Funny Games is structured around a series of escalating, violent games. On the way to their lake home, Anna (Susanne Lothar) and Georg (Ulrich Mühe) try to guess the opera song the other plays on the car’s stereo. Peter (Frank Giering) joins the games after they arrive, knocking on the door while Georg and Georg Jr. (Stefan Clapczynski) are setting up the boat. When Anna answers, he asks her for eggs. When she gives them, he drops them and asks for four more. He drops those four when the dog, Rolfi, jumps at him and his newly arriving friend Paul (Arno Frisch). They insist that Anna give them four more eggs — the last of her stock. When she refuses, they get violent. The games only get worse from there, eventually reaching a fevered German version of “eenie meenie miney mo” where the loser is executed.
The trick is, though, that Peter and Paul only get violent as part of a game or when a rule is broken. They do define the parameters some of smaller games they play later on, but they never explain the overarching game. When asked why they’re doing this, Paul rattles off different possible explanations, saying that maybe they are drug addicts, or maybe they’re bored rich kids, or maybe they were abused as children. After each, he laughs and admits it was another lie. It’s something that Heath Ledger and Christopher Nolan borrowed for their Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight.
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