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The SEVENTH CONTINENT is part of the internationally acclaimed series of films by Michael Haneke which also includes "Benny's Video"(1992) and "71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance."(1994). At this point, most major critics agree that SEVENTH CONTINENT is the master work of the trilogy because the original vision and technique that Haneke develops here is repeated and expanded in the other two films but never transcended.
What is the seventh continent? There are only six. It is a desire for some better world, pushing through the cracks in this modern one, only to bear the most bitter of fruit? A present day Austrian family is being hallowed out by the numbing repeat of urban life. George (Dieter Berner) is an engineer, his wife, Anna (Birgit Doll) an optician, both are blind to the deep emotion problems of Eva (Lenzi Tanzer) their daughter. THE SEVENTH CONTINENT chronicles three years in their lives.
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REVIEWS
MICHAEL WILMINGTON: Chicago Tribune
"THE SEVENTH CONTINENT is a calm chronical of hell...how commonplace people can erupt into despair or violence...Beautifully controlled, liberatingly intelligent it establishes Haneke as one of the more remarkable young contemporary filmmakers. The climactic half hour of this film ranks among the most truly terrifying in the modern cinema."
KEVIN THOMAS, Los Angeles Times.
"...arguably a great film...eschews conventional exposition in asking us to consider the systematic withering of the soul in our strarkly impersonal modern world."
VINCENT CANBY. New York Times
"...the visual style is its state of mind...at first seems merely obsessive, then becomes truly mad.
JONATHAN ROSENBAUM Chicago Reader
"A powerful provocative and highly disturbing Austrian film...a shocking and potent statement about our times...Devestating impact."THE SEVENTH CONTINENT (1989) by Michael Haneke is the first film in a trilogy that reflects on the role of violence and the media .