Caché (Hidden)
Directed by Michael Haneke.
Starring Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche.
Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) has received several awards, and features a top French cast, but was very disappointing. I really don’t want to write a review that puts people off from going to see a film, but in a nutshell, the meaning and value of Hidden is just that — hidden!
The film revolves around TV star Georges’ (Daniel Auteuil) reaction to receiving a series of mysterious videotapes, and how this affects his daily life and interactions with his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) and son Pierrot. Each tape is accompanied by a childish drawing splashed with red ink…
Now, you’d think this would be a great base from which to create a decent stalker film. However, the plot never gets off the ground, and the remaining hour or so drags on. No real attempt is made at building any tension, the only highlight being a graphic scene involving the suspected (and likely, falsely accused) stalker himself. An interesting but widely-open-to-interpretation twist in the final scene (watch for it very carefully, in the closing credits!) serves to reward those of the audience who a) haven’t already left the cinema and b) are still paying attention!
Despite Auteuil and Binoche putting in solid performances, their characters are wooden and lack depth. Interestingly, there is also no soundtrack and the subtitles are difficult to read at times (white text on a white or pale grey background just doesn’t work!).
In fairness, perhaps the film is a bit of an existential piece — perhaps we’re meant to make of it what we want to make of it! But with little plot and dull characters it just didn’t grab or maintain my attention.
Hidden does have a redeeming feature: the camera work is excellent and very creative at times!
1/5
Sarah Burton
If you need a clearly drawn narrative with its edges rounded for comfort, or if you like films to end with a simple resolution and you’re a bit squeamish when it comes to seeing a bit of blood, this is not a film for you.
It was about twenty minutes into this movie that it became apparent to me that things weren’t taking their ordinary course — the director was constantly playing — which is when I experienced this involuntary leaning-toward-the-screen thing in my upper body. I love it when directors get all artistic and exclusive, presenting their ‘art’ in a manner requiring careful attention.
I use the word ‘art’ because, above all, Hidden is a piece of Art Cinema. Sure it has elements of the thriller and drama genres mixed in, but the key to the film is director Michael Haneke’s attitude toward the film medium itself. Haneke is not looking to entertain so much as fracture perceptions and stimulate the broadening of perspectives.
I’m wary of giving too much away in terms of the content and form of this film. I’ve read some other reviews after watching it, and they just seem to spoil it.
I will say that there are taped sequences in the film — a type of film within the film. Amongst other things, the sequences clearly represent the role of the filmmaker-as-artist as being one of bringing things to a head. The filmmaker, Haneke seems to be saying, must manipulate tensions and risk ripping the seemingly safe but actually tottering fabric of society to shreds. In the post-modern tradition of self-revealing and self-questioning, Haneke has made a film that is as much about films as it is about the more immediately apparent subject matter.
The covered-up (or ‘hidden’) French massacre of protesting Algerians in 1961 informs and contributes to the underlying tension of the film, but the truly captivating element is that the tension is dislocated: we don’t know exactly who is doing what, and to launch into an analysis of “why?” would only lead to the most superficial treatment of the subject matter. The point of the film is that we’re not supposed to know so much as question.
In many ways form takes precedence over content — the fact that Haneke decided to present this story in the manner he has is perhaps more interesting than the story itself. So I won’t give you a plot outline for the film in this review. You don’t need it.
While the subject matter does include an analysis of guilt, immorality and shame, and while the ‘resolution’ has overtones of reconciliation, the film is as much ‘about’ how a rooster dances with its head chopped off as anything else. Hidden presents itself while at the same time hiding away from expectations of conventional storytelling and the general social expectations of simplicity and resolution. It doesn’t judge. It invites us to think about and participate in its own construction.
Go see it if you like to be challenged by intelligent and technically gifted filmmakers — and if you’re crazy enough to believe that films can be ‘art’ after all…
5/5
Shannon Burns
