Caché

59 W 12th Street . November 23, 2007 . 10:18 am .

I think that the underlying message of Michael Haneke's Caché is that paranoia and guilt are the essence behind every surveillance camera: there is no worst prison than ourselves. One must only suggest the idea that someone 'out there' might be watching, to trigger an infinite number of human apprehensions.

The principal quandaries behind technology are still moral in nature. At the end of the day humans continue to be scared little creatures and their fear is the rye that feed the mills. (I indulged in a movie marathon last night and randomly saw the documentary Jesus Camp after Caché... talk about rye that feeds the mills.)

Caché is welded and tightly-packed. It delivers. Every scene is meticulously assembled and for very specific reasons. It's the kind of film that makes me think "yeah, I should do films like that." Its parallel stories and antagonist characters come into play only to strengthen and feed the main narrative. They speak only when necessary and almost never raise their voice. I've always been a fan of discrete editing as it allows movies to happen and Caché henceforth successfully unwinds on its own.

There's a scene in the film that I found particularly interesting. The main characters, Georges and Anne, are leaving the police station and Georges is almost run over by a man on a bicycle. This enrages him. The man is black and, somehow, almost had to be black. Their encounter is a treat that only feeds the layers of ideological tension already felt throughout. Most importantly though, it messes with Georges' accumulating guilt.

We never know who sent the videos. We never know who made the drawings and the calls. We never know if Majid was even aware of them or if Anne was having an affair with Pierre. We never know why their relationship worked in the first place but it did. We never know who was 'out there' watching and don't really need to: Georges was already scared.

Cameras don't destroy our lives, we destroy them ourselves.

Gobble, gobble.

T