Caché (Hidden)

[polkablues]

OK, I'm very nearly tired of this debate.

I'm glad you came this far, though.  I'm starting to see your point much better than I could early on.

[modage]

i watched this last night.  my 2nd haneke after Funny Games a few months ago.  a thrill-less thriller, but it held my attention.  SPOILER i loved that 1 1/2 hour in something truly shocking happens. END SPOILER as a provocateur, so far i prefer Haneke to Von Trier. 

[RegularKarate]

sorry i havn't seen this. otherwise i might've helped you see GT's point 10 posts sooner.

are you vying for the title of "Official GT Translator"?

[polkablues]

sorry i havn't seen this. otherwise i might've helped you see GT's point 10 posts sooner.

are you vying for the title of "Official GT Translator"?

It even goes beyond that, though; he's the Tom Cruise to GT's Rain Man.

[MacGuffin]

Howard circling 'Cache' remake
Director eyes French film
Source: Variety

Ron Howard may unlock an American version of "Cache" for Universal.

Brian Grazer will produce the remake for Imagine, which acquired the rights from Plum Pictures, with Howard eyeing to direct. Plum's Celine Rattray will exec produce, along with Randy Simon, and Plum's Galt Niederhoffer and Daniela Taplin Lundberg will co-produce.

Michael Haneke wrote and helmed the French original, which starred Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche as a couple who find increasingly violent videos on their porch. Haneke won best director prize at Cannes in 2005.

Sony Classics released it Stateside late that year and the pic, also called "Hidden," went on to earn $3.6 million at the domestic box office. Universal version, to be set in the U.S., is expected to amp up the suspense and consequences.

Howard has several other potential projects in the offing. Besides "Frost/Nixon," the bigscreen adaptation of the play, there's "Angels & Demons," the follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code;" and "The Look of Real," a look at the garment industry that could star his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard.

Gotham-based Plum optioned the rights to the story in December 2005 as the pic was about to make its Stateside bow (Daily Variety, Dec. 13, 2005). Plum also produced two recent Sundance acquisitions, "Grace Is Gone," which The Weinstein Co. bought for $4 million, and "Dedication," sold to TWC and First Look for $4 million.

Peter Cramer is overseeing for Universal; Karen Kehela Sherwood and David Bernardi are doing the honors for Imagine.

[I Don't Believe in Beatles]

I really hope this doesn't happen. 

[squints]

ditto

[Gamblour.]

Yeah, say goodbye to all the subtlety that I didn't get.

Not being sarcastic, I actually really appreciate the film. A remake would ruin all the subtext.

[matt35mm]

I really hope this doesn't happen. 

When was the last time Ron Howard did something that pleased you?

Therefore: this will happen.

[Pas]

Well that was a masterwork.

I think one hour in I started to realize that the tapes were a red herring. This was much more a moral tale than a thriller. It has been often told this was about racism and classism, and it is, but I believe it is more importantly personal. How do you deal with guilt. How guilt and shame always are "hidden" in your head. Oh you go through life without much thought about it, but once in a while something happens and it springs back.

I think the tapes were a tool, sent by no one. Magical in a sense. Maybe sent by the devil, to see what would happen. The first tape was about nothing at all. There was nothing with it, no paper, nothing. Then, the tapes and the papers became what George (Daniel Auteuil) feared they would be, in a way.

If I put myself in the situation and receive a tape like the first one they received, I know who I would suspect. I know there is only one person in the world who could do that. But is it true? It could in fact be anyone at all. It could be nothing, a mistake. And that is what happened to George. There is no reason why Majide (sp?) would send him tapes that would guide him to his place. This makes no sense and during the movie I could not understand why he was so sure it was him. I think he accused him so relentlessly for all the faults in his life to deal with his guilt. "I fucked his life up, but he's just as bad so I'm not evil." Something like that.

Anyway I'd like to think and talk more about this. Anyone?

PS: At one point I thought the tapes came from his mother LOL

[for petes sake]

I agree with Pas, GT and others who talk about how the tapes themselves are irrelevant.  Like they have said, the movie isn't about what's in the tapes, or racism, or political statements at all.  Those are themes that specific to the lives of the characters and just happen to be the topics that come up when they are confronted with larger theme of the film, which is the nature of observation.  This is a film about how there mere act of knowing that you are being watched can unravel a seemingly perfect family.  I think this is pretty clear through several instances, mainly the generally non-threatening content of the tapes (not the implied threat that someone is taking the time to make them), the deliberate choice to shoot the movie on video and blur the layers of observation happening (the stalker to Georges, us viewers to his life unraveling), and the general stylistic lack of things like music or noticeable editing to cue us into how we should feel about what we are seeing.  The tapes are creepy not because of what they show, or how Haneke shows them, but mainly in the fact that they exist, that the idea of someone watching our lives from afar is a disturbing idea in and of itself.  Think about it this way: if the tapes kept coming without the drawings, would you still be disturbed by them?  Of course, the drawings merely being a specific device to point us in the direction necessary unfold the narrative of Georges' past.

To think about this more (and likely make some thematic leaps that others won't support) I think this film has some similarities with Peeping Tom in its implication of the audience as a "passive" observer.  Here we are watching the movie and naturally trying to make conclusions to explain what we are seeing, when the film deliberately doesn't give us all the information we need to do so.  And yet we still make assumptions and fill in the blanks as we need to try and deduce intention and meaning.  And this situation happens all the time in real life, when we are given limited information on people or a place and yet make broad assumptions merely to have rules of thumb to live by.  Stereotyping as a natural, and logical human process.  But like the Coen's interpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, that the act of observing fundamentally changes the observed (and thus deductively says more about the observer than the observed), this movie calls into question the accuracy of these conclusions.  Now I don't think  Haneke explicitly made this film to have us question stereotyping in our lives, but his calling into question the lenses of "observation" was merely an intention to expel the myth of the completely detached and objective observer to any situation.

[Pas]

I have read a review of the film by Roger Ebert and it's pretty hilarious.

Where is the first camera hidden? [...] That would imply access to the building, but let's not even go there. The point is, we can clearly see that a camera could apparently not be hidden there. It couldn't? Well, a camera was. Case closed. And it must have required an electrical outlet, since it had to run for long periods. We can eliminate the possibility that it's motion-sensitive, because it runs when there's no motion.

I guess some people think this film is about electrical outlets and motion sensoring. Mostly about electrical outlets, though, because we can eliminate the possibility that it's motion-sensitive, thanks Roger.

I am willing to accept that some people would think that the tapes were made by Pierrot and Majid's son. I just find it almost takes away the whole point of the film. Maybe I AM reading too much into it after all. But to pretend that this and that is impossible because of electrical outlets is just astoundingly insane to me.

[Stefen]

Roger Ebert channeling bigideas!