Benny's Video

Oddly, the film is presented in 1.78:1 rather than its original aspect (1.66:1). Perhaps Benny has been busy in the editing suite, cropping anything too incriminating from the extremes of his images. The film comes with optional English subtitles.

The only extra is a 21-minute interview (in French, with English subtitles) with Michael Haneke, who talks about the dangers of viewing reality exclusively through the media, who suggests that sound is a more powerful tool than any image for provoking feelings in filmgoers, and who claims that his choice to shoot mostly in "cold" blues was designed to counter the warm reds and yellows that dominate televisual images.

Haneke links Benny's Video to all his other films (apart from Funny Games) through the common theme of "guilt, and how we deal with it," and claims that the actions in his films tend to be ambiguous both because it is only from such ambiguity that any real guilt can arise, and because unequivocal answers to questions raised "will only reassure and calm the viewer." And so the interview exposes that special blend of extreme realism and overt artifice which lies at the core of all Haneke's films.