CACHÉ
Caché Movie Review
Caché Movie Poster
CACHÉ (2006)
Cast
Juliette Binoche as Anne Laurent
Daniel Auteuil as Georges Laurent
Maurice Benichou as Majid
Annie Girardot as Georges' mom
Bernard Le Coq as Georges' editor
Daniel Duval as Pierre
Directed and written by
Michael Haneke
Action, Drama, Foreign, Romance, Thriller
Rated R for brief strong violence
117 minutes
| Roger Ebert
January 13, 2010 | 29 May Contain Spoilers
Print Page
How is it possible to watch a thriller intently two times and completely miss a smoking gun that's in full view? Yet I did. Only on my third trip through Michael Haneke's "Cache" did I consciously observe a shot which forced me to redefine the film. I was not alone. I haven't read all of the reviews of the film, but after seeing that shot I looked up a lot of them, and the shot is never referred to. For that matter, no one seems to point to a conclusion that it might suggest.
I described the film as "a thriller." So it is, but a thriller that implodes, not releasing its tension in action but coiling it deeper inside. "Cache" on its fundamental level is about a family that becomes aware it is being watched. And not merely watched, but seen. The family's bourgeois home, in a side street in an ordinary district of Paris, is observed in an opening shot that lasts about five minutes.
The camera is locked down. We see the house. Its facade is almost entirely hidden from the street by shrubbery. Nothing happens. After perhaps three minutes, a bicyclist passes: That reveals it's footage, and not a photograph. Later, people emerge from the front door and head out for the day. And then we see the stripes a video tape displays when it's being rewound, and hear voices discussing it. The shot was watching, and now it is being watched.
It was on a tape left at the door of Anne and Georges Laurent (Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil). They have a 15-year-old son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). Georges hosts a public television talk show about books. She has a job in publishing. The walls in their home are lined with books, and the rooms filled with computers, editing equipment, all the tools of virtual labor.
The mysterious video is maddening. Others arrive, some are accompanied by childish drawings: A black and white cartoon head, with a slash of red blood at its mouth or neck. Who sends them? What message do they contain? Georges and Anne have lived comfortably behind their shrubbery for years, in what seems a stable marriage. Friends often come for dinner and good conversation. Their lives proceed on share assumptions. Now this.
It introduces a wedge between them -- the small point a first, then forcing a wider separation. Georges says he knows nothing about the tapes. We believe him. But Anne knows him so well that she senses they make him uncomfortable about something. He has secrets, perhaps even from himself. He grows unreasonably irritated by her questions. She discovers him withholding information.
Juliette Binoche, that actress of perfect tone, modulates Anne's feelings realistically. She doesn't become hysterical, simply offended. She regards Georges, and we see she knows him well. He may be hiding nothing, but i that case, he is nevertheless hiding it. Daniel Auteuil seems almost like a child found out at something.
I'll be brief. Other tapes arrive, suggesting Georges drive to a particular address and knock on a particular door. There he meets Majid (Maurice Benichou), a man about his age. They haven't seen one another since both were five or six. This was the man sending the tapes? Majid says he knows nothing about it. We believe him. We really do. Georges conceals details of his visit from Anne. Why? He asserts that Majid must be the source of the tapes. Then he must know Majid has a reason.
One subdued night in their bedroom, Anne regards him and asks simply, "What did you do to him?" Does Georges know?" I will let you discover how the two men knew each other as children. Whatever happened, it is still there in the air between them.
Haneke surrounds this mystery with the details of everyday life. Dinner parties, meetings at the office, meal preparation, tapings of the TV show, a lunch between Anne and a mutual friend, a visit by Georges to his elderly mother. Problems with Pierrot, a teenager who is sulky and distant in the way that teenagers are when they have little to complain about except their discontent. Pierrot frightens them by being missing all night. The police are called in. Pierrot's disappearance is explained. The police leave. Georges doesn't want to press the matter of the tapes with the police. His wife believes he protests too much.
We ask ourselves: Is the real mystery not who is sending the tapes, but how they cause Georges to feel? The focus shifts from an outside threat to one hidden in his character. Haneke's attention is on the couple forced apart, not on the source of the tapes and drawings. Indeed, when we discover the origin of the bloody mouth and neck images, it does nothing, really, to suggest Majid sent them. That's largely because Maurice Benichou, the actor playing Majid, does such a convincing job of playing innocence. To repeat: We believe him.
