Michael Haneke's CACHE (insert your own accent over the e)

xp yes Dan.

EXTREMELY effective, for better and worse

'the piano teacher' is a wriggling mess of a film; and at times, in certain scenes, there is almost far too much going on to allow time for effective in situ analysis: the scene betw. klemmer and teacher in the toilet of the conservatoire shifts so subtly over its length the movie could sustain all its power on its weight - but of course it couldn't; it's not a case of having his cake and eat it either; he lets the rooms speak for themselves, let's them decide who gets what cake etc.

has a masterful touch with allowing people to think the proper amount of time too

perhaps a silly attitude toward TV but then he worked its halls for 11 years so understandable if not excusable

it depends on what you think this gift is being turned to i suppose

i don't really know how i feel about haneke

i thought code: unknown was really exciting

the only other leant-forward hands on my knees experience I ever had was when I managed to catch 'safe' at the cinema and I had to be prized from the screen - 'the piano teacher' left me with a fraction of that feeling tht time round (maybe synthetic, since I ws in the emotionally-charged arena of a date (not date));

anyway, given too much away again

xp weirdly i was just thinking of Greenaway w/r/t Haneke.

opinions on the final shot? is that majid's son approaching pierre at the bottom corner of the steps?

I saw this film at the London film festival and Daniel Auteil was there to answer questions after the film. He should be a stand up comic! He's really witty and funny.

The you know what scene is one of the most shocking things I've ever seen on film even though I should've predicted what would happen. The audience seemed to be just as disgusted.

"intellectual"

these seem problematic to me

even in a narrow sense: todd haynes, terrence malick, hong sang-soo...

he's austrian

x-post

some are german tho right? 'der sieben kontinent', '71 fragments...', 'the castle'

m.haneke's films are very self-consciously intellectual tho, taking on a lot of feted intellectual themes

yes, but this is true of so many!

xp

ok

i've got rhythm

i've got music

who could ask for anything more?

x-post

michael haneke: a song, a joke, a laugh, a smoke

anything like HK triads?

re: the SPOILER -- the funny thing is, a friend told me to watch the final scene closely and i still missed (partly because i wasn't sure it was the final scene so wasn't paying attention). but from online discussion i've read, yes, i guess that is there. but even knowing it, i'm not sold on its significance -- even tho you can read it a lot of different ways, none of them really make sense narratively. it seems a little cheap, almost a standard hollywood "twist."

re: the legacy of racism, etc., which is the major theme (or one of them, depending on read it -- there's also the theme of parent-child relationships). yeah, i get it. and it's not badly done. but from interviews w/him where he's all like, "the french people must confront their past," i mean, it's a little didactic. which i think his stuff tends to be.

anyway, i basically enjoyed it while i was watching. it's pretty fucking suspenseful, for one thing. but i'm not sold on him as a thinker.

haha xp also 'Haneke is very much against violence' wow

Do you mean he is very much in favor of violence? I haven't seen any of his movies, but I 'm assuming Tuomas means that he is against it but uses it as a means to express his dislike? Does that make sense? Anyway, I should watch it.

i think he means it's a bit of a vacuous statement?

I'd be interested to know what you think of The Piano Teacher, Nath. It's my favourite of Haneke's films, largely due to Huppert's astonishing performance, but also because it maintains such blazing intensity throughout. I also really like Time of the Wolf, probably because am a total sucker for post-apocalyptic misery on film.

(yes xp)

tuomas seems to have fallen for haneke press releases hook, line and sinker

Yeah. Time of the Wolf is, so far, the only Haneke movie I've seen that I really liked.

Haneke is very much in favor of violence in his movies, and making you feel bad for watching them. No self-examination whatsoever, and Funny Games and Benny's Video (as Caché) were re-made to remove any autobigraphical elements. Screw him.

Bit irrelevant, but Caché respects very much a modern version of Sheridan le Fanu's The Watcher. (from A Glass Darkly).

Ugh, finger slipped and posted - you get the idea tho.

