Seventh Continent, The

Aroview: The disintegration of a seemingly content, middle-class family is at the center of this chilling domestic autopsy; a clinical and cynical tableaux of bourgeois imagery that first established dir. Haneke’s thematic interests in spectatorship, alienation and the contemporary malaise.

Based on the true story of an Austrian family who self-destructed over a three-year period, eventually committing suicide, this is a disturbing yet cerebral chamber piece outlaying the psychological implosion of its subjects, who revolt against their ritual conformism and materialism through self-inflicted acts of violence. True to future form, the film’s lasting impression is of a bleak yet utterly unshakable work by a master provocateur in the making.

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