Haneke, a masterful Austrian whose "The White Ribbon" won Cannes 2009, is a meticulous filmmaker. His camera is precisely placed, and he firmly controls what we see and how we see it. Point of view is all-important. Background images of TV news may be relevant. We learn from Georges of a long-suppressed incident in 1961, during Algerian demonstrations in Paris, when the bodies of 200 demonstrators were found floating in the Seine. How could this be forgotten? Has France hidden it in its memory?
A stationary camera is objective. A moving camera implies a subjective viewer, whether that viewer is a character, the director, or the audience. Haneke uses the technique of making the camera "move" in time, not space. His locked-down shots are objective. When they're reversed on a VCR, they become subjective. Likewise shots within the Laurent house sometimes seem to be objective. This is underlines by the fact that some of the tapes seem to have been shot from positions that must have been in full view. A tape taken within Majid's apartment, for example. If Majid didn't make it, who did? There's a reverse shot in Majid's apartment, showing the shelves where a camera must have been hidden to film the video. If you advance through it a frame at a time, on the bottom shelf you'll see in plain view what could be a camera lens, or maybe not. It seems too large.
Someone knows something. Georges may suspect what it is. It refers to his fifth year: How much do we recall or understand from then? Majid knows what it is. His grown son (Walid Afkir) may know, but says not, and he is also convincing. Given the Law of Economy of Characters, there is only one remaining player: Pierrot, the son. What could he possibly know, and how could he have learned a secret probably not clear even to his father, who has certainly never discussed it with him.
Yet the son, too, seems ruled out. Everyone seems ruled out. In an interview on the DVD Haneke is pleased by confounding our expectations. Those raised on the mainstream cinema, he says, are accustomed to an ending that resolves things, "so they can leave the film and forget it." He discusses many explanations for "Cache," and points out none are necessary.
Yet there is the film's final shot, which has been so much discussed, showing two characters meeting who shouldn't know one another. What does that mean? Does it solve anything? Haneke is delighted that he constructed the shot so about half of all viewers fail to even notice them on a large canvas filled with extras. That works for him, too. Now I call your attention to the shot I missed the first time through. You will find it on the DVD, centering around 20:39. You tell me what it means. It's the smoking gun, but did it shoot anybody?
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josh freedman • 5 years ago
the sender of the tapes is irrelevant. This film attempts to portray how France (through Georges) has dealt with its uncomfortable past with the Algerians (through Majid). France hid the fact they killed and threw the bodies of Algerians into the river in 1961. The tapes, rewind that memory that France/Georges has tried to forget. Majid (allegory of Algeria) attempts to get Georges/France to take responsibility for his actions (getting Majid orphaned/killing of Algerians). Georges hides behind his words while never actually lying - just shading responsibility - like the French government. Even when Georges tells the truth, he is literally in the dark. Like the French had done, they were too coward to take responsibility in public.
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Sajjad Saberi josh freedman • 7 months ago
very nice and pertinent review. thnx
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Stacy_C • 6 years ago
OK, curiosity roused. What is the smoking gun scene — anyone?
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dougholden Stacy_C • 6 years ago
As seen from a download and at around 19:30 there's a dark interior shot stalking what appears to be the child Majid coughing up blood into a sink... pointing to the possibility that Georges wasn't lying, that the family is the victim of a terroristic plot of revenge; the smoking gun? Still, it doesn't really point to such resolution for me. It does serve to further compound the element of (mis)trust, which is so beautifully orchestrated throughout the film on many social levels and between every character.
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TSam Stacy_C • 5 years ago
In the final scene Pierrot and Majid's son are seen talking outside the school.
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Etienne Grosbois TSam • 5 years ago
Do you know Michael Haneke (the director) wrote a dialogue for the final scene between Pierrot and Majid's son, and that is what the actors are saying in this shot. But he never told anyone else what is said in this dialogue. Except the actors, of course.
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Doug Roberts Stacy_C • 6 years ago
It looks like a scene where the main character picks a takeaway menu off the windscreen of his car. But I can't see anything but that in it.
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Claude Stacy_C • 4 years ago
I'm not sure why Roger called it a smoking gun scene, but this is what happens. The scene that starts at 20:39 begins with a character saying, "Sitting right at the far end, near the mirror." The previous scene was of Georges and Pierrot, with Pierrot sitting right at the far end of the shot, near the car's passenger mirror.
