Hidden (Cache)
(dir. Michael Haneke)
We’re all under constant surveillance, so why not add another level to the panopticon by watching Cache/Hidden..? In the grand tradition of Rear Window, The Conversation, Blow-Up, and Lost Highway, Michael Haneke’s latest film gleefully undermines the viewer’s understanding of what s/he is looking at (and why), and its opening shot is even bolder than the slow zoom that starts The Conversation. (I do love a director’s who’s not afraid just to leave the camera running.) About halfway through the film, I was still wondering ‘Where on earth is this going?’, and I’m happy to say that the final reel provides no answers. The glorious opening shot is, moreover, outdone by an even braver closing scene, in which a fleck of sense briefly emerges from meaningless bustle, only to disappear again. Is this a film about celebrity, surveillance, the war on terror, the turmoils of family life, France’s colonial past, memory, generational conflict, guilt, film itself, or all of the above? The answer is hidden.
PS: Don’t see the film at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre, though, or you’ll have to first sit through a four-minute short starring Rhys Ifans and a Mars Bar. (I’ve conveniently repressed the name of the piece, I’m afraid, but it might have been Siocled – Welsh for ‘chocolate’.) The only good thing to come out of this experience was the realization that I can now definitively answer the questions ‘What is the most annoying film ever made?’ and ‘What were the longest four minutes of your life?’
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20th Feb 2006 - Tumblr
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