Caché (Hidden)

[Gamblour.]

SPOILERS again

I've been reading some reviews, and maybe I missed something in the last shot, but which two characters are seen in the upper left talking to each other? It sounds really interesting but I don't know who they are because I didn't see it. That shot was large and you aren't given any reason to look that direction.

As for the recent events in Paris, I can see some interesting connection there, and really this film might be more effective in America if it were a black guy, because if it's about race or class there's that immediate recognition of assumption there. Arab racism doesn't jump out at me, black racism does. I'm not saying this is a problem with the film, just a cultural barrier that I'm thinking out loud about that would help me understand the film a bit more. I'm starting to see it, but I still would never call this film satisfying.

[children with angels]

I've been reading some reviews, and maybe I missed something in the last shot, but which two characters are seen in the upper left talking to each other? It sounds really interesting but I don't know who they are because I didn't see it. That shot was large and you aren't given any reason to look that direction.

SPOILERS

Had to jump in because how can you leave this question unanswered?

It's the teenage son and the Algerian son. They interract calmly, almost in a friendly way like they might know each other - or maybe this is an act and subtle threats are happening... The Algerian son walks off, and the teenage son walks off with his friends.

I had no idea that this was something that a lot of people had missed until I started reading reviews - I just looked to that part of the screen automatically because it contained the door that the son had come out of in a previous scene when we'd been shown the same shot. When I realised it had become this big "did-you-see-it" thing I asked my girlfriend, who'd seen the film with me with me, and I was shocked to find out she hadn't noticed it either!

As for the film's social meaning, I would say that it's absolutely about classism and racism equally, because they so often amount to the same thing - which I would say the film is pointing out. It's about the comfy middle-class world being shattered - about the privileges that come with it, and those automatically denied the working classes - but the seed of this shattering is a little boy's instinctive racism.

On a side-note, I love that our main character is a literary critic - the irony that he is exactly the kind of person who would find veiled racism, or a searing indictment of the bourgeois, in some work of fiction but is completely unable to be critical about his own life in the same way. Of course, we're then left with the added irony that most of the audience for this arthouse movie - who will rightly proclaim its importance - will themselves be white and middle-class.

[Gold Trumpet]

I was genuinely disappointed in this film. Michael Hanaeke has already made a film of the first rank for me in The Piano Teacher. The problem for Cache began with me when I started to feel the similarities of Antonioni's Blow Up. Everyone regards Antonioni's later work with equal praise as L'Avventura and L'Eclisse. There is no merit for that praise. Antonioni's downfall began with Blow Up and continued to get worst with every film.

People argue whether the main concern of this film is either racism or classiscm. I say neither. I say the main concern of this film is genre - specifically the thriller. Hitchcock was infamous for using actors who had credible careers as romantics or heroes and turning their image upside down and showing them in roles at their most squeamish and volatile. The shock to the audience was that Hitchcock was using actors against type cast and showing them with little mercy. Michael Hanaeke is taking a similar advantage of the audience here by using two of the most famous and beloved French actors to star as the husband and wife who are held hostage to a mysterious stalker. The focus of the story is their disintegration from each other and finally from themselves as the turns around become too much to personally bear.

People want to argue that there is more to this story. The problem is that the film is too vague to be credible for any other theme. The charge of racism stems from the lead character (Auteil) avoiding his past problems with Magil because he was an orphan and an Algerian who was connected to the family but not wanted by him. Auteil further continues to show this by showing little understanding for Magil later in life when he assumes he is the stalker. The classism charge really includes the same charges as the racism ones but includes the need Auteil has to protect his family and not involve them with Magile. Thing is, Auteil manages to shut out many characters in the movie including his wife from any personal confidence. This leaves me to believe the major distrust is with himself and he would have acted this way to any person - regardless of class or race. True, the problems start from a racist standpoint, but family history can be volatile to orphans in other ways as well. I think Auteil's resolve to shut himself off from everyone would have been the same.

Back to Antonioni. Blow Up had the look and feel of Antonioni film, but it was a shell casing to a genre story. Antonioni lost the amazing art he created with L'Avventura that beautifully merged film to painting like never done before or since. Blow Up tried to transfuse the genre to a pacing and focus that would give it credibility. Atonioni wanted to take the inner identity of the genre and re-tell it without focusing on the all usual action. Melville was doing similar things at the time but he had nothing on Antonioni. The difference is that Melville's transformation from his main period in the 50s to the 60s was actually a progression. Antonioni was making a transgression. Cache wraps itself around a similar austere shell and while it has two good performances, it has nothing unique to it to really recommend it. Its existence as a thriller keeps it from plunging into the darker terrain of the story. That is what The Piano Teacher was able to do.