So the dialogue points to Pierrot, but with what intent?
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Bill Stacy_C • 6 years ago
He said that it was at a certain point on the DVD and an article took a screenshot of the movie at that time and saw nothing. I tried looking it up and no one knows what he saw. Still a great movie.
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Alex Robinson Bill • 3 years ago
Focus on the shot. then the beginning of the next scene. The man is saying "Sitting right at the far end, near the mirror." as he begins his story. If you go back to the shot of them in the car, the son is on the right next to the wing mirror and is "hidden" from view. his son is most likely sending the tapes, maybe with Majid's son as an accomplice. The son is like his father, both very clever for their young age and manipulative.
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Cathal Carolan Bill • 6 years ago
Well that wasn't a very good article then! Watch the scene and keep your eye on the roof of Daniel's car.
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Hachiiiko Cathal Carolan • 5 years ago
Are you referring to the little fin? It's a radio antenna, not uncommon on cars like Georges'.
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Balasubramanian Ganesan • 6 years ago
I watched this movie and at the end of it, have an empty feeling. I was and am still unsure after a few days whether it was really worth my time. While there are many questions that arise, I've just been asking "so?" Relationships always go up and down no matter what happens and which type it is -friendship, marriage, parent-child, you name it. Objectively reviewing it, I felt this movie had nothing to offer and is very forgettable.
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Jay Dee Balasubramanian Ganesan • 2 years ago
It's about the massacre of Algerians....
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ev • 6 years ago
http://clumtrops.tumblr.com...
My amateur analysis/speculation about Roger Ebert's smoking gun
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Garnet70 ev • 5 years ago
Your link is dead. Please repost your analysis..
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mdsdavis • 5 years ago
I really don't enjoy films that are open to the viewer's interpretation. My interpretation is that I lost 2 hours that I won't get back, and that is not something to be cherished. Georges may have felt guilty simply because he's a decent human being, or because of his upbringing, but he was right - he had nothing to feel guilty about. Now that's out of the way, what's left? Not much.
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Lior1209 mdsdavis • 4 years ago
I've been thinking quite a bit about this topic of "what's the value of open-endedness?". The conclusion I came to was that if a film manages to compel the viewer to ponder its themes and loose ends, it succeeded. For me at least, Caché succeeds big time, and also works great as simply a superb thriller.
The question to ask about open-ended films is this-do you want to think about it? That's the thin line that separates 2001: A Space Odyssey and Caché from The Brown Bunny and 9 Songs.
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Cole Robert Heideman mdsdavis • 3 years ago
"I don't want to think when I look at a piece of art"
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mdsdavis Cole Robert Heideman • 3 years ago
I don't view films as pieces of art.
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Cole Robert Heideman mdsdavis • 3 years ago
haha ok. You're absolutely wrong not to, but I'll leave it alone.
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Jay Dee mdsdavis • 2 years ago
Films ARE ART.....it's not called the 7th art for nothing....
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Maynard M. • 3 years ago
Before the scene with blood boy, there is a shot from inside the house looking through a window down on the street, probably taken from the son's room (probably taken from the boy himself...??). That is what I see on my German DVD at around 20:39. And I guess that was what Ebert meant.
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dre7861 • 4 years ago
I went back and watched the scene that Roger was talking about. It's a grainier film stock and seems to me to represent Georges' memory of being in his parents house. As the camera moves forward, you can hear a retching sound. The camera turns towards a large window where Majid as a child is sitting with his back turned to us. He then becomes aware of a presence there and turns towards the camera. He has blood smeared across his lower face, in his hand is something white that is blood smeared and there are longs strands of blood dangling from his mouth. I watched it several times and could not decide what was the white thing in his hand. I thought it might be some sort of wadded up paper that he coughed the blood into but to me it had a rubbery look to. There is an earlier similar flashback scene at around 13:24, which also shows the young Majid turning surprised with a blood smeared face but this time no with object in his hands. Clearly Majid is coughing up blood although Georges says that he made that up to get his parents to send Majid away. I'm not quite sure what Roger saw that made him thing it was a smoking gun. Alas we will never know.
