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46 out of 50 people found the following comment useful :-
Burns its way into your psyche, 25 August 2003
Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C.

Arguably, no greater cinematic interpreter of alienation exists in the world today than Austrian director Michael Haneke. Haneke shows us characters whose response to the world around them has deadened, people who have forgotten how to feel, how to love, how to care. The Seventh Continent, the first film of the trilogy that, with Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), depicts what Haneke has called "my country's emotional glaciation." Based on a true story of the disintegration of a middle class Austrian family, the film has little plot, only incident and observation. Divided into three parts and shot in episodic fragments, as in his 2002 film Code Unknown, each fragment is tenuously connected by fadeouts in which scenes start and end abruptly. A mood of banality is established early in an extended sequence in which a car moves through a car wash showing all the details of detergent sprays, high-pressure washers, and rotating brushes. At the end of the car wash is a travel poster beckoning tourists to visit Australia with a peaceful scene of sand and water, a motif that is repeated periodically during the film.

The Schobers, husband George (Dieter Berner), wife Anna (Birgit Doll), and daughter Eva (Leni Tanzer), are the happily married family living next door. George is an engineer and Anna an optician. Eva is a bright child of about eight with deep, expressive eyes. The family moves through their morning ritual with precision -- brushing their teeth, feeding the fish, and eating breakfast with little conversation or emotional interaction. The camera avoids their faces, focusing on mundane objects such as a bowl of cereal, an alarm clock, a fish tank, a package of congealed broccoli. This preoccupation with objects underscores the lack of connection between the characters and the things they have acquired. We get our first hint that something is not right when Eva pretends to her teacher that she has lost her eyesight. Anna questions her about the incident, promising not to harm her if she tells the truth but, when Eva admits to the lie, suddenly slaps her across the face ignoring the fact that she is a very troubled little girl. It is from here that the cracks begin to widen.

Depicting ritualistic actions like counting of money at a supermarket, the distractions of television, the meaninglessness of work, the film reflects the powerlessness and isolation of people in modern society. Haneke chronicles a family enslaved to the structures they have created, operating in a morass of emotional vacuity. The first hour may seem slow but it builds considerable tension until it reaches a shattering climax. Little by little the family disengages. George quits his job and writes letters to his parents hinting of something dark about to happen. In the absence of a spiritual core, without the possibility of meaningful action, the family sinks deeper into an abyss, unraveling and discarding the tightly woven structures of their life. Similar in theme to Todd Haynes' 1995 film Safe but with three times the power, The Seventh Continent is a ruthlessly intelligent film that burns its way into your psyche, leaving an indelible mark that will forever haunt your dreams.

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33 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
Another brick in the inhumanity, 31 October 2004
Author: przgzr from Zagreb, Croatia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Disturbing and shocking?

No. If movies like "Freaks" and "Ecstasy" long ago, and "Color of Night", "Basic Instinct", "Pretty Baby", even "My Life As A Dog", "A Wicker Man" or "Crazy" sometimes get described as disturbing or shocking, this one is far, far beyond. I just don't know the word strong enough.

This is most depressive movie ever made, I'm sure, not because I saw all of them, but I just can't imagine anything being more depressive. It should be strongly forbidden for suicidal persons, cause an army of psychiatrists couldn't prevent taking their lives.

It can't be compared to Greek tragedies, because Greeks had God's will or human wickedness that make tragic events happen. In "Seventh Continent" the tragedy comes from inside. The characters aren't really dying. They weren't alive at all. They had no more life inside than a dishwasher or coffee machine. They just do what they are supposed to, and repeat it day after day. Androids in "Blade Runner" are far more human, even the robot in "Lost in Space" serial is. They have no trouble to commit suicide because, being a machine, they have no survival instinct.

Pasolini's "Salo" is a disturbing movie, but not close to Sade's book that inspired it. Pasolini was interested in politics and homosexuality and omitted most of other contents. Even so, "Salo" is full of violence, torturing, sexuality, sadism. Though far from what we consider normal and acceptable, it still has feelings and passion. There is no violence, sexuality or passion in "Seventh Continent", because a machine can't have or show them. Even killing the pets isn't a violent act, it is equal to combing hair or closing the door. No feelings. Something that has to be done.

