Hidden (Caché)
May. 11th, 2007 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandralI watched Michael Haneke's "Hidden" ("Cache") this week. It was a curious, very detached emotionally film. I liked the way it was made - almost all in the clinically white and black colours and without any background music. There was a small minus because the subtitles were also white and sometimes this made them hard to see.
Story in short: One day a middle aged, middle-class French couple George (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) Laurent receives an anonymous video tape which contains the footage of the surveillance of their life. Later they start receiving bizarre and scary-looking drawings of a child bleeding. As we follow the story that the anonymous tapes tell us we discover some things from Georges Laurent's past that he wants to stay hidden. Long time ago George's parents wanted to adopt an Algerian orphan called Majid but George didn't like the boy and by telling lies and fabricating stories he stopped his parents from adopting.
The tapes lead George to meet Madjit (who is living in the very poor conditions and whom George suspects to be the anonymous sender) for the first time in the many years and after some interaction between the two of them Madjit commits suicide in the front of George.
"Cache" was undeniably a film about racism. Not about the ignorant racism of someone with low intelligence and narrow vision, but about the racism of people who pride themselves to be highly-educated, smart and free from any prejudices. I would call this type unconscious racism. George will probably deny that he is racist but he so obviously is. Somewhere in the first 15 minutes of the film there is a revealing scene when George is having a fight with an African man on a bike. George doesn't make any racist remarks but the way this scene is made make you think that he doesn't like the African guy because he IS African.
I thought that the roots of George's racism lie in his childhood and the story with Madjit. Young George didn't like the fact that he probably would have to share his parents with this alien boy. He made this alien boy to disappear but because this left him with the huge feeling of guilt George and made him dislike "alien" people .
There are few questions of "What?" in this film for me. I really would like to discuss this with you if you seen the film..
First, I don't understand why Madjit killed himself. This can be understandable if Madjit was the tape sender and if the whole thing was his elaborate plan. Only I don't think Madjit was sending the tapes.. Why anyone would commit a suicide in the front of his arch-enemy?
Second, Who did send the tapes? There is a clue at the end of the film when during the titles rolling we see George's son and Madjit's son talking together. Did they conceive it together? This doesn't make sense to me because it seems that Madjit's son honestly loved his father.. I don't think it is Madjit himself neither, he just didin't seem to be that type of man. Madjit seems to be peace-loving and subdued. My theory (a wild one) is that George was sending the tapes himself, that he was driven by his bottled-up feeling of guilt and hate against Madjit.
Story in short: One day a middle aged, middle-class French couple George (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) Laurent receives an anonymous video tape which contains the footage of the surveillance of their life. Later they start receiving bizarre and scary-looking drawings of a child bleeding. As we follow the story that the anonymous tapes tell us we discover some things from Georges Laurent's past that he wants to stay hidden. Long time ago George's parents wanted to adopt an Algerian orphan called Majid but George didn't like the boy and by telling lies and fabricating stories he stopped his parents from adopting.
The tapes lead George to meet Madjit (who is living in the very poor conditions and whom George suspects to be the anonymous sender) for the first time in the many years and after some interaction between the two of them Madjit commits suicide in the front of George.
"Cache" was undeniably a film about racism. Not about the ignorant racism of someone with low intelligence and narrow vision, but about the racism of people who pride themselves to be highly-educated, smart and free from any prejudices. I would call this type unconscious racism. George will probably deny that he is racist but he so obviously is. Somewhere in the first 15 minutes of the film there is a revealing scene when George is having a fight with an African man on a bike. George doesn't make any racist remarks but the way this scene is made make you think that he doesn't like the African guy because he IS African.
I thought that the roots of George's racism lie in his childhood and the story with Madjit. Young George didn't like the fact that he probably would have to share his parents with this alien boy. He made this alien boy to disappear but because this left him with the huge feeling of guilt George and made him dislike "alien" people .
There are few questions of "What?" in this film for me. I really would like to discuss this with you if you seen the film..
First, I don't understand why Madjit killed himself. This can be understandable if Madjit was the tape sender and if the whole thing was his elaborate plan. Only I don't think Madjit was sending the tapes.. Why anyone would commit a suicide in the front of his arch-enemy?
Second, Who did send the tapes? There is a clue at the end of the film when during the titles rolling we see George's son and Madjit's son talking together. Did they conceive it together? This doesn't make sense to me because it seems that Madjit's son honestly loved his father.. I don't think it is Madjit himself neither, he just didin't seem to be that type of man. Madjit seems to be peace-loving and subdued. My theory (a wild one) is that George was sending the tapes himself, that he was driven by his bottled-up feeling of guilt and hate against Madjit.