All in all I liked this film. It has a quiet intensity that I found riveting. Despite that I have no clue who sent the tapes and the creepy drawings; and if Majid and/or his son had other motives. I also can't explain why the son suddenly becomes very hostile to his Mother when they seem to be getting along fine at the beginning of the film.Additionally we are left with the questions of whether Anne was being unfaithful to her husband - the scene in the cafe seems to indicate yes and what are we to make of Georges insisting that Anne send Pierre and his wife home. After the startling second scene with Majid, why didn't Georges call the police. What are we to make of the African guy that gets into an argument with Georges? What was the connection between Pierrot and Majid's son? The son definitely seeks out Pierrot but their conversation seems friendly even lighthearted. This film deliberately provides no answers to these questions, although one can guess. But I think that uncertainty is what gives the film its strength.
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bra jkishor tiwary • 5 years ago
george sending tapes himself , when at thier chilhood someone (new parrents) took majid , george was shooting at distant
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P.K. Hunter • 7 months ago
All of the metaphors about Algeria/France, and the deep stuff about 'blame and conscience' are cool. Got it. But, tapes were sent and they led to consternation. Painfully evoking the angst in the viewers. It's idiotic to suggest that "who sent is irrelevant". It absolutely is. Perhaps the metaphors would have been more strident if the 'mystery' was resolved, or some clues given. In the absence of that this otherwise interesting (but far too slow, and I like slow burns in general) is just plain farty.
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Joel • 4 years ago
Michael Haneke's Code Unknown opens with a little girl backing up to a wall and cowering down in a facetious and fragile position. Then her classmates offer interpretations: "Imprisoned" -- the girl shakes her head; "Alone" -- the girl shakes her head; "Sad" -- the girl shakes her head. The children grow more and more frustrated, tugging on their cheeks in concentration, and the girl looks blank. We cut to the opening credits and never find out the word that she was miming. Haneke breaking the fourth wall?
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CanadianSniper Guest • 6 years ago
Most liked Haneke's first Funny Games better than his American shot-for-shot remake
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Giorgi • 5 years ago
I think Roger's hint on the smoking gun is simply a joke, once again emphasizing our (viewers) affirmed nature of seeking details that solve the whole mystery. There is no smoking gun but anyway, neither a gun, nor a cannon would make a difference here. That's the point of the film. Roger gives us a self test for our perception. I love it!
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Caché Movie Review
Caché Movie Poster
CACHÉ (2006)
Cast
Juliette Binoche as Anne Laurent
Daniel Auteuil as Georges Laurent
Maurice Benichou as Majid
Annie Girardot as Georges' mom
Bernard Le Coq as Georges' editor
Daniel Duval as Pierre
Directed and written by
Michael Haneke
Action, Drama, Foreign, Romance, Thriller
Rated R for brief strong violence
117 minutes
| Roger Ebert
January 13, 2010 | 29 May Contain Spoilers
Print Page
How is it possible to watch a thriller intently two times and completely miss a smoking gun that's in full view? Yet I did. Only on my third trip through Michael Haneke's "Cache" did I consciously observe a shot which forced me to redefine the film. I was not alone. I haven't read all of the reviews of the film, but after seeing that shot I looked up a lot of them, and the shot is never referred to. For that matter, no one seems to point to a conclusion that it might suggest.
I described the film as "a thriller." So it is, but a thriller that implodes, not releasing its tension in action but coiling it deeper inside. "Cache" on its fundamental level is about a family that becomes aware it is being watched. And not merely watched, but seen. The family's bourgeois home, in a side street in an ordinary district of Paris, is observed in an opening shot that lasts about five minutes.
The camera is locked down. We see the house. Its facade is almost entirely hidden from the street by shrubbery. Nothing happens. After perhaps three minutes, a bicyclist passes: That reveals it's footage, and not a photograph. Later, people emerge from the front door and head out for the day. And then we see the stripes a video tape displays when it's being rewound, and hear voices discussing it. The shot was watching, and now it is being watched.
It was on a tape left at the door of Anne and Georges Laurent (Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil). They have a 15-year-old son, Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). Georges hosts a public television talk show about books. She has a job in publishing. The walls in their home are lined with books, and the rooms filled with computers, editing equipment, all the tools of virtual labor.
The mysterious video is maddening. Others arrive, some are accompanied by childish drawings: A black and white cartoon head, with a slash of red blood at its mouth or neck. Who sends them? What message do they contain? Georges and Anne have lived comfortably behind their shrubbery for years, in what seems a stable marriage. Friends often come for dinner and good conversation. Their lives proceed on share assumptions. Now this.
