Michael Haneke
Il Settimo Continente

Do you remember the most disturbing film you've ever seen in your life? Well, forget it. Because, in terms of shock, it won't amount to a crumb compared to this masterpiece by Haneke from 1989. 

And to think there is no blood in "The Seventh Continent." Not a single drop. If you already feel shaken in the first hour, with those long black cuts (five seconds) and those claustrophobic and continuous details that isolate the characters off-screen, then I invite you to stop watching. Because nothing has happened yet. Because what will happen next is the apocalypse captured on film. Still deciding to proceed? Well, I've warned you. It's your choice. At your own risk.
Haneke, even in his less successful films, is an extraordinary director: he totally rejects empathy, identification, and sentiment, creating a vast distance between the viewer and the work and forcing them to be violated with an unparalleled coldness. The viewer, then, in front of "The Seventh Continent", cannot help but ask themselves "what the hell am I watching?" because they are constantly thrown out. There’s no logical explanation, except for an unbearable spleen, to justify what happens on screen. But the extraordinary thing is that, even without knowing the origins of evil, you, the viewer, unconsciously live that evil indeed. Haneke's magic lies in making you experience the same neurosis the characters feel, distancing you from them, preventing you from understanding what's going on in their heads and why they're doing those things. 
But what does this film contain? This film contains a family: mother, father, and little daughter. Three years of mechanical days on the verge of robotic. Then something cracks, until it breaks. Put like that, it may seem like the classic family melodrama, a bit sweet and a bit sour, yet it could very well be a horror: a grand guignol about the tragedy of existence and emptiness. A self-annihilation of the family that in an advertising poster depicting an idyllic place to store dreams and hopes (Australia) reads a shocking epiphany. I can't say more. The bravest ones will discover (or feel, because nothing is revealed in Haneke) what the heart of the work is. The first and astonishing chapter of the so-called "glaciation trilogy" (the name says it all), which will include the subsequent "Benny's Video" (1992) and "71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance" (1994) and the Austrian director's first feature film after a long television tenure, "The Seventh Continent" is a work that is impressive, suffocating, where the author's entire poetics are already present. A heavy criticism of the bourgeoisie and the importance of the symbol: every shot, despite its almost documentary simplicity, contains complexities that terrify. Complexities also present in human nature, so devoted to rigor yet so inclined towards evil.
An unhealthy journey towards decay, where the horror is not amplified but, on the contrary, enclosed in an aseptic and minimalist direction, interpreted with icy austerity by the three main actors. There is a wonderful scene: the family disposes of their life's savings by throwing them down the toilet. Haneke said: "During that scene, many had left the theater. Many more than for other scenes in other films". Nowadays it's more shocking to witness the destruction of material rather than witnessing a killing. Upon completion, silence. But the film continues to grow inside me, terrifying me. With unheard-of violence.