Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys

Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages

France, Romania, Germany

2000

117 Min

Color

1.85:1

French, Arabic, English, French Sign Language, Malinka, Romanian

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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PROD Marin Karmitz, Alain Sarde

CAST Juliette Binoche, Luminiţa Gheorghiu, Thierry Neuvic, Ona Lu Yenke, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Josef Bierbichler, Alexandre Hamidi, Djibril Kouyaté, Crenguta Hariton Stoica, Bob Nicolescu, Bruno Todeschini, Arsinée Khanjian, Florence Loiret-Caille, Nathalie Richard, Andrée Tainsy, Carlo Brandt, Philippe Demarle, Maurice Bénichou, Walid Afkir, Aïssa Maïga, Costel Cascaval

ED Karin Hartusch, Nadine Muse, Andreas Prochaska

PROD DES Emmanuel de Chauvigny

SOUND Nadine Muse, Guillaume Sciama

Cannes (In Competition): Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Toronto (Masters), Edinburgh, Karlovy Vary (Horizons), Rotterdam (Critics' Choice), San Francisco

Synopsis

On a busy Paris boulevard, a youth scornfully tosses a crumpled paper bag into the outstretched hands of a beggar woman. This is the bond which, for an instant, links several very different characters: Anne (Binoche), an actress; her war photographer boyfriend Georges; his farmer father and younger brother Jean, who, contrary to his father’s wishes, has no interest in inheriting the farm; Amandou, a music teacher for deaf-mute children, and his family, who originate from Africa; and Maria a Romanian immigrant.

Written and directed by Michael Haneke, one of modern cinema’s most distinctive and ambitious directors, CODE UNKNOWN is a complex film of powerful emotional force and a fascinating study of the subtle connections and barriers between people, social class, race, and the difficulty of communicating in the modern world.

Director

Michael Haneke

Cheerfully wishing his audience a “disturbing evening” at a London retrospective of his films, director Michael Haneke insists that he is an optimist at heart, despite all of the relentlessly bleak carnage and deeply disturbing imagery so vividly painted and seared into the mind of anyone who has had the uncomfortable experience of viewing his work.

Practically born into show business, to an actress mother and director father, in Munich in March 1942, Haneke spent his early years in a working class suburb of Vienna before an early attempt at fame as an actor and pianist. Failing to achieve early success, Haneke attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy and psychology, and became a film critic and stage director before making his eventual debut as a television director with After Liverpool in 1973. Setting in motion a television career specializing in literary adaptations and small screen films, Haneke would work successfully in that medium until his feature debut… read more

Cheerfully wishing his audience a “disturbing evening” at a London retrospective of his films, director Michael Haneke insists that he is an optimist at heart, despite all of the relentlessly bleak carnage and deeply disturbing imagery so vividly painted and seared into the mind of anyone who has had the uncomfortable experience of viewing his work.

Practically born into show business, to an actress mother and director father, in Munich in March 1942, Haneke spent his early years in a working class suburb of Vienna before an early attempt at fame as an actor and pianist. Failing to achieve early success, Haneke attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy and psychology, and became a film critic and stage director before making his eventual debut as a television director with After Liverpool in 1973. Setting in motion a television career specializing in literary adaptations and small screen films, Haneke would work successfully in that medium until his feature debut with The Seventh Continent in 1989.
Laced with the theme of muted emotions resulting in stark violence that would become his calling card, The Seventh Continent’s bleak and austere portrayal of a family deadened and ultimately destroyed by modern convenience served as a deeply disturbing cautionary tale, made all the more effective by the final revelation that it was based in reality. The first of an agonizing trilogy on the same theme, including Benny’s Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology Chance (1994), it offered a telling contrast to the Hollywood-manufactured attempts at shock in the form of slimy aliens and supernatural chills. These films were horrific and they were all too real in their implications and actions, the distortion of reality so common among typical horror films was abandoned in Haneke’s works in favor of the infinitely more terrifying affects of urban alienation.

Haneke took the modern obsession with cinematic violence to a level rarely attempted in 1997, with the tale of a happy family relentlessly tortured in Funny Games. Violence is not fun in Haneke’s world and this is where his optimism comes into play. Though shocking and repulsive on a number of levels, Haneke’s goal to shatter the numbness instilled by countless depictions of inconsequential violence in modern media is something the director views as positive and uplifting, even if the means to that end induce shock and anger. Haneke took home the Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for The Piano Teacher, a compelling tale of sexual repression that also won that film’s stars, Benoit Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, the Best Actor and Actress awards at the festival.

(Source: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:93329)

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