[Sunrise]

People argue whether the main concern of this film is either racism or classiscm. I say neither. I say the main concern of this film is genre - specifically the thriller.

I would be one of those people if you are claiming that Cache strives to be or is a thriller. The term "thriller" would lead to the assumption that there is a puzzle to be solved or there is a mystery going on. The tapes and their author, whether Anne is having an affair, why Peirrot disappears for a night, etc. are simply the means for studying the behavior of these characters. I really don't think the point was for us to determine answers to these questions. If that was the point, the film is much too ambiguous. Note a famous Haneke quote: "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." This philosophy assuredly applies to Cache and offers instruction for its interpretation.

Because the focus is rightly on the characters and their behavior toward and interactions with each other, it is absolutely about race and class. Georges' guilt is manifested in his dreams, but he still shows no sign of making things right with Majid. I don't think their race, and related social class, are merely coincidences in an unfolding mystery we are tasked with solving.

On a side note, I read the final shot as hopeful (perhaps naively so) in that the new generation, Peirrot and Majid's son, seem to be interacting in a friendly manner.

[Gold Trumpet]

"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."

Haneke is just disassociating his work from typical American movies. There is no reason to believe that Cache still can't be argued in the context of a thriller. Europe has gone a long way to define its meaning of exceptional genre work. Exceptional thrillers do exist. Look at my previous analogy of Blow Up. I doubt neither Haneke nor Antonioni would argue that Blow Up isn't a thriller. I also doubt that Haneke would argue that his film has higher aspirations than Blow Up. The world of European cinema has given a context to genre that is lacking in the United States. It can allow for greater themes and discussions to be pursued.

I do argue against Antonioni's experimentation in genre though. He started the 1960s at the peak of the film world in avant garde filmmaking and by the end of the decade he was making films that were half the value of his greatest work.

Because the focus is rightly on the characters and their behavior toward and interactions with each other, it is absolutely about race and class. Georges' guilt is manifested in his dreams, but he still shows no sign of making things right with Majid. I don't think their race, and related social class, are merely coincidences in an unfolding mystery we are tasked with solving.

This is the heart of the argument.

I still don't believe the film is about racism or class at all. I haven't heard one logical argument that would lead me to believe me so. The main focus of the film is about this family having their lives turned upside down. It is about the process of the father becoming so disconcerted with the stalker that he distances himself from his friends, family and finally himself.

The fact that the problem is a situation that involves class and race is of secondary importance. It really doesn't begin to describe the film. I've heard people use the saying that "every action is political". Sure, an argument can be mustered that every action has a political connotation because of the society we live in, but that saying doesn't begin to describe most situations. Its a heavy handed insert of a theme or an idea merely because the situation glides across it in some way.

The same thing is applied in this film. Cache doesn't have enough details to its backstory to say that the pain Georges is going through is a strictly racial or social problem. It only has enough details to say it is caused from a childhood problem he never had a chance to make right. In my original review I argued that even if the details of race and social ladder were changed I still think Georges would have gone through a similar anxiety because a stalker was tormenting him. I haven't heard a rebuttal of that argument yet.

[Sunrise]

The world of European cinema has given a context to genre that is lacking in the United States. It can allow for greater themes and discussions to be pursued.

Generally I think this is true.

This is the heart of the argument.

I still don't believe the film is about racism or class at all. I haven't heard one logical argument that would lead me to believe me so. The main focus of the film is about this family having their lives turned upside down. It is about the process of the father becoming so disconcerted with the stalker that he distances himself from his friends, family and finally himself.

This is where we will probably have to agree to disagree. I read the cause of Georges' unraveling to be the latent guilt he feels from his instinctive childhood racism and jealousy (which has, at least unconsciously, carried over to his adult life). The tragic element of the narrative is that while he feels this guilt he has no way to cope with it and cannot consciously recognize it. That is why his behavior toward Majid and Majid's son does not change even though the audience can blatantly see what affect his guilt has caused. It is also HIS cause for the distancing you mention above. The tapes are just a means to draw the audience in and discover what's going on, or went on, in Georges' past and how it shape's his adult behavior. I do think that Anne is more affected by the fact that their is an anonymous terrorist out there creating and delivering these tapes. But then again she doesn't know the whole story.

Haneke supplies just enough detail to allow the audience to draw its own conclusions and often times disagree.