It introduces a wedge between them -- the small point a first, then forcing a wider separation. Georges says he knows nothing about the tapes. We believe him. But Anne knows him so well that she senses they make him uncomfortable about something. He has secrets, perhaps even from himself. He grows unreasonably irritated by her questions. She discovers him withholding information.
Juliette Binoche, that actress of perfect tone, modulates Anne's feelings realistically. She doesn't become hysterical, simply offended. She regards Georges, and we see she knows him well. He may be hiding nothing, but i that case, he is nevertheless hiding it. Daniel Auteuil seems almost like a child found out at something.
I'll be brief. Other tapes arrive, suggesting Georges drive to a particular address and knock on a particular door. There he meets Majid (Maurice Benichou), a man about his age. They haven't seen one another since both were five or six. This was the man sending the tapes? Majid says he knows nothing about it. We believe him. We really do. Georges conceals details of his visit from Anne. Why? He asserts that Majid must be the source of the tapes. Then he must know Majid has a reason.
One subdued night in their bedroom, Anne regards him and asks simply, "What did you do to him?" Does Georges know?" I will let you discover how the two men knew each other as children. Whatever happened, it is still there in the air between them.
Haneke surrounds this mystery with the details of everyday life. Dinner parties, meetings at the office, meal preparation, tapings of the TV show, a lunch between Anne and a mutual friend, a visit by Georges to his elderly mother. Problems with Pierrot, a teenager who is sulky and distant in the way that teenagers are when they have little to complain about except their discontent. Pierrot frightens them by being missing all night. The police are called in. Pierrot's disappearance is explained. The police leave. Georges doesn't want to press the matter of the tapes with the police. His wife believes he protests too much.
We ask ourselves: Is the real mystery not who is sending the tapes, but how they cause Georges to feel? The focus shifts from an outside threat to one hidden in his character. Haneke's attention is on the couple forced apart, not on the source of the tapes and drawings. Indeed, when we discover the origin of the bloody mouth and neck images, it does nothing, really, to suggest Majid sent them. That's largely because Maurice Benichou, the actor playing Majid, does such a convincing job of playing innocence. To repeat: We believe him.
Haneke, a masterful Austrian whose "The White Ribbon" won Cannes 2009, is a meticulous filmmaker. His camera is precisely placed, and he firmly controls what we see and how we see it. Point of view is all-important. Background images of TV news may be relevant. We learn from Georges of a long-suppressed incident in 1961, during Algerian demonstrations in Paris, when the bodies of 200 demonstrators were found floating in the Seine. How could this be forgotten? Has France hidden it in its memory?
A stationary camera is objective. A moving camera implies a subjective viewer, whether that viewer is a character, the director, or the audience. Haneke uses the technique of making the camera "move" in time, not space. His locked-down shots are objective. When they're reversed on a VCR, they become subjective. Likewise shots within the Laurent house sometimes seem to be objective. This is underlines by the fact that some of the tapes seem to have been shot from positions that must have been in full view. A tape taken within Majid's apartment, for example. If Majid didn't make it, who did? There's a reverse shot in Majid's apartment, showing the shelves where a camera must have been hidden to film the video. If you advance through it a frame at a time, on the bottom shelf you'll see in plain view what could be a camera lens, or maybe not. It seems too large.
Someone knows something. Georges may suspect what it is. It refers to his fifth year: How much do we recall or understand from then? Majid knows what it is. His grown son (Walid Afkir) may know, but says not, and he is also convincing. Given the Law of Economy of Characters, there is only one remaining player: Pierrot, the son. What could he possibly know, and how could he have learned a secret probably not clear even to his father, who has certainly never discussed it with him.
Yet the son, too, seems ruled out. Everyone seems ruled out. In an interview on the DVD Haneke is pleased by confounding our expectations. Those raised on the mainstream cinema, he says, are accustomed to an ending that resolves things, "so they can leave the film and forget it." He discusses many explanations for "Cache," and points out none are necessary.
Yet there is the film's final shot, which has been so much discussed, showing two characters meeting who shouldn't know one another. What does that mean? Does it solve anything? Haneke is delighted that he constructed the shot so about half of all viewers fail to even notice them on a large canvas filled with extras. That works for him, too. Now I call your attention to the shot I missed the first time through. You will find it on the DVD, centering around 20:39. You tell me what it means. It's the smoking gun, but did it shoot anybody?
