71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls

German-Austrian director Michael Haneke's experimental feature film, 71 Fragments: A Chronology of Chance, explores the bleak, disjointed lives of several people only to tie them together at the end, during a tragic, violent climax. Five-to-ten minute segments, spliced together, unravel fractured narratives from ten sets of people, ranging from a couple frustrated by their newly-adopted girl, to a daughter who, to spite her aging father, prevents him from spending time with his granddaughter, to a young runaway who survives German winters in subway stations, stealing and panhandling for food, cigarettes, and comic books. Between these narratives, real news footage reporting on Yugoslavian and Turkish wars, and the Michael Jackson molestation trial, makes the world within the film even larger and colder. It’s as if Haneke made ten movies, chopped the films into short strips, and edited them back together like Frankenstein, opting for ambience instead of plot. Full of characters who are "sorry that they exist," 71 Fragments contains little of the actual violence that viewers sometimes loathe in Haneke’s work. In an interview included in the extras, Haneke says of this third film in his "glaciation" trilogy, that 71 Fragments: A Chronology of Chance documents failed communication. That said, this film meditates on human isolation by distilling violence down into one chilling, final action, feeling more like a cry for help than a wish to separate further from humanity. —Trinie Dalton