71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
Director: Michael Haneke
Year Released: 1994
Rating: 2.0
The lives of various people - an urchin who ran away from his home in Romania, a bank teller, and a college student, just to name three - are told in pieces, leading up to a senseless murder in a bank that brings them all together. My problem with Haneke is that, while his films are well-crafted and generally done with forethought, I can't help but feel almost neutral when they're over - there's too much conductor and not enough orchestra. In this case, I can see what he's building up to and understand the message - about random and disturbing violence that takes place all over the world (which gets covered via news footage of the atrocities in Bosnia and Somalia) - but aside from agreeing with him that the world is a screwed up place and that you never know which day something horrible is going to happen (a similar film could be made about the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the incidents that led up to that day), I'm baffled as to what other kind of response he's trying to evoke.
