Caché / Caché (Hidden) (2005) – 3/5

Haneke’s whodunnit

„Caché“ or „Hidden“ is a co-production between no less than four countries from 2005, so it is not that long anymore until this movie will have its 20th anniversary and this quartet of countries would be France, Germany, Austria and Italy, even if I must say that I did not really see the Italian impact and the German impact here. Cast is French and the writer and director is Austrian Michael Haneke. He turned 80 last year and his most recent movie is from 2017, so I am not sure if he is ever going to make another movie (the name of his final film sounds almost like closure), but regardless of that there is no denying how impressive Haneke’s body of work is. It took the Academy Awards a little longer to understand, so this film here did not score any attention with them, but I am sure Haneke won’t mind with all the other awards it won and also the ones it was nominated or. The biggest occasions where it turned out successful were the Cannes Film Festival with its prestigious Palme d’Or and the European Film Awards. It won big with both. Despite the film’s age, this is one of Haneke’s more recent releases. Like with most other stuff he made in the new millennium, he had a pretty impressive cast at his disposal. This includes Daniel Auteuil and Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, who have been among France’s most successful actors for decades now. Not the only time she worked with Haneke. Nathalie Richard also felt familiar to me and Annie Girardot it is also not the first time I have come across her I think, but French film buffs can surely give better insight there.

That is why I will just move on to the story and what stayed on my mind from the movie as a whole. The first scene is already fairly telling. Typical Haneke and how he enjoys toying with his audience. There is a static camera shot outside the protagonists‘ home and we think we are watching them while the reality is that they are watching themselves as much as we are watching them. We see what they see. We do not know it right away though. It was a tape recording of something that took place before the film already. Not the first time Haneke is fascinated by including tapes as a crucial factor in his works. Just look at „Bennys Video“. Later on, there is another such inclusion when we see the male protagonist during his profession and there we also see some fast-forward motion instructed by his director. The entire film runs for almost two hours and I watched it on the occasion of a film series showing Haneke’s most known releases (and also some of his not so famous works) on the big screen. Quite a way to start the movie year. With Haneke, there is often the subject of danger, even violence, having an impact on a seemingly normal, maybe even happy family life. This danger is brought in intentionally by other humans, so not really through the form of an accident, but there is a certain malicious threat. Haneke surely knows how to make his audience feel uncomfortable. For me, what he did here was a success: Basically, every time the main characters ran into others, I was wondering if those might have something to do with the threats. One example would be the young man with his bike early on when violence almost ensues there. Or, another example, this even went down to the one male friend of the family who is married to another friend of the family, but seems to like Binoche’s character a tad too much as we see when he is alone with her and comforts her. Cannot really blame him. I always thought she was a beauty, already since her early works and Oscar-winning performance or even a while before that when she starred next to Daniel Day-Lewis.

But that film we talked about on another occasion and now let’s have a look at this one here instead I would say: I think the cast all did a fine job as it is always the case with Haneke films. He knows how to get the best out of his actors. The best acting moment for me perhaps was when we have Binoche struggle in one scene. And with that I don’t mean when she struggles with the idea that her son could have been abducted, but the moment when her husband tells her that he has an idea who might be the one that is behind all this. I think he got the idea from a video he was watching as they found a way to get closer to whoever is responsible. However, Haneke there also takes the right and realistic approach I think by not pursuing any unnecessary twists. I was still expecting the man from the male protagonist’s childhood to not have anything to do with all of this, but if we are rational and realistic, then the moment they watch Auteuil’s character recorded at said man’s home, we know he was at the right place, even if we could no longer be really sure if it is really this man behind all of this when his son comes into play, especially when we see the old man cry. Maybe he understood that his son was the one that his visitor was really looking for. The very final shot also supports this theory. We see the son visit the couple’s son at school. They trade smiles and there is and normal talk, but we do not know what exactly happened there. It was definitely nothing positive though. Maybe the man suggested to take the son home after school and real tragedy was about to ensue there. One thing we can be safe about is that the young man would not give it a rest at that point after what happened to his dad, even if the suicide was his father’s free decision. That was surely the most shocking moment of the film in terms of graphic violence. No crime is committed there, but how the blood keeps pouring out after one well-adjusted cut was highly shocking. It showed us also that the man was still struggling mentally and the idea of his son ruining his own life was maybe something that he could not go on with himself. Maybe he also hoped the police would arrest Auteuil’s character or at least make life a bit more difficult for him for a while. We can only speculate.

But there is no Haneke movie without violence and this also, as usual with him, includes animals. It is a recurring factor in his films that we see animals die and even see them suffer in the process and that usually these moments are not staged. I like Haneke as a filmmaker and enjoy watching his content, but this I am not too much in favor of. In other films of his, it is dogs and horses, but here it is poultry. Maybe good news that the couple at the center of the film did not have any cats or dogs. The chicken scene was shocking enough though with the head being cut off and the animal keeps living on for a little while afterwards. This is where Haneke also made use of a dream sequence or in a way it was a flashback scene to the male protagonist’s youth and what happened there may have been the reason behind all the threats. Maybe the older man told his son about what exactly happened there. When we see the man who now killed himself as a boy there and how he runs away from the people ready to take him with them, it must have been a traumatizing experience that he never managed to get rid of. If we look at what the male protagonist sent the couple, you could surely make a connection between the way the man dies and what is on the drawings. However, these drawings seem more like a reference back to the chicken moment I guess. There is also a slight possibility that the two men collaborated with this devilish plan, but I kinda doubt it. My guess is still that it was all the son. He won’t let go either in the end when he visits the boy and also it must have taken quite some spiteful dedication to always have a camera ready filming in the room because there could have been the possibility that Auteuil’s character would show up one day, but then again the older man there made sure that Auteuil’s character is in the perfect spot for the recording. He even said something like „after you“ as if he would allow the protagonist to enter the stage. So yeah, I don’t know.

Let’s just talk about a few other things before the review comes to an end. People say this is a film by Haneke that is more for the general public than most others he made, so this shows you his approach and that he is a bit of a distinguished taste. There are a few scenes in here for sure that stayed in the mind, also in terms of the mentality between the characters. One situation that brings conflict is when we have Binoche’s character tell her friends about the threat they are facing. This she decided on her own when they had guests one evening after another unpleasant situation when somebody rings the doorbell, but nobody is there when Auteuil’s character goes to check. Just another tape. As a consequence then, the latter decides he can just tell them about the tape as well and were they even watching it together? I am not entirely sure. But turned out that they took the path of not hiding that they are being threatened or harassed at least and stalked by somebody and they open up about it and generally people/psychologists say that is the right choice. Do not deal with it on your own. Things do get really serious when the son vanishes in the second half, but after some doubts and worrying and a night out to visit the „bad guy’s“ or „bad guys’“ place, we understand the son just had a sleepover at a friend’s house and he did not call to tell his family. So we can be relieved. Or can we? Haneke there plays again with us that for once the boy is safe, but the last scene he really makes sure to tell us the boy is not safe. Of course, the false alarm from before that will also not make things any easier with the police (that is other than that not a factor at all in this film) and the boy disappearing there without talking to his parents also makes sure we understand that he would not hesitate a second to spend time with the young man (who may pose a definite threat) without telling his parents again. Oh yeah, we also get Haneke’s constant static camera shots again. I like those. And I liked the movie. See it.