Disturbing and shocking?

No. If movies like "Freaks" and "Ecstasy" long ago, and "Color of Night", "Basic Instinct", "Pretty Baby", even "My Life As A Dog", "A Wicker Man" or "Crazy" sometimes get described as disturbing or shocking, this one is far, far beyond. I just don't know the word strong enough.

This is most depressive movie ever made, I'm sure, not because I saw all of them, but I just can't imagine anything being more depressive. It should be strongly forbidden for suicidal persons, cause an army of psychiatrists couldn't prevent taking their lives.

It can't be compared to Greek tragedies, because Greeks had God's will or human wickedness that make tragic events happen. In "Seventh Continent" the tragedy comes from inside. The characters aren't really dying. They weren't alive at all. They had no more life inside than a dishwasher or coffee machine. They just do what they are supposed to, and repeat it day after day. Androids in "Blade Runner" are far more human, even the robot in "Lost in Space" serial is. They have no trouble to commit suicide because, being a machine, they have no survival instinct.

Pasolini's "Salo" is a disturbing movie, but not close to Sade's book that inspired it. Pasolini was interested in politics and homosexuality and omitted most of other contents. Even so, "Salo" is full of violence, torturing, sexuality, sadism. Though far from what we consider normal and acceptable, it still has feelings and passion. There is no violence, sexuality or passion in "Seventh Continent", because a machine can't have or show them. Even killing the pets isn't a violent act, it is equal to combing hair or closing the door. No feelings. Something that has to be done.

Haneke has made more movies and characters like these. Benny in "Benny's Video" has also no feelings (something between autistic and psychopath), but he still explores. Even murder, though heartless, cruel and pointless, is a part of exploring life and it's possibilities, and still leaves a possibility for a life (a kind of hope for Benny and human civilization itself). Characters in "Seventh Continent" went further: they came to the end of exploring and they found nothing. They are not alive and human any more even to be evil. They realized how pointless is their existence. They (adults) have more experience than Benny and they found that they have nothing more to look for or to expect. And with machine perfection they terminate they existence. Not violently, immediately as humans would do - by weapons, bomb that would destroy every trace of their lives. They are not human enough even to die as humans. Compare it to your computer: you click turning off, all the running programs will be terminated, then Windows save its settings and slowly fade away. And at the end there is nothing left. Only what has been left on hard disc. Complete perfection of inhumanity. Only traces will exist in administrations - school, police, job, insurance... Nothing related to humans.

Watch this movie if you have a chance. But be sure to have an infusion of Prozac on stand-by.

A powerful, disturbing film, shot in a highly idiosyncratic style. Michael Haneke's dissection of Austrian alienation is astonishingly effective. The style is, for the first part of the film, full of such close-ups that we don't see the characters' faces for nearly half an hour, but we share with them their view of the breakfast cereals, shoes and shopping. It should be boring, but is instead gripping, a quiet build-up to the prosaic horrors to come.

It is hard to comment without revealing some of these horrors, but the overall effect is shattering, tolerable only because Haneke avoids any real involvement with the characters and their motivations. With hindsight this is a weakness, and I reached the end of the film with the feeling 'what was that all about?'. But it is a film to reflect on, unlike any other that I have seen. Don't miss it - unless you are feeling depressed!

A middle-class family, consisting of father Georg (Dieter Berner), mother Anna (Birgit Doll), and young daughter Evi (Leni Tanzer) live out their routine daily lives in apparent discomfort. The film is split into three sections - 1987, 1988, and 1989. The first two years, we are given an insight into their thinking as Anna narrates letters written to her parents. We witness the mundaneness of their lives in scenes showing them eating breakfast, at work, going through a car wash, driving in their car. They are trapped by their repetitive surroundings in an unavoidable consumerist world. The third section sees the parents quitting their jobs, buying power tools, and emptying their bank accounts. They tell people they're going to Australia, only they plan to destroy their home and kill themselves. Haneke is the master of the cold and the uncomfortable. This was his debut feature, only he seemed to have already mastered this skill. In his later films, we witness brutal animal slaughter in Benny's Video (1992), genital mutilation in The Piano Teacher (2001), and possibly the most shocking suicide ever depicted on film in his masterpiece Hidden (2005). In The Seventh Continent, we know what is coming. It is laid out quite early in the film. When it comes, it is every bit as unpleasant as you would hope it wouldn't be. Haneke doesn't need blood or dramatic music. Instead he just lets us hear the last gargled breaths, taking place off-camera, of someone taken an overdose of pills. Powerful, terrible and profoundly disturbing. Haneke, in my opinion, is the world's greatest living director. Granted, the likes of Godard and Herzog are still making films, but their heyday was in the 1960's and 70's respectively. Haneke is in his prime, and their is no-one is making more skillful films. He based The Seventh Continent on a newspaper article he read about a family that committed suicide in a similar fashion (as we learn over the end credits), and uses it as a commentary on a world obsessed with formality. This is certainly not an enjoyable film, but it is one that will linger with me for a long time, which is similar to the effect Hidden had on me. It will occasionally test your patience (scenes are repeated and their are long periods without dialogue), but its power is undeniable. An assured debut.