CACHE (Blu-ray)

Release Date: October 27th 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 minutes

Created by: Michael Haneke

Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Annie Girardot, Bernard le Coq, Walid Afkir, Lester Makedonsky, Daniel Duval, Nathalie

Hidden is a film by the highly acclaimed Austrian film director Michael Haneke starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliet Binoche. The story is centred on the Laurent family; Auteuil plays Georges, a television presenter who begins to receive mysterious packages in the post containing videotapes of him and his family secretly filmed, along with disturbing drawings and soon after, sinister telephone calls as well. The family is then plunged into turmoil as they try to figure out who is behind it all but it threatens to tear them apart even further as there are very dark secrets lying in Georges’ long forgotten past.

The film makes us think and ask about the way we view things. This happens in the very first scene of the movie and is continued throughout. It is so effective that I found myself always wondering if I was viewing the scene through my own eyes as a viewer or if I was viewing the scene as a pre-recorded videotape and always waiting for a sign to indicate which one it was.

Daniel Frampton, in his book Filmosophy talks about this opening scene:

“The opening image of Hidden seems objective – a view of a street – but then is revealed to be subjective (in being the viewpoint of an actual observer who has recorded the street on video). The filmgoer receives a very simple and direct shock to thought – the rewound video immediately alters our perception of the street. From being a relatively meaningless establishing image, of location and time, to being a scoped and intended image (the gaze of another). Hidden thus shocks us into realising that perhaps all images are thought, are intended and directed. Subsequently, the film takes on an added intention. The film that follows Anne and Georges from lounge to kitchen suddenly feels watchful and subjective.”
- Daniel Framptopn, Filmosophy, page 144

Hidden is a film that also asks us what we are willing to take responsibility for and how much responsibility. It works on 2 different levels in the story. First with the Parisians (like Georges’ parents), who felt somehow responsible for the deaths of the 200 Algerians in 1961 at the hands of 20,000 French police (in the film, Majid’s parents were among the 200 Algerians who were protesting), and on another level, with Georges refusing to accept responsibility for what happened to Majid. One way to avoid his moral responsibility is to resort to self deception. Like his television programme, Georges prefers to edit out what he does not like and only keep the things which he wants you to see and it explains one of his reasons for burying his lies so deeply that even he himself cannot access them.

It can also described as a Haneke’s own critique of the middle class and shows, not only his attitude towards them, but also how they go on to form a picture of society and attitudes today towards the misfortune and unhappiness of others. Viewed from a safe distance and told in casual stories unless it is your story that is threatened or in danger of being told.

With regards to the Parisians taking responsibility for the deaths of the Algerians, philosophers have argued that collective moral responsibility is not possible because not everyone makes the same decision. Should moral responsibility be collective in this case? Should it be collective with those who were killed in the Holocaust, as well as the Rwandan and Kurdish Genocides? Hidden is a film which makes us question all of these ideas rather than just reflect it because it leaves us to make your own mind up about it. It never tells us you which is the right way or what the answer is but gives you the situation and what is happening and leaves it all up to you.

Another suggestion that Daniel Frampton makes in Filmosophy is that no one in fact sent Georges the videotapes. While watching the movie, the ordinary viewer might be compelled to find out who is sending them, but the film never really arrives at such an answer. One might think that indeed it must have been Majid sending the tapes, and in the final scene in the movie there is a long pull back shot outside of Pierrot’s school. The school children are all coming out of the building and it is very difficult to spot, but in the midst of them you can see Pierrot on the steps talking to Majid’s son. It is so hard to spot them as they seem hidden. Although the dialogue is never heard, the viewer is painfully left to think about the conversation they might be having as there was never any indication during the movie that these two boys actually knew each other.

Could it be that these two boys were in cahoots and that it was them who sent the videotapes and drawings to Georges in an attempt to finally get him to recognise the effects his lies had on Majid’s life? In an interview for The Guardian, Haneke talked about when people continually ask “whodunit” and that they miss the point completely. The film is not about trying to figure out who did it, but rather about how one can deceive themselves and live with their actions, as in the case of Georges, and how that deceit finally brings itself to the surface. , but he also gives some insight into what might be going on in the final scene:

“Although this scene happens in silence, I did actually write dialogue for it. The actors are actually speaking it and it might stand as an explanation for some. In any case, that dialogue will never be written in the published screenplay for the film and I told the actors never to reveal it to anyone. They are bound to silence forever and I hope they will have forgotten it by now, because they didn’t know when they were shooting it what the significance of the scene might be.”

The idea that Daniel Frampton offers is that no one sent the tapes. The film sent them. It would seem like an absurd assumption to make, after all, what possible reasons could I have for coming to such a conclusion? Frampton suggests that it is the film itself that accuses George of his sins and forces him to take moral responsibility which he ultimately refuses:

“What Hidden’s filmthinking presents us with is unwavering attention, the attention of history, of time itself on the events of now. It is the film itself, as past rising up to the present, that accuses Georges – the image almost hums with intention.”
- Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy, page 144

It is not such a bizarre conclusion to arrive at if you take into consideration that this film is unlike most films; it delivers philosophical problems and asks how you would tackle them. The question over who sent the tapes becomes redundant when you uncover the real questions being asked in this film.

Ultimately, Hidden is a film that begs the question “What would you do if you were about to be revealed?” We would like to think we would always choose to do the right thing (as by Kant’s Categorical Imperative which dictates “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”), and I am sure that this is what Georges would have thought as well, but what we think we might do in such situations may not always be what we would actually do if those situations were to suddenly present themselves. Georges, through his selfish nature seeks to protect himself and the life has created for himself and his family but first and foremost he does not want his secret to come out and does everything to prevent Anne from finding out until she is sent a videotape of his visit to Majid. His boss is also sent a videotape of him threatening Majid, so despite his efforts, the truth, forced by his guilt is slowing revealing itself through the film. In the end, his secret is out and his actions become known to everyone, all that is left for him is facing up to those responsibilities which he so effectively ignored over the years.