Haneke has made more movies and characters like these. Benny in "Benny's Video" has also no feelings (something between autistic and psychopath), but he still explores. Even murder, though heartless, cruel and pointless, is a part of exploring life and it's possibilities, and still leaves a possibility for a life (a kind of hope for Benny and human civilization itself). Characters in "Seventh Continent" went further: they came to the end of exploring and they found nothing. They are not alive and human any more even to be evil. They realized how pointless is their existence. They (adults) have more experience than Benny and they found that they have nothing more to look for or to expect. And with machine perfection they terminate they existence. Not violently, immediately as humans would do - by weapons, bomb that would destroy every trace of their lives. They are not human enough even to die as humans. Compare it to your computer: you click turning off, all the running programs will be terminated, then Windows save its settings and slowly fade away. And at the end there is nothing left. Only what has been left on hard disc. Complete perfection of inhumanity. Only traces will exist in administrations - school, police, job, insurance... Nothing related to humans.

Watch this movie if you have a chance. But be sure to have an infusion of Prozac on stand-by.

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17 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
Art at its best, 6 March 2004
10/10
Author: Vitor Cunha from Oporto, Portugal

Der Siebent Kontinent is a film you should watch. It is not pleasant neither does Michael Haneke uses any tricks in order to even interest you about the characters or their lives. Yet, it is as powerful as an atomic bomb during peace time. It is LOUD and its message (which is whatever you want it to be) is right in your face.

It is amazing how a masterpiece needs no soundtrack, fancy camera work or explicit and extended dialogs.

Unfortunately, it is very hard to find. The screenings are rare and no personal editions on VHS or DVD exist as far as I am aware. Many will recognize the "Piano Teacher" approach to directing but, this is as powerful as it can get. One of the finest examples of style not overlapping form.

Treat yourself with this lesson. Watch it if you can. Specially if you experienced depression at a given time in your life.

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11 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
a controlled freak-out, 13 August 2002
Author: kentos from New York

Having spent a couple years now browsing thru IMDb, this is the first film I've seen that actually motivated me to leave a comment. I've seen 3 other (more recent) movies by Haneke: "Funny Games," "Code Unknown," and "The Piano Teacher." All of them disturbed me in their own special way--a feeling that I obviously don't mind getting from a film. "The 7th Continent," though, really blew me away in ways that I find difficult but necessary to describe.

This was Haneke's first theatrical film & apparently based on a true story--although I'm always skeptical of such disclaimers (the same was said about "Picnic at Hanging Rock," another great creepy film). It's divided into 3 parts: 1987, 1988, and 1989. Many scenes repeat themselves, and we get a clear sense that the family (dad, mom, daughter) is going through the motions of modern life. The banalities have a bizarre and uneasy edge to them, though, that really piles up by the time Part 3 arrives. All I have to say about the last 40 minutes is: OH MY GOD! I thought Gaspar Noe's "I Can't Sleep" (?) had an excruciating buildup, but that one (with all its explicitness) can't hold a candle to the amount of emotional and physical devastation packed into the conclusion of "Continent."

Fans of Haneke's later work should definitely check this one out to see the origin of his trademarks: no music score, seemingly pointless scenes that linger (often with little or no dialogue), off-putting camera angles (we sometimes see only the actors' hands or feet). While these techniques aren't always successful in his films ("Code" had some interminable moments), they all come together seamlessly in "Continent." A superb work!

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10 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Emotionally shattering real-life horror, 16 March 2004
8/10
Author: gray4 from Somerset, England

A powerful, disturbing film, shot in a highly idiosyncratic style. Michael Haneke's dissection of Austrian alienation is astonishingly effective. The style is, for the first part of the film, full of such close-ups that we don't see the characters' faces for nearly half an hour, but we share with them their view of the breakfast cereals, shoes and shopping. It should be boring, but is instead gripping, a quiet build-up to the prosaic horrors to come.

It is hard to comment without revealing some of these horrors, but the overall effect is shattering, tolerable only because Haneke avoids any real involvement with the characters and their motivations. With hindsight this is a weakness, and I reached the end of the film with the feeling 'what was that all about?'. But it is a film to reflect on, unlike any other that I have seen. Don't miss it - unless you are feeling depressed!

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18 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
If I never, ever see another movie this one will have made it enough., 12 April 2006
10/10
Author: Elise S from United States

Michael Haneke is The Filmmaker, the one those aficionados of The Grand Cinematic Tradition have been waiting for to continue the work of Welles, Bunuel, and Kubrick. There are others. This filmmaker, Michael Haneke, with "The Seventh Continent" and his other films "Hidden", "The Time of the Wolf", "The Piano Teacher", "Code Unknown", "Funny Games", and others makes for a talent so brilliant and bright that I scarcely believe it. This incredible, incredible, incredible motion picture ostensibly about a girl that fraudulently claims blindness highlights what will ultimately become Michael Haneke's greatest focus: the tragedy of the middle-class intelligentsia.

