The bad dream of life. About The Seventh Continent.

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the overall structure of The Seventh Continent (Der siebente Kontinent, Michael Haneke, 1989). It provides a comparison between this film and Landscape Suicide (James Benning, 1986) because Haneke’s film owes much to the American independent production. Both films have huge formal and discursive matches: the structural nature as well as the minimalist character of the plots. In this way, the film summarises the joint organization of Haneke’s story through everyday gestures of the Shöber family in order to highlight the final denounciation: familiar self-destruction is carried out with the same routine and automatism as they had lived their own lives. As a consequence of this, the articulation of a set of symbols and representations that have been established as a model of life and whose incarnation might well be viewed via the American dream are questioned. The shots that preface the film are analysed to get an idea of that descent into the madness and horror. In short, Haneke is identified with the approach of the heterodox marxist Guy Debord in his diagnose of the signs of decay that are taking place within the capitalist society in which we live.