MUBI

Fantastic! I just finished this film and here were the thoughts I jotted down as I watched it. Having subsequently read this thread, I would only amend to include Joe’s excellent theory about collusion between the two sons, and an expansion of a possible exegesis of the film to include all immigrants rather than just Algerians (Jazzahola’s point above).

The film is about truths we hide; from ourselves, from our spouses, from our family, from our co-workers, and so on. Surveillence here is not meant to connote some sort of Big brother always watching, but our own consciences constantly harboring those memories, waiting—surveilling—for the moment when we act in such a way as to necessitate their return. The tapes are symbolic.

Notice the similarities between the living room, the talk show set and his superior’s office: charis set close together with books/tapes all around. The living room and the office are supposed to be places of intimacy, places where things are not hidden, but they are just as much places of show as the set. The only place the truth is spoken in the film, truly, is in Majid’s apartment.

The juxtaposition of these tapes with the newsreel tapes (and the appearance of such news tapes in Haneke’s previous films) is indicitive of a statement about France’s guilt over the 1961 Algerian protest, and subsequent massacre.

The shot in the elevator is excellent—George is barely visible in the reflection of the wall, trying to hide from the truth, from Majid’s son, from his conscience, which of course is impossible.

This is an essay I wrote with a friend a couple weeks back. We weren’t able to give it the attention it needed, so thematically is more sporadic than I would like.

The editing in Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Caché illustrates a process by which the characters repress their guilt. Through a dissection of particular cuts it can be studied that Haneke creates a narrative that remains intentionally evasive to illustrate his observations on individual and social repressions of guilt. Michael Hudecek’s editing distracts from the narrative, emotionally distancing its audience forcing them to be more critical of Haneke’s observations.

Caché tells the story of Georges Laurent and his family who repeatedly receive videotapes, anonymous phone calls and crudely drawn images. Georges believes that the perpetrator is an Algerian man named Majid who George’s family had decided to adopt 44 years prior, just after Majid’s parents went missing following the 1961 Algerian massacre in Paris. However, for reasons never fully revealed, Georges’ parents sent him to an orphanage. It is never clear if it is Majid who is sending the tapes, Majid’s unnamed son, or someone entirely different, possibly even Haneke. Haneke transcends the mystery genre by making the film about Georges’ guilt, marginalizing the importance of the voyeur’s identity.

Ellipses

Haneke and editor Michael Hudecek omit large sections of the story to shape an incomplete narrative; in technical terms these omissions are referred to as ellipses. According to Barsam an ellipsis is an “omission of time––the time that separates one shot from another––to create dramatic or comedic impact” (406). Hudecek uses ellipses for Haneke’s symbolic ends. By removing whole expletive sections of the narrative, Hudecek creates ambiguity, making it impossible to definitively say one person is more at fault than another for events that have occurred, or that those events even happened at all. Therefore, Haneke makes an observation rather than a statement about the subjectivity of their characters’ guilt. He does not condemn any of the characters for their actions, but shows how each of them copes with what they have done, or at least what is suggested they have done. It is open to the viewer’s interpretation to decide if each character is lying or not. It is unclear if Majid was the one who sent the tapes, just as it is uncertain whether or not Georges reveals all of the events that occurred between he and Majid when they were children. Haneke’s observations illustrate individuals who repress their guilt through denial, and the ellipses symbolize this repression as it prevents the viewer from confirming or refuting a character’s purity because the story and dialogue in between edits is not shown.
In one scene, Hudecek cuts from Pierre intimately comforting Anne in a café to a long take of a television in Anne’s living room before she arrives home, apparently later that night. It is ambiguous whether she slept with Pierre or not. However, the extreme comfort shown in the previous scene between the two characters suggests the possibility. This ellipsis makes it possible for Anne to deny her guilt of an affair and only remain suspect to the audience. Later in the film Anne says to her son, “What have you got into your head? That Pierre and me…that’s absurd!” Haneke omits the evidence that would condemn or absolve her in the audience’s eyes, but this ellipsis symbolizes Anne’s repression of her guilt.