Bill, I will post about it. :-)

Hi there,
I just wanted to drop in something that seems to have gone unmentioned in the discussion about Caché.
I think in watching this film it's important to consider your own implication in the film as a viewer.
I believe the narrative, the mystery and the thematics also include the passivity or even guilt of viewers of events.
One is implicated in the horror by being a willing viewer of it, in fact, as film watchers we in essence will these horrible events into existence.
I suggest re-watching the film, paying attention to formal elements and consider the film to be something bigger than what plays out within it's own world.
You, as the viewer are part of the film. You instigate the mystery. The events unfold only because you are there. You want the mystery. You want the resolution. You want this film to be, even if you don't realise you do. Viewers infact create cassettes, DVD's, news reports, web feeds, internet sites, everything. Without an audience, these do not exist.
What do you think?

what if reality is just an illusion

what if this film
in actuality really is
completely made up

Brt, your theory, as you formulate it, would apply to every film ever made. So why would Caché be a special case within this theory? It's true that in Funny Games Haneke plays upon what the audience expects/wants to happen next, and refuses to give them that, but there's no such "gotcha!" moments aimed at the viewer in Caché. The fact that there's no obvious solution to the mystery of the tapes is not supposed to implicate the viewer, the answer to the mystery would implicate certain people within the movie. Basically, the source of the tapes is also the source of Georges' guilt, and the reason Haneke doesn't give any definite answer to the question of who/what was behind the tapes is that he wants to say something about this sort of guilt. (Though like I've mentioned upthread, it's not that difficult to get an answer if you put the film to a formal analysis.)

well, you could say that the audience's experience of the film parallels georges' experience of the tapes. each watches something presented as a mystery, holding certain ideas about what mysteries imply - most obviously that mysteries imply solution. it can't be mere coincidence that the mystery presented to georges is a film, or that cache's camera plays the live-or-memorex tricks we saw in funny games. georges is unhinged by the absence of an explanation, and it's reasonable to suppose that haneke intends to play a similar prank on his audience, punishing us for the simplicity of our expectations.

looking back, this appears to be exactly what brt said yesterday. so condense to "brt otm."

dismissive wank gesture

oh simple-minded audience, wanting an explanation to a simple conundrum

yes, because haneke is a weiner

p much

I thought the unsolvedness worked OK just because it fits in with the general mood of the film. The only 'point' I got from the film if you want to call it that was that it's arbitrary where you start and finish a narrative, unseen events are implicated in the portion of time you see which aren't (or can't be) explained within the scope of the narrative.

In other words I think the technique of confusing the viewer as to where their sympathies are meant to lie is effective at creating a mood of unease, but there's nothing that revelatory to thinking 'oh wait maybe I am implicated in all kinds of awful stuff that doesn't even fit into the narrative of my life'.

he only 'point' I got from the film ... was that it's arbitrary where you start and finish a narrative, unseen events are implicated in the portion of time you see which aren't (or can't be) explained within the scope of the narrative.

...but there's nothing that revelatory to thinking 'oh wait maybe I am implicated in all kinds of awful stuff that doesn't even fit into the narrative of my life'.

― Vasco da Gama

i agree, but remember that georges is personally implicated by the mystery he investigates. the unseen events in question likely are related to the narrative of his life, but seem to arise from suppressed parts of that narrative. this creates a subtextual political argument within haneke's film concerning the massacres of algerians in french cities in the early 60s, and on that level, it implicates its presumably french audience in the mystery with which they've been presented. the withholding of a solution to both mysteries (the one georges is shown trying to solve and the one the audience approaches in watching the film), haneke makes a point about the ways in which such narratives seek to localize and simplify questions of responsibility, and thereby to provide a cheap sort of comfort. while we never really learn who sent the videotapes or what they might mean, it's notable that they are, in a sense, memories - echoes of george's suppressed guilt. likewise, cache itself can be seen as a sort of memory, one that seeks to goad its audience into an awareness of culpability. i therefore see the film as scolding and morally arrogant, and these qualities often bother me in haneke's films. here, though, i was sufficiently intrigued and entertained to tolerate his typical bitterness.

i now notice in looking back that the argument i'm fumbling towards is hashed out much more thoughtfully upthread.

