7. Michael Haneke
Late last year, while filming the English-language remake of his own Funny Games, Austrian director Michael Haneke told the New York Times: "I've been accused of 'raping' the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely—all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What's different about my films is this: I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence." If you don't feel like being raped into independence, then his deeply discomforting features aren't for you. But films like The Seventh Continent (about the long, slow descent of a seemingly normal family) and Benny's Video (about a shocking act of violence and its ripples) are so starkly brilliant that they're difficult to dismiss—even if you're of the opinion that Haneke is a heavy-handed schoolmarm.
8. Werner Herzog
For 40 years, Werner Herzog has been making fiction films and documentaries, but he doesn't like to draw any sharp distinctions between the two; both fall under the aegis of "ecstatic truth," which is his way of saying that the truth in this films is filtered through his sensibility first. And that sensibility, from early provocations like Even Dwarfs Started Small and The Mystery Of Kaspar Hauser to recent work like Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn, has always been marked by a love for mad, quixotic outsiders and a deep skepticism of man's ability to overcome forces from within and without. His legendarily arduous productions have put cast and crew through incredible ordeals to achieve verisimilitude: Aguirre, The Wrath Of God was shot entirely in the Peruvian rainforest to better reflect a conquistador's journey; Herzog had his actors hypnotized for Heart Of Glass, about an isolated 18th-century Bavarian village that sinks into collective madness; and Christian Bale lustily devoured maggots as a POW in Rescue Dawn. But Herzog's most contentious shoot was 1982's Fitzcarraldo, in which he employed indigenous Peruvians for virtually no money to drag a 320-ton steamboat up a steep incline using a primitive pulley system. And that's just for starters: His controversial misadventures are chronicled in the excellent documentary Burden Of Dreams.
9. Harmony Korine
There's a certain level of grotesquerie involved in the three films written and directed by Harmony Korine. (He also wrote Kids, directed by Larry Clark.) But there's also a beautiful cinematic eye and a weird sense of empathy to Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, and the new Mister Lonely. It may be tough to get past certain scenes—cat-drowning, a meal in a dirty bath—but there's something at the heart of each film that makes it more than just provocation. On that front, though, Korine is also capable of simply pushing buttons: He started a film a decade ago that involved him instigating fist fights with strangers and surreptitiously filming them beating the shit out of him. Fight Harm was never released.
10. Takashi Miike
From 1995 to 2003, Japanese gadfly Takashi Miike directed anywhere from four to seven movies a year, many of them direct-to-video releases, and any given one of them likely to disgust at least someone in the audience. In films like Audition, Dead Or Alive, Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q and, Gozu, Miike has shown a preoccupation with the bestial side of human nature, as expressed in rough sex, ritualized violence, and gallons of bodily fluids. Miike's output and his outrageousness have slowed some in recent years, though as recently as 2006, his entry into Showtime's Masters Of Horror series—an episode entitled "Imprint," focusing on abortion, prostitution, and torture—was tabled by the network for being too extreme.
11. Michael Moore
Long before 24-hour cable news turned journalism into contrarian loudmouth jerks screaming at each other, Michael Moore pioneered the art of "I'm right, you're evil" entertainment with his film Roger And Me. By the time of his massively successful Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore was making films with the expressed purpose of influencing the presidential election. Problem is, as good as Moore is at rallying the left-wing base, he's equally good at galvanizing right-wingers against everything he stands for. So while Moore's socialized medicine movie Sicko was admirable, the message might have been more persuasive for those outside the choir if it came from a guy who hadn't made his name by smugly mocking those outside the choir.
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