[polkablues]

Sunrise has this movie nailed right on the head.  The story is not in the slightest "about the process of the father becoming so disconcerted with the stalker that he distances himself from his friends, family and finally himself," it's about why he undergoes this process.  "Cache" is only a thriller inasmuch as it appropriates the plot beats of the thriller to tell a story about not an external discovery, a "mystery", but an internal discovery, that of a man finally facing a lifetime of suppressed guilt.  And that guilt is deeply rooted in racial and class issues.  To deny that is to deny the text itself, which Haneke liberally (pun sort of intended) sprinkles with such moments as the story of the Algerian massacre and the lengthy news broadcast about the Iraq war.

In a way, the story is very much about liberal guilt.  As a child, the main character thought of Majid as beneath him, and let his bigotry get the better of him.  Then, when faced with the results of his actions, he can't face up to it; he doesn't think of himself as being someone like that, so he can't outwardly admit to the guilt that's clearly destroying him internally.

What Haneke does that's really interesting, and that seems to have utterly bamboozled GT, is to let the subjects of race and class sneak into the story, mirroring the dawning realization that the main character experiences (though never admits to).  The most disastrous thing he could have done would have been to have some big scene near the end of the movie where Majid's son has a long, "Crash"-like monologue about the dangers of soft bigotry, something a lesser film would have found irresistable.  Instead, he just lets the story tell itself: the story of a man who thinks he is above such things, but finds out otherwise.

And wow, the final shot makes a hell of a lot more sense having read this thread.  Damn my regular-sized television, I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be seeing there.  It's nice, sort of a "Lady or the Tiger" kind of ending.  The meaning you take away from it is entirely dependent on how optimistic a person you are.

[Gold Trumpet]

What Haneke does that's really interesting, and that seems to have utterly bamboozled GT, is to let the subjects of race and class sneak into the story, mirroring the dawning realization that the main character experiences (though never admits to). 

Don't mention my name like that only in passing. Your comment to my "bamboozlement" is too glib to be accurate. I made points. I made arguments. Honor that before you single me out as the one who doesn't understand. If you wont then just do your review and don't mention my name.

[polkablues]

What Haneke does that's really interesting, and that seems to have utterly bamboozled GT, is to let the subjects of race and class sneak into the story, mirroring the dawning realization that the main character experiences (though never admits to). 

Don't mention my name like that only in passing. Your comment to my "bamboozlement" is too glib to be accurate. I made points. I made arguments. Honor that before you single me out as the one who doesn't understand. If you wont then just do your review and don't mention my name.

That was in direct reference to your prior posts on the film, in which you argued a point which I attempted to rebut in my post.  For clarity's sake, I'll quote you:

I still don't believe the film is about racism or class at all.

Then I'll quote me:

...that guilt is deeply rooted in racial and class issues. To deny that is to deny the text itself, which Haneke liberally (pun sort of intended) sprinkles with such moments as the story of the Algerian massacre and the lengthy news broadcast about the Iraq war.

Point/counterpoint.  And "bamboozled," while a funny word, meant exactly what I meant it to mean -- that I believe the approach the film takes in developing its themes misled you away from what those themes actually were.  At no point was any of that intended as disrespect to you, just as a counterargument to your analysis.  If I phrased it in a way that offended you, I apologize.  But I stand by the point itself.

[Gold Trumpet]

...that guilt is deeply rooted in racial and class issues. To deny that is to deny the text itself, which Haneke liberally (pun sort of intended) sprinkles with such moments as the story of the Algerian massacre and the lengthy news broadcast about the Iraq war.

For me, those sprinkled moments hardly go the length of defining the text. I've said before that beneath the surface of this film may be such things as classism or racism, but I do not believe the film is driven by those themes. That would mean the film would be an idea work. It would try to find a new way to define racial tensions in France. Or even the tensions of those who are dealing with the aftermath of Algerian blow over. It does not. It is a character study of these characters at their most uncomfortable. The suspense porthole which it looks at pain and anger has more relation to Hitchock than any serious artist. Its a quasi attempt at realism for a family on the fringes of breaking apart and a man being driven by his past insecurities. The classism or racism subtext only stands as light ground which the film stands on. It hardly differentiates differentiates the drama from what almost any other subtext could have provided.

On the point of personal offense, none taken. I just find myself easily quoted because everyone seems to assume I disagree to just disagree. Its very annoying.

[Alexandro]

...that guilt is deeply rooted in racial and class issues. To deny that is to deny the text itself, which Haneke liberally (pun sort of intended) sprinkles with such moments as the story of the Algerian massacre and the lengthy news broadcast about the Iraq war.

