Caché (2005)
Directed by Michael Haneke

Film Review

After his disappointing post-apocalyptic drama Le Temps du loup (2003), the acclaimed Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke returns to form with this sophisticated psychological thriller which explores the devastating consequences of pent-up guilt to great effect.  Whilst Caché is incredibly slow moving and statically filmed throughout, with very few moments of actual real horror, it manages to be one of the most compelling thrillers in recent years - mainly because the nature of the threat is so rigorously repressed and because the spectator's anticipation of what may or may not happen plays a significant part in the viewing experience.   Haneke conveys trauma perhaps better than any director around today, and his skill as a thriller director and understanding of human psychology allows him to craft works of cinema which are both totally absorbing and thoroughly disturbing - and Caché is an excellent example of this. The film earned Haneke the best director award at Cannes in 2005.

Whilst not primarily a political film, Haneke makes some capital from one shameful incident - the killing of 200 Algerian demonstrators during a demonstration in Paris in 1961.  Not only does this event serve as an essential part of the plot, but it also outwardly projects the individual guilt of the film's main protagonist.  The “crime” that Georges committed in his childhood is nothing when set aside the greater crime of a hushed up massacre perpetrated by a so-called civilised state.  The inference is very suggestive: whilst Georges' guilty secret has caught up with him and will probably destroy his world, France has yet to atone for its past atrocities. Caché is fundamentally an old-fashioned morality tale, its message being that bad deeds never go unpunished.

Haneke's films are seldom comfortable or complete.  Caché may be more coherent and conventional than much of his earlier work, but its frustrating ambiguity and lack of an ending will irritate many spectators.  The director is far more concerned with exploring how his characters react to an unseen threat than giving us a nice tidy plot in which every detail is meticulously worked through.  In that respect, he is imitating life, since things we experience in the course of our brief existence seldom have the satisfying closure we often want them to.  Life is on an on-going narrative in which we try to interpret what we see and feel, knowing full well that there is no cleverly constructed screenplay, no contrived happy ending.  Haneke shows us as much as he thinks he needs to; it is up to the spectator to make the effort to fill in the blanks and decide how the drama should end, if indeed it ever does end...

Film Synopsis

Georges and Anne are a comfortably settled middle-aged couple who have a nice apartment in Paris.  He hosts a popular literary review programme on television; she is a successful writer; they have a teenage son.  Their life is peaceful and ordered.  Then it all starts to fall apart.  The couple receive a video cassette recording of the street where they live, wrapped in a macabre child's drawing.  A short while later, another recording lands on their doorstep, this time showing a car driving up to George's childhood home in the country.  Driven half-mad with fear and anger, Georges realises who may be behind this campaign to terrify his family.  The answer lies in his past, when he unjustly treated a young Algerian orphan boy…