In another cut, one of Hudecek’s ellipses represents a character’s repression of information that might condemn him under the jury of the audience. Georges gives his wife, Anne, information that the audience knew he had been withholding. He informs her that he told his parents Majid coughed up blood, and Majid scared him. He then says, “Slitting his own throat for that, a heck of a twisted joke, don’t you think?” Briefly after Georges speaks to Anne, Hudecek cuts to Georges walking into his office building. Just as Georges suggests, the notion that Majid “wants revenge” for Georges’ tattletale forty-four years ago seems absurd. However, the relationship between the two boys is hinted at being seemingly more complex at an earlier point in the film when Georges first visits Majid at his apartment, so the audience can intuit that there is still more information about his relationship with Majid he has not revealed to his wife or the audience before the cut. The cut between this intimate scene and Georges entering his work building may be the omission of Georges’ entire confession to Anne, where the full scope of his relationship with Majid is revealed, and possibly the clues which would allow the audience to deduct who the voyeur is. Hudecek edits Haneke’s film in this manner so the viewer will focus on the process in which the characters repress information from the audience, other characters, or themselves. If Haneke would have given us explicit information as to who had sent the tapes and why then the viewer would be more engaged by Haneke’s narrative rather than his psychological observations.

The ellipses in Caché serve a larger function in the film than just represented by the process in which the characters repress their guilt. There are often less telling ellipses throughout the film that cut from one scene to another; the narrative time between the images could be as long as a day or even a month, it is never explicitly stated. These general ellipses, as well as the ones discussed previously, are intended by Haneke to achieve his glaciation effect, which promotes “critical distance and intellectual analysis of emotional manipulation effected through character psychology and viewer identification” (Grundmann). In one edit, Hudecek cuts from a tense conversation between Anne and Georges during the evening about the second tape they received to a long take of Anne clearing the table during the middle of the day. This ellipsis possibly omits a large gap of time, or it might be a cut to the following day. Either way, Hudecek inserts the ellipsis to Haneke’s advantage as the edit disorients and therefore distances the viewer. It also works for more obvious reasons, namely establishing a tightly knit pace. In Caché, the glaciation established by the editing forces the viewer to be more critically engaged in assessing the process by which characters repress their guilt, and particular ellipses directly represent this repression.

Long Take

In the opening frame of the film we find ourselves as voyeurs of Georges’ household. This establishing shot, which depicts Georges’ bourgeois home and street-front, eventually reveals itself to the audience as the images from a stationary “security camera” when Georges and his wife, Anne, play a tape of the same images several minutes later on their television. This opening shot’s length is a little under three minutes, and in technical terms it is referred to as a long take, which is defined by Barsam as an edit that can last anywhere from one minute to ten (409). Haneke’s long takes instigate a feeling of surveillance. The film is shot as if an omniscient perspective is constantly roving around the characters, watching, and then relaying information to the viewer, but omitting telling hubs and satellites between these long takes. This omniscient perspective could be said to be Haneke; whose long takes distance the viewer from passive spectatorship, and allow he or she to critically reflect on process by which the characters repress their guilt.

In the final interaction between Majid and Georges, Georges is lead into a room where Majid slits his throat. This scene is shot with a long take as Georges pauses and then slowly walks in and out of the stationary camera’s frame after Majid cuts himself. About this scene film scholar Karen Ritzenhoff says, “The wide cinematic frame articulates the sensory distance. The scene is represented in a long shot, similar to the other prominent sequences in the film. The viewer remains detached” (144). It is true the cinematographic properties of this scene are elemental in establishing the audiences’ detachment. However, Hudecek’s long take effectively enhances the cinematography. The long take in this scene has little to do with Hudeck’s editing as its time length is innate to the cinematographer’s composition, but Hudeck could have chosen to cut the subsequent scene more quickly, which would have increased the viewer’s pacification. In this scene, the long take distances the viewer from both of the characters while heightening the viewer’s shock. This long take forces the viewer to thoroughly think about how Majid’s suicide will affect George’s conscience as he slowly walks in an out of the frame for an entire minute. This shot also creates anxiety as the viewer begins to wonder if he will attempt to repress this visit with Majid just as he had done with his first one.

