71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance)
1994
**½
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Gabriel Cosmin Urdes, Lukas Miko, Otto Grünmandl, Anne Bennent, Udo Samel
Following The Seventh Continent and Benny's Video, the final part in Haneke's glaciation trilogy offers, like the terrible title suggests, 71 fragments of Viennese life intercut with current news on TV. The lives of various troubled characters are ruled by chance, and the people don't meet each other until the climactic tragedy, which is incidentally based on a real event. Unfortunately the whole is not a sum of its fragmented parts. This feels like an academic exercise that leaves you wanting to know more about the characters.