People, I've seen thousands of movies, and I would sooner see absolutely no more movies for the rest of my time on this planet than never see a piece of work like "The Seventh Continent" again. This single movie, this one movie, is why the medium of film still exists so successfully. "Hyperbole!" you may think. Have you seen this film? I'm a loud, confrontational person and this movie shut me up for five days. Forget Matthew Barney; hang this film in a museum. I am floored, stunned, that this movie could be made. It will stun so many of you, as well, with its horrific honesty and truth. So should I never see a movie as amazing! God forbid! So should it ever happen!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Realistic family study regarding modern living or pretentious film making?, 10 July 2008
1/10
Author: digital_groove from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I sadly to say go with the latter. I only recently became interested in Haneke's work after viewing Funny Games, being completely hypnotized and blown away by the magnificent work. "Cache" was enjoyable to me but I was hoping for more, I've seen plenty of European cinema, hundreds, but the ending was just too disappointing.

I made it an effort to see every Haneke film on DVD possible, starting in chronological order I watched this film and was just utterly taken aback by it instantly. I think to really comment on cinema one needs to be objective and know history of films similar to this type of intense plodding character (in this case family) study. To put it simply if it wasn't for being able to fast forward with subtitles still on I would have stopped this film within 30 minutes. The die-hard film lover in me pressed on expecting something important from this.

Let it be said, I never heard the hype surrounding this film nor did I view this IMDb page until AFTER I saw it. Complete 100% unbiased opinion and I thought it was trash. I fully understand someone can argue the idea it was so plodding and boring is because it's a film detailing how monotonous a life in the 21st century can get. To me, he easily could have shortened the film down, hell this could have been a short film reeling no more than 30 minutes and get the point across. After scene after scene it becomes obvious to the viewer the style he is going for, eventually turning predictable. You get where he's going with the film and just want the pay off already. It comes and in my case I was left wondering what a waste of time.

Film in the past has done a better and more remarkable job getting across the point of alienation humans can feel in modern society. Better pacing, establishing reason and emotions for characters, not over-indulging in film techniques. Instead this film displayed trite and mind-numbingly boring imagery. One of the worst art house films I've ever seen. A shame real fish had to die or suffer for this film. Haneke is clearly an auteur and I can only hope his films get better with each successor.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
A bleak and clinical examination of a family in despair, 19 March 2008
Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The seventh continent at the centre of this bleak tale of suburban dysfunction is as vague and enigmatic as the film itself. Are we supposed to believe that the geographical state noted in the title is the rugged, ethereal landscape glimpsed fleetingly throughout key moments of the film, or is it in fact a much higher state of being that can only truly be achieved by purging yourself of the trappings of twentieth century life? The need for transcendence is central throughout The Seventh Continent (1989), the first feature film from Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke, who has subsequently gone on to re-examine this very same theme in his following films - 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), The Piano Teacher (2001) and Hidden (2005) - by continually probing the very boundaries of human nature and the personal and/or social factors that can drive an individual to the point of complete, psychological transcendence. If you are at all familiar with Haneke's work you will be partially aware of what to expect from the film in question, with The Seventh Continent presenting us with a deep, hypnotic and highly clinical examination of the break-down in communication between members of a middle-class Austrian family, and the desire they have to transcend the drab, soulless grind of their everyday existence and arrive at that mythical place so central to the title.

Even here, with his first film for cinema, Haneke's iconic style and attention to detail is fully-formed, with the same stylistic flourishes found in his recent film, the highly acclaimed Hidden, already presented in the stark, antiseptic presentation of the world created here. The direction of the film is intended to present to us the emptiness and tedium central to the lives of its characters, by giving us scenes that play out in long, unbroken takes lasting anywhere between five to ten minutes, with the camera often locked off and immobile in order to further emphasise the idea of clinical examination. In this respect, the film is less about telling a story and presenting emotions in a manner that we might expect from cinema, but instead feeling more like a science experiment, with Haneke as the biology professor inviting us to take a look through the lens of the microscope. In keeping with this idea, the way in which the drama unfolds and is presented is again drawing heavily on the director's desire to create a mood for the audience that in some way mirrors that of the characters depicted on screen. So, the slow pace, deliberately minimal use of editing and the constant repetition of scenes, actions and events all help to create that same sense of tedium and lifeless banality in order to create a reaction or even a sense of empathy from those of us watching this very ordinary family spiral so terribly out of control.