Haneke’s use of the long take includes a two-minute shot where the news is shown on a television in the background of an image behind Georges and Anne who are discussing where their son could be. This take’s length gives the audience significant time to process what is happening in the scene. The long take distances the audience from the characters as it allows them to excessive time to scan the shot. On the television, a newsreel on the Iraq war is playing. The television narrator suggests openness as a resolution to a particular conflict, and an interviewee says that “operating under the same rules of engagement will ensure better homogeneity and better coordination.” In this take Anne comes home from an evening with Pierre and is spiteful towards Georges when he asks her where she has been. The two are in conflict because in an earlier scene Georges had not been open with her and repressed information about his past from her. The length of this shot allows the viewer to absorb a considerable amount of information. Had the take been any shorter we would not receive Haneke’s commentary on the situation, given through the news, that a policy of openness would resolve their domestic tension. They have completely repressed any guilt for the incident through the engrossment of their own concerns. We are able to identify this as viewers because Haneke deliberately distances us in order to give the audience an objective position in relation to characters within the film.

Through long takes we often find ourselves alienated from the characters within the film. This disconnection subsequently generates a lack of empathy in the viewer for the characters. Through the shot length, Haneke and Hudecek heighten the sense of subjectivity in the conviction of guilty characters throughout the film. The viewer is not moved to identify or support any particular character because of the distance the editing establishes. Cinema scholar Jonathan Thomas makes a note about Haneke’s glaciation effect, “When Haneke cuts from one image to the next (a transition that in his cinema because an even, since he normally adheres to the long-take sequence shot), we are led to question the status of what we see as a matter of course. Put differently, we are, as spectators constantly distanced, just as we are persistently invited to occupy the subject position of what Raymond Bellour called a “pensive spectator” (84). Our objective distance from the content creates a more subjective interpretation of who is to be judged. Is Majid sending the tapes or not? Is Georges lying about what he did to Majid? Is Anne having an affair? Is Pierrot leaving the drawings because he’s upset? Each character can be interpreted as innocent only to the degree that they are guilty. Through the evasive editing Haneke gives us just enough clues to make an argument for either side.

Works Cited

Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition ( Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Grundmann, Roy. "Auteur de force: Michael Haneke’s “cinema of glaciation”. | Goliath Business News." Goliath: Business Knowledge On Demand. Web. 18 Dec. 2009. <http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6396246/Auteur-de-force-Michael-Haneke.html>.
Ritzenhoff, Karen. “Visual competence and readign the recorded past: the paradigm shift from analogue to digital video in Michael Haneke’s film Caché.” Visual Studies 23.2 (2008): 136-46. Print.
Thomas, Jonathan. “Michael Haneke’s New(s) images.” The Oxford Art Journal (2008): 80-85. Print.

Social apprehension and guilt captured in the bone-chilling guise of Haneke’s forever watching camera, the menace of a hidden past returning, from beyond the fourth wall, in occult snippets of voyeurism and gruesome drawings. That’s Caché, both a lesson in painstaking contemporary terror and a ghostly allegory of political remorse. Surveillance, suspicion, and shameful accountability, the main characters of the film find themselves and their comfortable placid existence crumbling deliberately around them as their visibility becomes suspect to a third party. How does one live when they know they’re being watched? The mysterious videotapes are only the beginning of this subtly crafted psychological nightmare, one which exposes itself layer by layer until what’s left is not a clear picture, but a perpetually spinning reel of tape that never forgets what it documents. And neither does it ever let us know.

drawn out scenes and far off voyeur angles are atmospheric— and tiresome in such excess. with just a little bit more, oh i don’t know, maybe more script. maybe a more INTERESTING script for that matter. maybe more infidelity. maybe a little less of a whiny lead. maybe more information about the characters in general? too bland for my tastes. with a little more SOMETHING the minimal could have been something beautiful. instead, in turned into a nearly two hour movie comprised of wasting my fucking time. no, i’m not going to watch it again. i’m confident when i say i was quite attentive the first time around. if i’m missing something by this point, i don’t really care.

when i want to rollick in bleak, overcast? i step outside. that’s what the west coast is good for. i’ll give this three stars. third star being awarded for the havoc guy wreaked on his wall. the blood splatter was fantastic. everything else was a big fat pile of arty garbage.