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josh freedman • 5 years ago
the sender of the tapes is irrelevant. This film attempts to portray how France (through Georges) has dealt with its uncomfortable past with the Algerians (through Majid). France hid the fact they killed and threw the bodies of Algerians into the river in 1961. The tapes, rewind that memory that France/Georges has tried to forget. Majid (allegory of Algeria) attempts to get Georges/France to take responsibility for his actions (getting Majid orphaned/killing of Algerians). Georges hides behind his words while never actually lying - just shading responsibility - like the French government. Even when Georges tells the truth, he is literally in the dark. Like the French had done, they were too coward to take responsibility in public.
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Sajjad Saberi josh freedman • 7 months ago
very nice and pertinent review. thnx
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Stacy_C • 6 years ago
OK, curiosity roused. What is the smoking gun scene — anyone?
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dougholden Stacy_C • 6 years ago
As seen from a download and at around 19:30 there's a dark interior shot stalking what appears to be the child Majid coughing up blood into a sink... pointing to the possibility that Georges wasn't lying, that the family is the victim of a terroristic plot of revenge; the smoking gun? Still, it doesn't really point to such resolution for me. It does serve to further compound the element of (mis)trust, which is so beautifully orchestrated throughout the film on many social levels and between every character.
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TSam Stacy_C • 5 years ago
In the final scene Pierrot and Majid's son are seen talking outside the school.
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Etienne Grosbois TSam • 5 years ago
Do you know Michael Haneke (the director) wrote a dialogue for the final scene between Pierrot and Majid's son, and that is what the actors are saying in this shot. But he never told anyone else what is said in this dialogue. Except the actors, of course.
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Doug Roberts Stacy_C • 6 years ago
It looks like a scene where the main character picks a takeaway menu off the windscreen of his car. But I can't see anything but that in it.
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Claude Stacy_C • 4 years ago
I'm not sure why Roger called it a smoking gun scene, but this is what happens. The scene that starts at 20:39 begins with a character saying, "Sitting right at the far end, near the mirror." The previous scene was of Georges and Pierrot, with Pierrot sitting right at the far end of the shot, near the car's passenger mirror.
So the dialogue points to Pierrot, but with what intent?
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Bill Stacy_C • 6 years ago
He said that it was at a certain point on the DVD and an article took a screenshot of the movie at that time and saw nothing. I tried looking it up and no one knows what he saw. Still a great movie.
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Alex Robinson Bill • 3 years ago
Focus on the shot. then the beginning of the next scene. The man is saying "Sitting right at the far end, near the mirror." as he begins his story. If you go back to the shot of them in the car, the son is on the right next to the wing mirror and is "hidden" from view. his son is most likely sending the tapes, maybe with Majid's son as an accomplice. The son is like his father, both very clever for their young age and manipulative.
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Cathal Carolan Bill • 6 years ago
Well that wasn't a very good article then! Watch the scene and keep your eye on the roof of Daniel's car.
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Hachiiiko Cathal Carolan • 5 years ago
Are you referring to the little fin? It's a radio antenna, not uncommon on cars like Georges'.
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Balasubramanian Ganesan • 6 years ago
I watched this movie and at the end of it, have an empty feeling. I was and am still unsure after a few days whether it was really worth my time. While there are many questions that arise, I've just been asking "so?" Relationships always go up and down no matter what happens and which type it is -friendship, marriage, parent-child, you name it. Objectively reviewing it, I felt this movie had nothing to offer and is very forgettable.
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Jay Dee Balasubramanian Ganesan • 2 years ago
It's about the massacre of Algerians....
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ev • 6 years ago
http://clumtrops.tumblr.com...
My amateur analysis/speculation about Roger Ebert's smoking gun
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Garnet70 ev • 5 years ago
Your link is dead. Please repost your analysis..
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mdsdavis • 5 years ago
I really don't enjoy films that are open to the viewer's interpretation. My interpretation is that I lost 2 hours that I won't get back, and that is not something to be cherished. Georges may have felt guilty simply because he's a decent human being, or because of his upbringing, but he was right - he had nothing to feel guilty about. Now that's out of the way, what's left? Not much.