"the unseen events in question likely are related to the narrative of his life"

yeah that's true, but he thought the childhood episode was only a minor aspect of his own life story and would remain so. When the unseen network of consequences attached to it begin to impinge on his life, the coherence of his life-story is threatened. He is challenged to try and vindicate himself by figuring out the whole network, but I think the film hints that this is an impossible task, he has to draw the line somewhere and retreat into complacency. Any attempt to uncover things eventually results in a new covering-over. So I don't think the film is trying to make anyone in particular feel culpable. I thought it was saying that everyone's moral self-esteem is necessarily based on a propensity to trivialise aspects of their history which are messy and potentially disruptive.

It's no so much actual guilt we are suppressing as moral ambiguity, which we all have to keep at bay to avoid going crazy.

tempted to teach this film since it's such a perfect example of art cinema but i hate it.

i would love to teach it, and lead students through some of the various "meanings" that can be attributed to it and so forth, do some real close reading of it ... and then, say, "ok, but what if we assume haneke is full of shit?"

yeah, i mean the whole thing is like a closed system designed to fuck with you, which is really only one way (and a particularly bullying one) to utilize the open-endedness/structural-ambiguity schema common to art films. a very ungenerous and self-regarding form of open-endedness.

the most objectionable part is all the self-serving "interesting"/"political" concepts and memes that haneke feels we should yoke the film's game of form to. which would go over students' heads anyway. (algeria? where's that?)

id guess in france the kids would "get" that to be fair

and in general ppl in the west/north seem kinda complacently guilty...

i don't mind if haneke wants to make his films about colonialism, but the attempt to make [danny auteuil's character]'s guilt -- guilt for what he did as an infant -- stand for europe's guilt is bs through and through

yeah it's ridiculous. not worth dwelling on politics of his films, they're thoroughly trite.

finally saw this yesterday after meaning to for eight years. my first haneke!

it was compelling and tense at the time but the more i think about it the less impressive it gets imo. thematically, i mean - i don't know much about cinematography etc but the way it was crafted was awesome, that opening scene! and the whodunnit aspect makes it quite fun to analyse and mull over afterwards. BUT the lack of resolution, or the way it's entirely set up to be a whodunnit while also making it pretty obvious that answering that question isn't the point, makes it seem a bit empty. as has been pointed out the political allegory is laughable - in fact the moment when georges reveals what he did when he was 6 is so anticlimactic, and certainly not enough to bear the weight of the rest of the film (unless he's lying even then?). in the situation he describes, it's fairly obvious to me that georges' parents must take the bulk of the blame - for considering majid so disposable that they can offer to adopt him and then send him away on what amounts to little more than a whim.

tracer otm about how frustrating the exchanges between georges and majid are - when majid denies knowledge of the tapes why doesn't georges describe what's been happening instead of blustering ahead? sure, georges is a blustery character, but it doesn't ring true at all.

majid and his son are complete ciphers - i found myself asking why majid was so passive, why he even felt he needed to take his drastic action, why his son is so oblique - we're given no insight into their lives or characters. what did majid want out of life that georges' family denied him? did he want to be a tv intellectual? living in a run-down apartment isn't really an answer here but we know NOTHING else about him.

re: the last scene, i initially assumed targeting pierrot was another revenge strategy on the part of majid's son. i don't really buy that they were in it together for some reason. the most intuitive explanation, especially given the similarity between the static tapes and georges' dreams, is that they're products of georges' repressed guilt somehow made real. yes, i find this silly too.

pierrot accusing his mother of adultery was a plot point that rather dissipated into nothing.

i find myself wondering about the role of georges' mother - not only does majid somehow know she's been ill, but she's the ONLY character whose dialogue is direct, knowledgeable and able to cut through bullshit.

ultimately i guess i don't find "bourgeois liberals have white guilt" a particularly revelatory point?

Not seen this the whole way through for a while now, but I'm going to assume that THAT scene is still a massive shocker.

Lex, watch the Piano Teacher next, BEST FILM EVER.

oh yeah a laff riot

it's a shocker and we don't see it coming because THAT CHARACTER IS GIVEN NO DEPTH WHATSOEVER!

wow - I saw this only 2 years ago but already forgot what you guys are referring to by THAT scene

it's a shocker and we don't see it coming because THAT CHARACTER IS GIVEN NO DEPTH WHATSOEVER!

