We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
to sept. 5
You shouldn’t trust writer-director Michael Haneke—but then, he doesn’t trust you, either. The Austrian filmmaker offers tutorials in watching, confronting viewers with uneasy silences, voyeuristic intimacy, and violence that’s both visceral and alienating. Haneke certainly can go too far, as he did in such ’90s provocations as Benny’s Video (pictured; at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 28, and 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 30) and Funny Games (at 2:45 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26, 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 29, and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 31), neither of which is for the squeamish. But his more recent movies are brilliantly creepy without (usually) being excessively gory. This eight-film retrospective opens with last year’s powerful Caché (at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5, 9:10 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 8, and 9:20 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10), which considers both the process of cinematic observation and the indifference of bourgeois Europeans to their recent-immigrant neighbors. Similar concerns animate 2000’s coolly disturbing Code Unknown (at 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 12, 9:05 p.m. Monday, Aug. 14, 9:20 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 15, and 9:15 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 17), in which an incident on a Parisian boulevard briefly links four essentially solitary people. More fanciful but equally harrowing is The Time of the Wolf (at 2:40 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 2, and 1 p.m. Monday, Sept. 4), which literalizes Europe’s anomie into a new dark age. “Rewind: The Films of Michael Haneke” runs to Wednesday, Sept. 6, at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $9.25. (301) 495-6700. (Mark Jenkins)