These themes are further reinforced with the film's near iconic opening shot; a locked off, low-angle perspective of a family saloon moving slowly through a service station car wash. The shot, presented in real-time, lasts somewhere between five or six minutes, but on our first exposure to the film, feels much, much longer. Although it will undoubtedly infuriate some, it establishes the style and pace of the film perfectly; whilst also creating something of an atmosphere of empty, soulless routine. Why wash the car when it will only get dirty again? Later in the film the shot will be repeated within context to further illustrate this point. From here we cut to a montage of cold, clinically arranged images of domestic cleansing; toilets, shower-heads, sinks, plug-holes, toothbrushes, etc. It's almost ten minutes before we even see a character's face or find any kind of meaningful exchange of dialog, with Haneke instead presenting the ideas of routine, conformity, cleansing and facade. The notion of cleansing, both literally in this instance, and spiritually as the film progresses, is an important theme, with the family effectively cleansing themselves from society; stripping away every layer of the superficial and eventually taking the final leap of faith into the unknown.

Even here, as the family take their house apart piece by piece and destroy their belongings in order to free themselves from the shackles of routine and social responsibility, we have the action presented as a series of hypnotic, gruelling and repetitive montages that stress the weight of effort required to even escape the horrors of the mundane. Admittedly, I could be reading this the wrong way, but to me the implication is clear; that the family - for one reason or another - have simply ceased to exist. Even before the film begins they have been consumed by life and are now numbed to its pleasures, no matter how few and far between. As a result, many will find these characters hard to like and even harder to empathise with, particularly in the selfishness regarding their child. In one of the most moving scenes, Haneke drops his guard, and for the first time allows his polemic to be overtaken by emotion; as the family sit motionless on the couch, the television set flickering in the dark, with Jennifer Rush singing her anthemic hit The Power of Love as their house lies in ruins, the little girl drinks her milk and softly proclaims "its bitter!". The Seventh Continent is not as easy film to watch; nor to appreciate on any immediate, emotional level. Like much of Haneke's work it requires an enormous amount of thought and effort on the part of the audience to really think about and deconstruct what it is that he is attempting to convey, and only then are we able to truly understand and appreciate what the film is really about.

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10 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Not enjoyable, yet manages to affect the viewer., 25 October 2007
6/10
Author: Alocirp from New York

I went into this film with very high expectations. Unfortunately, I can't say that it lived up to them. The first hour is incredibly dull, as we watch an upper middle-class family lifelessly perform mundane tasks (take a shower, eat breakfast, tie shoes, etc.). I failed to sympathize with any of the characters, and some scenes dragged on so long that I found my mind wandering. I generally don't mind long takes, and even in other films by the same director (Funny Games, Benny's Video, etc.) thought they were used extremely well. However, here they were simply tedious.

The film wasn't totally a let down however; far from it. The last 45 minutes really picks up intensity and re-grabs the viewer's interest. I won't spoil anything for those who haven't seen it, but the scene in which the family destroys their own house and possessions is extremely well done. The ending is bleak and depressingly powerful, and I realized that it wouldn't have worked without the boring first hour. But that doesn't change the fact that it was boring.

Overall, I had trouble giving this film a number rating, but I guess it would be somewhere around a 6/10. I think it's possible that that number would change on a second viewing, but to be honest, I doubt I would ever want to watch this film again.

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5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Haunting tale not to be missed.., 12 May 2000
8/10
Author: smakawhat from Washington, DC

This underapreciated and much unheard film deals with the life of a typical family that takes a dramatic turn in their history.

Scenes cut to black. There is little dialogue. But the scenes create an intense paranoia and huge sense of aprehension as you sit back wondering what is going to happen. Awesome directing technique in creating two different worlds. One that is everyday and normal, the other frightningly disturbing.

A hand reaches for a hammer, and chooses a different one. A man in a junk yard drives his car towards his daughter. The sound of a mother gasping for air. A fish tank is destroyed. All these scenes which are so simple (even some of them not seen) and so BRILLIANT that they convey a sense of a anxiety and horror even though there are actions of ordinary people.

I just saw this at a special screening of Austrian director Michael Haneke's work. They are showing a trilogy of his best work and I can't wait to see "Benny's video" and "71 Fragments of a chronology of Chance".

If you ever do hear of this film (THe seventh continent) DON'T MISS IT you will NEVER see another film like it.

Rating 8 out of 10.

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