(Insert a million words from thesaurus here.) This is what it takes to win best director at the Cannes Film Festival? What do people see in this beyond a reasonably enjoyable mystery, with no resolution offered what so ever? I’ve always felt like people tend to over-analyze the work of directors like Haneke and Von Trier to no end, and this film only reaffirms my belief in that. I see a lot of writing about the racial undertones of the film, and I’m not saying there might not be any, but wow were they completely underdeveloped. It seemed to me to have a lot less to do with race and a lot more to do with selfishness. It’s not disturbing or creepy, so it doesn’t deliver in the promise made on the dvd box. The story kept me intrigued, but frankly dissapointed when it didn’t evolve into anything too stimulating. Overall I found this fairly average, and wouldn’t go out of my way to show this to anyone who has yet to see it. 3 stars (and leaning closer to 2 stars than 4.)

Cache is a great movie, I really like it. His technique of using long shots creates a little while of suspension, like in funny games, and I really like the way he criticize the influence of television and mainstream movies when at a same shot, he shows the family discussing and a turn on television, so it’s inevitable to stop watching what it is passed on the tv, instead of looking to the reactions of the characters.

Cache is a film that will stick in your head well after the ending credits have finished rolling. This movie truly tests its audience, as I’m sure it will piss off many people who desire closure of any sort.

Haneke bends all the rules with this one. Decades ago characters in Godard films would turn around, face the camera and spew out dialogue, since they were, in fact, addressing us, the audience. Haneke breaks the fourth wall by giving us the idea that it is actually himself who is videotaping these people. One clue that really stuck out to me was near the beginning, when the couple is watching one of the videotapes. As the husband walks by the camera you can see, for a split second, the shadow of the camera on a tripod. Michael Haneke is a very domineering filmmaker: everything you see in his films is there for a reason. Like Kubrick, Wes Anderson or even David Fincher, each shot is well planned out with very specific details. It is because of this that I find it very hard to believe that the shadow of the camera just happened to slip by.

Regardless, this is Haneke’s film. The character’s bend at his whim and thus he was able to mold a complicated and beautiful allegory to the French-Algerian conflict back in the 60’s. There are subtle clues throughout, like the conversation the couple have while the news is on in the background. It’s Haneke’s filmmaking that really works the wonders here. His films have a very clean feeling to them, almost pristine. Which is odd, since his subject matter tends to be rather dark. Haneke knows how to push all the right buttons and stay inside your head while you toss around the idea if you liked his film or not. Either way I’m sure he doesn’t care if you hate it. The fact that you’re still mulling over it is what he really wants.

I’m still not quite certain what to think a day after watching Michael Haneke’s acclaimed film Caché. It is at the same time unnerving, confusing, and unabashedly honest. A story about guilt and how we as people cope with it, accept it, or disregard it. We may tell ourselves that we feel nothing, the tragedies in life were not our fault, however, our psyches and emotions can and will get the better of us. If you truly don’t feel responsible, why then, when confronted, do you still act aggressive? Why must you try and defend yourself if you are completely certain you were not the cause? It is a very interesting question that is asked without words here, a question that hangs behind each scene as the plot progresses. Caché becomes all the more intriguing because that plot is completely innocuous—the entire film is one big McGuffin that is never answered or rectified. You never get to find out who is behind everything, why things have happened, or what kind of lasting effects the events that transpired will have. Instead the story itself is just a tool to show guilt in all its naked glory, to allow us, as an audience, entrance into a world we all know only too well. Whether we know who is seeking “revenge” or not, guilt is always only about you and how you let it affect your life.

The film revolves around a couple living a good life in France—successful, well known, and loving parents of a school-aged boy. Their world gets turned upside-down when they begin to receive VHS tapes showing the outside of their home; static shots that go on for hours, showing them as they come and go. The mystery escalates as crude child-like drawings come packaged with subsequent videos as well as sent singularly through the mail. These images depict either a stick figure head with red blood exiting its mouth or a chicken with red blood covering its neck. Both Anne and Georges Laurent appear to be completely surprised and confused about what is happening, however, they are not truthful to each other. With the police unwilling to help until an actual attempt at violence is done, Georges decides to take matters into his own hands. After a video sent shows his old childhood home and another the way to a run-down apartment flat, he begins to guess at what it all means. Memories of an event from when he was six start to crop up into his mind and speculation begins to manifest theories on what it all means.

