Review of Time of the Wolf

If there's one subgenre that particularly appeals to me, it is the post-apocalyptic movie, or any movie dealing with the end of civilization. I don't know why the subject fascinates me so, but it does. Haneke's The Time of the Wolf is one of the best of its type ever made. Some sort of cataclysm has occurred – all we really know is that most water supplies are tainted – and we follow a mother and her two children (the father is with them when the film opens) as they vie for survival. Life now is all about the few material possessions you have preserved. You try to hold onto a semblance of your values, but they seem mostly vestigial. Isabelle Huppert returns as Haneke's star. She and her children are the point around which everything happens, but they are just three people amongst many. The young girl who plays her daughter, Anaïs Demoustier, gives a particularly amazing performance. We talked (ed: on the Classic Film forum of IMDb) last week (or perhaps the week before) about the directors influenced by Hitchcock and those influenced by Bresson, and Huppert in an interview explains how both directors have influenced Haneke. It's definitely true. Haneke uses suspense in a much different manner than Hitchcock, but the devices are surprisingly similar.