This ... is actually sort of OTM.

Well, obviously George's parents are mainly to blame, the whole point - as I see it - of the film is that the racist policies of that generation is what has created the differing paths in the life of Majid and George. George is only to blame because he allowed and exploited this, the hope is for the next generation to come together and stop it. Yeah, it's pretty 'white guilt', but I knew nothing of the 61 massacre, and as such I found the story sorta revelatory. But it's a bit overrated as a film (as is White Ribbon, btw), I much prefer something like Code Inconnu.

the coyness of haneke in leaving it so open here is that so much is open to interpretation.

for instance, i found majid's distress at georges' accusations palpable, and i thought it obvious that we were meant to glean that his living in the poor conditions he did were as a result of a childhood in which the unthinking duplicity of his now-accuser has played a large part.

i personally felt that his 'passive' reaction in taking out this protest in an act of such violence against himself, ensuring that georges witness it, was a much more powerful and profound statement in contect than an action taken against georges or his family.

again in context of this picture as i saw it unfolding, georges blustering ahead over mujid's denials is a signal (repeated many times throughout the film) of georges' own self-denial that he has a case to answer here, or that mujid can be granted any access even now to steer or influence events because of fear of the revenge that he may exact (from georges POV).

imo, this is the movie. it's about georges and his projections. mujid may be a cipher to us, he's little more than a cipher to georges, a nightmare projection of overwhelming past guilt long suppressed. all the other elements that you found unsatisfying were, in my interpretation, nothing more than grace notes at best, false trails at worst (up to and including the algeria/1961 allegories, which are surely too clumsy from a director as meticulous as haneke to be anything but).

there is no consistent nor unquestionable POV except for (or perhaps not even) the implacable cameras under whose eye the principals are placed throughout, and seeking a complete story that can be solved to satisfaction from any such POV will inevitably, i think, lead to your finding flaws in characterisation, plot, etc, which again is obv a matter of taste and what you brought from watching it yourself when Haneke leaves so much unresolved.

compelling and tense at the time but the more i think about it the less impressive it gets imo

welcome to his world.

the interactions between georges and majid made sense if you look at them from the perspective of "everything is georges' projections and represents what's happening inside his head" but they were frustrating and pretty unconvincing as actual dialogue happening in the actual real world

and if most of the rest of the film is meant to be a cipher in comparison to georges, from the tapes to majid...georges is not actually interesting enough a character to do that much heavy lifting

as i said i did find it an engrossing film - the acting was superb, i thought, especially juliette binoche, and the cinematography was brilliant in how it managed to hint things and lead you on - i just wish all that technique had been put to more substantial use

Amour is his best – one of the only times his masochism settles on an appropriate subject.

Amour is a steaming pile of vileness

yeah i don't disagree with any of that either lexon another day i could have disliked it thoroughly for pretty much those reasons too.

Amour is a steaming pile of vileness

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday,

an opinion you've never quite clarified or elaborated, knowing your taste

It's an exploitation film with varicose veins... plus a dumb pigeon dream, grrrrrr. Haneke hasn't been able to shake off the "Yes, dear spectator, I vill make you talk" vibe in years, and Cache was maybe the last time it was remotely entertaining.

he got lucky with the actors, specifically Tringtignant

Was just watching Straub/Huillet's Too Early, too Late. Mention it here as Haneke almost certainly steals a couple of scenes cold? 1) The shot from the car as Majid is taken away from his French adopters (been years so hazy on the plot detail) matches the first in this film: shot from the side of the car as it goes on the roundabout for 5+ mins. Then 2) the final shot in the school is basically the same idea as the shot taken outside what seems to be a public building in Cairo.

When I say steal it sounds graver than it is. Almost all of the static/slow cinema is drawn in some way from certain (mostly US) experimental films and the Straubs then travels via Akerman then to SE Asia in the 80s, but I love how both Hidden and Too Early, too Late shift from Paris to North Africa, to intermixing of histories of class and colonialism. Its there in spirit as well as in the way its shot, except Haneke also takes a bit of Peckinpah.

re: slow cinema...And much more of course.