These memories and dreams are my favorite aspect of the film. Before we know what they are, Haneke decides to cut short vignettes into the story at hand. We will be watching the Laurents in their home and all of a sudden be transported to a dark room wherein sits a young boy with blood in his mouth. The moments are unsettling and completely disjointed from the rest of the visuals … at least until the story continues on and the past is brought to light. Georges needs to cope with what occurred in his youth; he needs to reconcile his soul on whether lies he told—like any six year old who’s autonomy is being threatened in the home with a new sibling—ruined the life of another man, someone he hasn’t thought about or seen in decades. Whomever is behind the videos, whether someone involved with that incident or not, has uncovered this hidden guilt inside of Georges and now he must battle it, discovering for himself how deep the feelings go.

It is a tough film to discuss because, although you never find out who is orchestrating everything, the course of events will ruin your comprehension on what the Laurents are feeling. Daniel Auteuil and Juilette Binoche are both fantastic portraying a terrorized couple that slowly begin to realize what is happening and start to keep secrets from each other. This gets into the question of guilt again, how one can feel ashamed about his actions and, even though telling the other about it won’t do any harm, can’t do so. Sometimes it is easier to hide what could be important until absolutely necessary. Thinking back after so many years, with your age and experiences now weighing in, can have horrible effect on your mind. Something that seemed harmless as a child might become catastrophic as an adult because you now understand the consequences of those actions. The opposite is true as well, something we see with their son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). He is a young boy who may see phone calls and signs of affection between adults and leap to the conclusion of an affair, not comprehending platonic love between peers. Everything is relative to what state you are in at the time.

Haneke is the master at crafting stories that make you think for days afterwards, sometimes without ever coming up with a conclusion on what occurred. He makes sure to show the audience everything as raw as possible, utilizing long takes and static set-ups. Almost every scene commences with a still composition showing action occurring within the frame. Sometimes these moments become a videotaped visual to be rewound and fast-forwarded, other times they allow the camera to pull back and move, following live action. With such little camera movement, we are allowed to experience it all as a voyeur, spying on the hidden moments of these people’s lives. We as viewers begin to create a feeling of guilt ourselves, experiencing moments as a witness, knowing the truth whether the people involved decide to lie about the incident we just saw to those they love.

Caché is a very powerful film that warrants multiple viewings. I would also recommend checking out the interview with Haneke on the DVD to shed some light on his motivations. With wonderful performances—I must mention both Maurice Bénichou and Walid Afkir without saying whom they play, as that revelation should be uncovered while you watch—you will become engrossed with the story, waiting with anticipation to see where it all goes. By watching these people and their emotions, you will start to understand yourself. The ones who feel they hold no blame are so caught up in that need for innocence that they will do whatever it takes, without listening to those on the other end, while the ones who are innocently brought into the mess are calm and collected, unknowing what is truly at stake. Rather than seeing that composed demeanor as a sign of innocence, we get even angrier because we believe they are laughing at us smugly, making us squirm even more. Our minds are complex and make us do things we may not understand until it is too late. Some will be able to go home at night and sleep, unconcerned, while others will be left open-eyed, unable to bear the nightmares they know will come.

And that ending—a seemingly unimportant scene without context to the rest of the film, until you look closely and notice the two sons meeting and talking in the bottom left of the screen. What could they be talking about? Is this a videotape of a conversation that occurred earlier? Perhaps even the planting of the seed that Pierrot’s mother could be having an affair? It could be just one more piece to the puzzle, carefully orchestrated by the man linked to Georges past. Or maybe it happens in sequential order. Georges was going to bed early and Pierrot was not yet home from school, so potentially this occurs as the final event, one last overlap of these two families. We will never know exactly what it is as no words can be heard and nothing comes afterwards. It is just one more flourish from Haneke, making the audience feel guilt at seeing something and being unable to warn the Laurents that the nightmare may not be over afterall.

At the heart of Cache is an old-fashioned mystery, that pulls at all corners of the viewer’s being; visually stimulating, intellectually challenging, and emotionally adept. The final shot of the film, like the opening shot, will be a static, single shot; and the resolution to the mystery is complete and powerful; so long as the viewer pays close attention.

Read more: “Cache (2005): French Mystery Directed by Michael Haneke | Suite101.com” – http://european-films.suite101.com/article.cfm/cache_2005#ixzz0GRGJ6rYF&A

Yes, people just need to know a little about the French colonialist past to understand the background story of this film. Otherwise, the intent behind it seems pretty obvious…And I think Haneke achieved his goal here for me because I was really quite disturbed and probably will avoid seeing this film again. But it was really well done and would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t flinch as easily as I do, at least once.