Michael, the debut directorial effort from Markus Schleinzer, the Austrian casting director known for working with Ulrich Seidl, Michael Glawogger, and regularly with Michael Haneke, is an ambitious, discomfiting and quite ugly bit of business. Its repugnancy is not a matter of aesthetic -- the cinematography, courtesy of DP Gerald Kerkletz, is appropriately clean and rigidly framed -- but in its observational approach to detailing the day-to-day processes of the eponymous pedophile (Michael Fuith), who keeps a young boy (David Rauchenberger) locked in an admittedly spacious room in his basement.
Draining the film of any agent of outrage or justice, apart from the kid himself, Schleinzer comes very close to succeeding in portraying the external life of an unrepentant child molester without any sway of passion; just how much of an accomplishment that is, however, is up for debate. The script, written by the director, boldly refutes a great deal of the conventional disgust that goes into depictions of pedophilia but allows for more than a few scenarios where he must polish the artifice of his existence while also putting it in tremendous danger. At one point, he takes his captive out for the day, to a crowded park, and exudes a borderline preposterous calm while moving through the crowd.
Such stretches of the imagination lend weight to a metaphorical reading of the narrative; this young boy, devoid of any real personality, acts like more of an adult than Michael does. Indeed, there are a more than a few times when Schleinzer indulges in what might be fairly construed as black comedy but two or three particular scenes -- an early moment depicts Michael washing his crotch in the sink after an assumed rape of the child -- plainly suggest acts so revolting that the film's sober tone feels cynical to the point where Schleinzer could justifiably be accused of wagging his finger at the audience. His connections to Haneke and Seidl are, in this regard, quite telling.And yet, on the whole, Michael is convincing as a character study to the point of disconcertment. Fuith's portrayal allows for moments of juvenilia, awkwardness, embarrassment and perversion that genuinely blindside you; the character's discipline, mirrored in the film's repetition of routine and the mechanic whirl of motors that lock up Michael's home, is compromised enough to denote Schleinzer's ability to surrender control. Had the filmmaker loosened his grip on the character a bit more, the intermittent chills afforded in Schleinzer's film may have seeped in deeper and become truly impossible to shake, like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer with a suit jacket and the top button buttoned.
What the film offers instead, towards the end, is more akin to a rolled-up newspaper to the snout. Schleinzer does, at long last, put forth a scene of rebellion but withholds anything resembling real catharsis, keeping his focus unwaveringly on the character of Michael. There is certainly something to be admired about what Schleinzer is trying to do here: Michael is pathetic and quite troubled but he is not shown as inherently evil or malevolent, leading to something approaching a purely behavioral study of behavior that is equally hard to contemplate and stomach. I mean, honestly, would you ever imagine such a deplorable figure joyfully, excitedly belting out Boney M.'s slinky disco hit "Sunny '76"?
