71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) by Michael Haneke - Review

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by Michael Haneke

grade: 8.5

It is based on a real-life news story 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. In the film – which is divided into five chapters, each concerning a particular day – everything takes place from October 12 to December 23, 1993. Everything leads up to a single event in which all the characters will be involved in one way or another. But how important is the human being in this feature film by Michael Haneke?

Many stories, one story

71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. Fragments of everyday life. So many stories, so many short fragments that lead to a tragic epilogue. So many people who apparently have nothing in common, but who by pure chance find themselves sharing a decisive moment. So many solitudes in a mechanical everyday life, where few seem to have kept a certain humanity. Michael Haneke has captured all this and in his third feature film has created a great fresco of society where there seems to be no place for any feelings.

Hans (Branko Samarovski) and Maria (Claudia Martini) are married and have a young daughter. Hans spends most of the day at work, while Maria is frustrated with her life as a housewife and mother. Paul (Udo Samel) and Inge (Anne Bennent) strongly desire to have children. Perhaps they are no longer in love, but a child could somehow save their relationship. Tomek (Otto Grünmandl) lives alone and has had no relationship with his daughter for years. Bernie (Georg Friedrich) is a soldier who steals weapons from his barracks in order to resell them. Among these weapons, a gun ends up in the wrong hands. Young Marian (Gabriel Cosmin Urdes) has just arrived from Romania and still feels lost in the cosmopolitan Vienna. And then, finally, there is him: Max (played by Lukas Miko). Max is a student who lives with his friend Hanno (Alexander Pschill) and spends his days playing table tennis and solving puzzles. Max, together with Marian, is perhaps the only character to show some humanity, some vulnerability. Albeit with tragic consequences.

In 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, people are portrayed almost as machines. Similarly, news stories in the news are listed without emphasis, in a completely neutral way, whether it is about wars in the world, or recent events concerning Michael Jackson. A sharp, abrupt editing separates one episode from the next. And often such episodes run for only a handful of seconds. A few seconds that are, however, enough to make us understand the various situations, to delineate the personalities of the protagonists, to lead us by the hand into that grey, dark world that Haneke has so well portrayed in this important film of his.

It is based on a real-life event, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. An event that took place in 1994 – the year the film was shot – during which a young man shot several people inside a bank and subsequently killed himself. In the film – which is divided into five chapters, each concerning a particular day – everything takes place from October 12 to December 23, 1993. Everything leads up to a single event in which all the characters will be involved in one way or another. But how important is the human being in this feature film by Michael Haneke?

A cold camera, dark and cramped environments, interpersonal relationships almost devoid of feelings and moments of everyday life that unfold almost mechanically speak for themselves. Just as the final scene, during which, following Max’s shooting, we are no longer given to see who the characters involved are, how many of them are dead and who, on the other hand, has remained alive. What matters is the act or, better still, everything that slowly led to that act. And so, once again, it is society itself that is indicted. An increasingly selfish, consumerist society, attentive only to material goods. A society that no longer generates human beings, but within which the last remaining human beings do not have an easy life.

Michael Haneke shows us all this with a sharp, attentive gaze and great stylistic maturity. A stylistic maturity that we had already appreciated in his previous films – The Seventh Continent (1989) and Benny’s Video (1992) – and which is further confirmed in 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. Can the eyes of a child ever find even a faint hope in the world? Probably not even a Vienna in the days before Christmas can do much.