Caché, directed by Michael Haneke, is a deeply unsettling movie that gives rise to many questions but provides few answers. But what would a Haneke film be, if it wasn't unsettling?
The very first images of the movie make us question what it is we see, and from whose perspective the images are shot. The camera is static. Nothing seems to happen. We see a back yard. It turns out we watch a video tape sent to a French married couple (played by Daniel Auteuil & Juliette Binoche, big names). The house on the images is their house. He works as a TV journalist, she works (I think) in a publishing company. The tape is an enigma to its receivers. What is the intention? More "gifts" are sent. Threatening drawings, more tapes. One tape shows the house where the man, Georges, grew up. The next tape contains an unknown urban landscape, and a drab corridor. Another person is drawn into the story. Georges' parents intended to adopt a boy, Majid, whose Algerian parents worked for them (before they were killed). We learn that there is something fishy about George's childhood memories. He thinks that this person send him the tapes.
If the script for this film were handled by another director, this could have become a run-of-the-mill thriller. This is not to say that Haneke dispenses with mystery & shock. On the contrary; there are a few scenes that have the force and suddenness to throw you out of your chair. But this is, as always, also a film about ideas. And what ideas you see expressed in the movie will not be self-evident.
I don't really want to say anything about what is the final verdict as to the mystery of the tapes. Caché connects different themes. Guilt (collective guilt, even), colonialism, paranoia, trust/distrust and the tensions of a relationship. Most of all, it is a self-conscious movie about images that writes the viewer into the story. Everything hangs on what you see (what you think you see) in these images. Right from the start, we are challenged to re-think and re-value the images we just saw. In this sense, it is just as much a film about the viewer as it is about the trust, distrust and paranoia of its characters.
Caché starts with the disquieting realization of the main characters that they are watched. This seemingly anonymous gaze, represented by the static camera (that seems to be the gaze of nobody), poses a mysterious threat to their lives. But Haneke is not satisfied with this point about being watched. He goes on to explore the other part of the relation: what it is to see, to witness, to peep, to notice something, to react to what one sees. Haneke's film does not revolve around one form of watching; it discusses variations of seeing, showing in what ways the various forms of seeing & watching are connected with actions, confessions, secrets, responsibility, memories, trust, distrust etc..
It's a good film because of it's openness, I would say. There are relatively few grand statements here. As I see it, Haneke is not a cynic director with a simple, sceptic message ("I fooled ya all, fuckaz, you thought you knew, but you didn't! Ha!"). His intention(s) seem deeper than that. He makes us realize what it means that we makes mistakes, or what it means that I come to distrust my eyes, or what it means to be confronted with an image that changes everything what one has seen before.
As I tried to say: it is a film that can be read on many levels. It's not a film that you finish with a sigh of relief. But that is a strenght of the film. One reason why it is fun to read reviews of this film, and films similar to it, is that the reviewer's description will reveal what expectations s/he has about the film (even films in general) and what role she assigns to herself as a viewer. Read this blog post by Roger Ebert, for example.
There is no soundtrack music in Caché. This is yet another example of why a film DOES NOT NEED to be puffed up with glossy strings or the latest indie hit.
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