For me, those sprinkled moments hardly go the length of defining the text. I've said before that beneath the surface of this film may be such things as classism or racism, but I do not believe the film is driven by those themes. That would mean the film would be an idea work. It would try to find a new way to define racial tensions in France. Or even the tensions of those who are dealing with the aftermath of Algerian blow over. It does not. It is a character study of these characters at their most uncomfortable. The suspense porthole which it looks at pain and anger has more relation to Hitchock than any serious artist. Its a quasi attempt at realism for a family on the fringes of breaking apart and a man being driven by his past insecurities. The classism or racism subtext only stands as light ground which the film stands on. It hardly differentiates differentiates the drama from what almost any other subtext could have provided.

On the point of personal offense, none taken. I just find myself easily quoted because everyone seems to assume I disagree to just disagree. Its very annoying.

I don't think the classism or racism here is subtext at all. It's all over the place. The incident with the black guy in the bicicle, the mentioning of the 60's incident where his childhood playmate parent's died, the news on tv behind them on several points during the movie.

There is a clear, if not indictment, at least criticism of french (maybe even european) burguoise society and the way they have gotten a free pass over their opresive crimes toward other cultures and minorities throughout history. I've always been bothered actually when looking at countries like France and Spain and their wealth, by how no one wants to mention where all that wealth actually came from, and how their crimes of the past still affects economies of millions of peoples all over the globe. It's a harsh reality we all have to deal with. The main character in Caché thinks he's through with it but he ain't, and just the realization of knowing he's being wacthed is enough to trigger his guilty feelings. It doesn't matter if is a black, arab, mexican, australian native...we all share the same story of being pretty much destroyed and serving as the future bank account of the richest nations in the world.

The thriller aesthetic is important to the film. But mind you is not that overplayed through it. The film has no music, no chases, no real hang ups in a traditional way. In fact I guess it tries not to be a thriller, but is kind of useless to do that, since the anonymous videptapes are so disturbing that you can't help but feel some sort of anxiety towards "solving" the "mistery". That makes the audience get involved in a traditional way while all the other info is permeated, and also, and this is important, is the device by which we, the audience, by trying to "solve the mistery" and find a guilty party, a villain, can't help but filter that through our own racial prejudices.

SPOILERS
My guess is that even though the film offers little evidence of who actually sent those tapes, most of us can't help but point our fingers to certain someones just because we naturally empathize with the main characters...But the thing is, we never know who sent them cause the movie is not about that, it's about the guilt this guy has for basically being privileged at someone else's expense, or at least of damaging that person for life...

By the end, he goes to his house and decides to close his drapes and get naked in bed, under the dellusion he's hidden, but he will keep being observed and it will keep haunting him...

That last take could mean a lot of things, but one that it does says with clarity is that nor his son or the other guy's son sent those tapes, cause they seem to be under surveillance too...maybe Haneke himself is sending those sick tapes...wasn't he the guy who in Funny Games gave a character the power to rewind the movie as it played?

END OF SPOILERS

[RegularKarate]

Alexandro, I was thinking that exact thing you stated in your spoiler there.  Not that it matters who sends them, but that's how I felt.

[Gold Trumpet]

The thriller aesthetic is important to the film. But mind you is not that overplayed through it. The film has no music, no chases, no real hang ups in a traditional way. In fact I guess it tries not to be a thriller, but is kind of useless to do that, since the anonymous videptapes are so disturbing that you can't help but feel some sort of anxiety towards "solving" the "mistery". That makes the audience get involved in a traditional way while all the other info is permeated, and also, and this is important, is the device by which we, the audience, by trying to "solve the mistery" and find a guilty party, a villain, can't help but filter that through our own racial prejudices.

I missed this post.

Cache is still is a thriller. By separating Cache from the thriller mold because it has no music or traditional hang ups of the genre does not truly separate it from that genre. Blow Up, as I talked about before, also has the same left outs that Cache has. It also has the same inclusion of being wonderfully made. European filmmaking has always been able to glamorize well made genre studies.

The problem is no genre study has been able to be a deep reading of human society. Each person who responds to me continually gives me more scenes that is supposed evidence to what the film is about. It is evidence of absolutely nothing.

