In Caché, a sparkling masterpiece, from the noted Austrian auteur, Michael Haneke, we are presented with a suspense thriller which makes a radical departure from the movies of the genre.
Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a popular television show host lives with his wife Anne (Juliet Binoche) who works with a publisher and a school going teenager son, Pierrot. The apparently prosperous family lives in a quiet Paris neighbourhood. The seemingly peaceful flow of their lives is disturbed and the simmering tensions that flow beneath their settled lives are exposed with the arrival of a series of mysterious videos which indicate that they and their house are being watched. The fact that videos do not contain any threats or demands confounds them further. Some of the videos are also accompanied by crayon drawings with splashes of bright red emanating from a caricature figures. When Georges and Anne approach the police to help them solve this disturbing mystery, they find the police are not in a position to help in the absence of any threats or demands. Despite their helplessness and their growing unease at these videos, the couple continue with their lives in their professional and social spheres, attempting to brush these disquieting developments under the carpet of normal living.
The mystery deepens with the arrival of further videos - one showing the house where Georges was raised and another which leads to the door of an apartment in a poor neighbourhood. Georges tracks down the apartment complex and knocks on the door to come face to face with a middle aged Arab man, Majid, whom he had last met when he was six. Majid seems happy to see Georges after several years. However,when he is confronted by Georges about the videos and drawings, Majid, positively denies sending any such videos. A befuddled and unconvinced Georges, leaves after threatening Majid of serious consequences, if he contacts him in future. However, a brooding Georges conceals the entire episode from Anne. Another video arrives - this time, showing the entire episode involving Georges and Majid at the apartment, including Georges' threats to Majid. The disquieting videos opens up the hitherto unacknowledged fissured in the seemingly stable relationship of Georges and Anne, especially, when Anne senses that Georges may have some clues about the videos which he declines from sharing with her. Gradually, their once, structured and serene life starts falling apart with Georges' growing guilt, Anne's swelling suspicion and Pierrot's sullen irreverence to them.
Was it Majid who actually sent the tapes ? If so, why ? Did anything happen between them when Georges was six and could such a thing be still alive in their minds causing Majid to seek revenge and Georges to feel guilty ? Or, if Majid was innocent, then who had sent those videos ? And, for what reason ? While Georges appears to have some secret(s), does Anne and Pierrot have their own secrets ? Is there a large subtext/context to the happenings confounding the Laurents family ?
These and several other questions rise like wild mushrooms in the minds of the viewer and multiply with the unfolding events. Haneke does not attempt to answer all the questions in the movie, though there are indications several of these are acknowledged. Consequently, the movie and its unanswered questions continue to gnaw in the mind space of the viewers long after they have finished watching Caché.
We are familiar with the genre of suspense thrillers which employ the technique of presenting the viewer with some red herrings strewn along the narrative and a pacy unfolding of the mystery which is embellished with crisp editing, racy score and action set pieces. Caché shuns all such formulaic ingredients to merely cast a keen, observant eye on the happenings and does not bother to find closure to all issues at hand.
This is a meticulously crafted movie, which despite being largely devoid of any background score, hooks the viewers from the very first frame, engages them in an emotionally immersive experience with the leads as they go through the ordeal and continues to hold an unyielding grip over them, till the very final frame. The performances of the entire cast and especially, Daniel Auteuil and Juliet Binoche are first rate and accentuate the movie, as in the scene where they have an argument, after the arrival of the video which shows Georges threatening Majid, which shows a growing discomfort between which is almost palpable.
Never have I seen an opening scene and a closing scene which are so pregnant with impact as in this movie. Both these scenes, spanning well over a minute and accompanied by the credits, have been captured with stationary cameras which appear to be precisely placed. There is no accompanying background score or editing to spice up the proceedings except the natural sounds. Yet, they have a beguiling beauty and they capture important subtexts that anchor the movie. Haneke's brilliance shines through in this final scene where he almost buries the answer to a key question almost in open sight and it is as if he challenges the viewer to uncover it.
Caché is a multi-layered movie and works on several planes. At the surface level which is most apparent, it is a suspense thriller, where we keep constantly guessing on the identity of the person sending the disturbing videos and diagrams as well as the motive(s) of such person. At another level, it also presents us with a set of characters, each of whom have secrets that continue to haunt them deep below their cultivated superficial stability. At yet another level, the events unfolding in the lives of the Laurent family and their reaction to it hold subtle pointers to an infamous episode in the French history called Paris massacre of 1961 (aka la nuit noire), when on October 17, 1961, hundreds of Algerian protesters, protesting France's colonial rule over Algeria, were thrashed and killed by the French Police. It throws the spotlight on the repression of the memories of the massacre from the collective conscious of the nation which is guilty of such an inhuman act. At a deeper level, the movie is also an allegorical reference to the cause-effect relation between historical oppression of imperialism and the eventual backlash of violence and terror that seeks to threaten the apparent prosperity and peaceful existence of the erstwhile imperialists. And, in the tradition of the best of movies, it shuns from preaching or taking sides and merely holds a mirror that makes the viewer to look deep within themselves and to draw their own conclusions.
Caché won 3 award at Cannes Film festival in 2005 where it premiered, including Best Director and Critics Award for the Best Film and went on to collect many more well deserved awards internationally. This is a rare movie that is minutely crafted to perfection to a level where it is almost transcendental such that it successfully works at both a micro level as well as the macro level - at the micro level, where it is a sparse, dark, taut and unnerving thriller and at the macro level, where it is an effective political allegory on insensitive acts of oppression, a concerted repression from the collective memory of the citizenry of a nation and its resultant backlash of impending violence and terror which could upend the carefully constructed cocoons that shelters the haves from the have-nots.
A MASTERPIECE ! A MUST WATCH !!
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