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Lior1209 mdsdavis • 4 years ago
I've been thinking quite a bit about this topic of "what's the value of open-endedness?". The conclusion I came to was that if a film manages to compel the viewer to ponder its themes and loose ends, it succeeded. For me at least, Caché succeeds big time, and also works great as simply a superb thriller.
The question to ask about open-ended films is this-do you want to think about it? That's the thin line that separates 2001: A Space Odyssey and Caché from The Brown Bunny and 9 Songs.
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Cole Robert Heideman mdsdavis • 3 years ago
"I don't want to think when I look at a piece of art"
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mdsdavis Cole Robert Heideman • 3 years ago
I don't view films as pieces of art.
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Cole Robert Heideman mdsdavis • 3 years ago
haha ok. You're absolutely wrong not to, but I'll leave it alone.
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Jay Dee mdsdavis • 2 years ago
Films ARE ART.....it's not called the 7th art for nothing....
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Maynard M. • 3 years ago
Before the scene with blood boy, there is a shot from inside the house looking through a window down on the street, probably taken from the son's room (probably taken from the boy himself...??). That is what I see on my German DVD at around 20:39. And I guess that was what Ebert meant.
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dre7861 • 4 years ago
I went back and watched the scene that Roger was talking about. It's a grainier film stock and seems to me to represent Georges' memory of being in his parents house. As the camera moves forward, you can hear a retching sound. The camera turns towards a large window where Majid as a child is sitting with his back turned to us. He then becomes aware of a presence there and turns towards the camera. He has blood smeared across his lower face, in his hand is something white that is blood smeared and there are longs strands of blood dangling from his mouth. I watched it several times and could not decide what was the white thing in his hand. I thought it might be some sort of wadded up paper that he coughed the blood into but to me it had a rubbery look to. There is an earlier similar flashback scene at around 13:24, which also shows the young Majid turning surprised with a blood smeared face but this time no with object in his hands. Clearly Majid is coughing up blood although Georges says that he made that up to get his parents to send Majid away. I'm not quite sure what Roger saw that made him thing it was a smoking gun. Alas we will never know.
All in all I liked this film. It has a quiet intensity that I found riveting. Despite that I have no clue who sent the tapes and the creepy drawings; and if Majid and/or his son had other motives. I also can't explain why the son suddenly becomes very hostile to his Mother when they seem to be getting along fine at the beginning of the film.Additionally we are left with the questions of whether Anne was being unfaithful to her husband - the scene in the cafe seems to indicate yes and what are we to make of Georges insisting that Anne send Pierre and his wife home. After the startling second scene with Majid, why didn't Georges call the police. What are we to make of the African guy that gets into an argument with Georges? What was the connection between Pierrot and Majid's son? The son definitely seeks out Pierrot but their conversation seems friendly even lighthearted. This film deliberately provides no answers to these questions, although one can guess. But I think that uncertainty is what gives the film its strength.
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bra jkishor tiwary • 5 years ago
george sending tapes himself , when at thier chilhood someone (new parrents) took majid , george was shooting at distant
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P.K. Hunter • 7 months ago
All of the metaphors about Algeria/France, and the deep stuff about 'blame and conscience' are cool. Got it. But, tapes were sent and they led to consternation. Painfully evoking the angst in the viewers. It's idiotic to suggest that "who sent is irrelevant". It absolutely is. Perhaps the metaphors would have been more strident if the 'mystery' was resolved, or some clues given. In the absence of that this otherwise interesting (but far too slow, and I like slow burns in general) is just plain farty.
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Joel • 4 years ago
Michael Haneke's Code Unknown opens with a little girl backing up to a wall and cowering down in a facetious and fragile position. Then her classmates offer interpretations: "Imprisoned" -- the girl shakes her head; "Alone" -- the girl shakes her head; "Sad" -- the girl shakes her head. The children grow more and more frustrated, tugging on their cheeks in concentration, and the girl looks blank. We cut to the opening credits and never find out the word that she was miming. Haneke breaking the fourth wall?
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CanadianSniper Guest • 6 years ago
Most liked Haneke's first Funny Games better than his American shot-for-shot remake
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Giorgi • 5 years ago
I think Roger's hint on the smoking gun is simply a joke, once again emphasizing our (viewers) affirmed nature of seeking details that solve the whole mystery. There is no smoking gun but anyway, neither a gun, nor a cannon would make a difference here. That's the point of the film. Roger gives us a self test for our perception. I love it!
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