Take for instance the film, "Children of Heaven", an Iranian film. The film is a send off of the Bicyle Thief but with a little boy who must get his sister a pair of shoes so she will be able to go to school. The two children live in a family that is very poor. They can't afford many means of living many of us would call very basic means. Is the film a good study in Iranian culture? Absolutely not. Their poverty is interchangeable with problems in many societies and cultures. The basic problem of poverty to afford shoes is nothing unique or even very interesting. The details of the school they go to, the living conditions they have to stand and the city they run through are all just background details. Change some specifics and you easily could have an authentic story set in the United States instead.

The same problem is in Cache. The film focuses on the relationship of the husband and wife and their mysterious stalker. All the other details of race and conflict really become irrevelant. Yes, they are prevelant and through out the film but they are background decor that is interchangeable to other settings and situations. Let me pose this question: What about the details of this film is unique to the racism in France? Sure, a couple lines here and there, but as far as I could tell, nothing that was important. The main identity of this film is the structure it resides in, the thriller. All the other details are less important because the situation of racism is in every country. There isn't a context to this racism that is highly unique or even thoughtful. The argument against that stance is that all drama is possible to be interchangeable. Yes, an argument can be made to say anything is interchangeable. The problem is that good dramas begin with focus on the characters and ideas first. They apply roots that ground the film in their settings. Cache is grounded in a mystery story.

[polkablues]

Each person who responds to me continually gives me more scenes that is supposed evidence to what the film is about. It is evidence of absolutely nothing.

Sarcasm warning:

Yes, heaven forbid one refers to the text in one's interpretation of it.

Let me pose this question: What about the details of this film is unique to the racism in France?

Nothing.  It's not a film about racism in France.  It's a film about racism in humans, set in France.  To follow your "Children of Heaven" example, I would argue that the fact that the story could be authentically set anywhere is a virtue, not a failing.  For that matter, I don't think that your ideal culture study is even possible; even if you were to make a documentary of the situation, rather than narrative fiction, any other person in any other culture could still have the capacity to identify with it.  The problems humans face, across cultures, are remarkably the same (just change some specifics, to borrow a phrase).

The issue I'm having with your attack (maybe the wrong word, but it'll have to do) on genre is that it seems to allow no space for universality in storytelling.  You seem to be suggesting (and let me know if I'm wrong) that for a film to do justice to its subject, it has to be so specific as to apply to nothing but its subject.  But isn't the whole purpose of narrative storytelling to create universality through specificity?  To tell us about ourselves by telling us about others? 

Maybe it would help me if you could give an example of a film that fits the criteria you're looking for, because every one that I can think of would be struck down when your argument was applied to it.

[Gold Trumpet]

You seem to be suggesting (and let me know if I'm wrong) that for a film to do justice to its subject, it has to be so specific as to apply to nothing but its subject.  But isn't the whole purpose of narrative storytelling to create universality through specificity?  To tell us about ourselves by telling us about others? 

Yes, I believe a film has to be specific. I also believe to be specific is the only way to become universal. I think you simplify unversality though. Can the subject of racism alone be enough to truly make it universal? I don't think so.

You focus on identification. I don't think it is very important. Problems around the world are manifested within basic human emotions that lend themselves to be identifiable for everyone. It is a default sensibility that is already engrained into all of us.

The greater trait is to be understandable. When I argue that a film should be as specific as possible I also mean specific in ideas. The detail shouldn't only be emotional. The fact is that the nature of racism is different in every country. Take for instance the situation in England with terrorism. Its being understood that England is better breeding grounds for terrorist cells than the United States is. England has a problem with its Pakastani population. The younger Pakastini population is becoming disenfranchised by the country. Most Pakastanis consider themselves Pakastani first and English second (even if born in England). The fact that England is based on a population that only belonged to one church (the Church of England) is saying that religious toleration isn't the same in many European countries as it is in the United States. Most of the those countries are based on one people and a church being dominant. The United States came from a Puritan background but was an escape route for people seeking religious freedom. The United States isn't perfect in racial tolerance by any means, but it has some good things to it.

So I would argue that the nature of racism isn't interchangeable at all. The deeper problems of England have very little to do with the problems of the United States. You could tell a story that did address racism in general terms of just emotonal content, but I think that avvoids greater issues. I think it also makes for a film that is less satisfactory. The universal aspect of Children of Heaven isn't a plus. Its so easily identifiable because the film does skimp on the details that would make it unique.

OK, I'm very nearly tired of this debate. I've already come to the understanding that I see this film as a thriller while others don't. Blow Up didn't take on the greater issues that L'Avventura did and neither does Cache take on the greater issues of racism. My original point that the film could still be fine but the limited focus would keep it from being a masterwork. I think Cache is fine in many respects but more importantly I think it reminds me of my original problems with genre.