CACHÉ (2005)

A videotape arrives on a Parisian couple’s doorstep. It’s wrapped up in a crude drawing: a man clutches his throat, vomiting blood. The cassette reveals a static shot of their suburban home, playing for hours. On the tape, Anne (Juliet Binoche) is filmed leaving for work, while Georges (Daniel Auteuil) is captured leaving for the office forty minutes later, even walking past the man filming them. Yet, he saw nothing. Their stalker remained obscure from his mind, almost as though he were invisible.

Both Anne and Georges dismiss this as an unsettling, but ultimately stupid prank. However, then a second tape arrives on their doorstep. Then Anne receives a threatening telephone call from an anonymous man, demanding to speak with Georges over and over again, as though deranged. When Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), their 12-year-old son, receives a similarly baleful drawing at school, Anne and Georges are forced to reconsider: this isn’t random. Someone has targeted the Laurent household—but why? What is the basis of this obsession? And perhaps most importantly, what does each member of the Laurent family have to hide?

Michael Haneke’s Caché (also known as Hidden) explores all of our disturbing little secrets, winding a taut mystery around those shameful horrors we’ve perpetrated, things we’d rather die than acknowledge. However, what makes Haneke’s psychological thriller such an intriguing film is how the story excavates these themes of guilt, trauma, and memory at both an individual and societal level: what are the collective shames that we share as a nation? To what extent will we go to ensure such things remain buried? Throughout Caché, we watch as a man’s driven nearly insane by the fear of childhood iniquity being unearthed, the terror of everything he’s accrued being taken away. And with this horror, one is forced to answer the question: what wouldn’t we do not to lose what’s ours?

As Georges asks himself this question, a series of images involuntarily flood his mind. The dreamlike memory of a boy standing in the corner of a dark room, blood spewing from his mouth. The sharp blade of an axe, brought down on a rooster’s neck, gore bursting from the wound and splattering a young Algerian boy in the eye. These exceptionally evocative sequences serve to draw us in, ensuring us that there’s a mystery to be uncovered; for a seemingly normal family, it would appear that there’s something worthwhile to expose.

Georges soon connects the dots: the evidence leads to Majid, an orphan who lived with the Laurent family when Georges was six. Majid’s parents had previously worked on the Laurent estate, until they were both murdered on 17 October 1961, along with more than 200 other Algerian activists. During a demonstration against France’s continued involvement in the Algerian war, protesters were savagely beaten by police, and thrown in the Seine to drown. Historians estimate as many as 300 people were intentionally killed under orders from Parisian police chief Maurice Papon.

Though he repeatedly states it’s too long ago to remember what happened between him and Majid, it’s obvious Georges recalls more than he claims. His vehement denial is revealing: a great guilt dwells inside him. If he addresses it overtly, it would mean having to reckon with his complicity in one boy’s changed fate. It’s here that we can see how the personal experience reflects the collective: Georges’ regret over his treatment of Majid, the same regret he denies exists, mirrors a national guilt that was buried and denied acknowledgement for almost four decades. In 1998, the French government recognised the deaths of 40 people during the massacre, though this number is heavily disputed by historians.

Perhaps Georges refuses to accept blame because to do so would be to open himself up to retribution, a revenge long-sought and well-deserved. This also mirrors the societal paranoia present in many contemporary nations with a storied past of imperialism. The historical revisionism of colonial powers, with the UK, France, Japan, and Israel refusing to acknowledge the true extent of human rights abuses committed under their regimes, reveals a deep-seated aversion to truth. Much like how these nations demonstrate a distrust and hatred of the people they once subjugated, Georges is fearful of Majid, and so threatens to destroy him. Our unreliable protagonist’s attitude is reminiscent of Václav Havel’s pithy aphorism: “A person afraid to look at his own past must fear what is to come.”

Confessing to misconduct, be it incidental or systematic, would be to welcome reprisals for past sins. It would also mean having to stare one’s true identity straight in the face. At the dinner table, when Georges relates the fate of Majid’s parents to some guests, he intones gravely: “In October ‘61, the FLN called all Algerians to a demonstration in Paris. October 17th… Enough said.” It’s as though none of them want to state aloud: ‘Our country massacred peaceful demonstrators, who were protesting against French colonial rule.’ However, no matter how much one might want to turn away, these horrors demand recognition. It’s for this reason that a graffiti artist wrote on the Pont Saint-Michel bridge, where dozens of dead bodies were pulled from the Seine: “Here we drown Algerians.”

As evidenced by the ongoing genocide committed by the Israeli government in Palestine, there is a tendency for people to look the other way in the midst of atrocity. People don’t want to believe they can be a part of a group—a community, a nation, or a people—capable of such savagery. So, instead of acknowledging these crimes against humanity, they’re brushed underneath the carpet, intentionally forgotten, and ruthlessly denied. In much the same way, Georges does everything he can to avoid explicitly stating how he wronged Majid. He prevaricates, becomes terse and evasive, or hostile towards Anne for interrogating him. However, all his equivocating suggests the shame that he can’t say aloud: that he ruined a boy’s life out of petty jealousy.

Still, as much as the truth is buried, it’s only natural that those who have suffered demand to be heard; pretending that nothing ever happened is inconceivable. This may be why Majid is sending these tapes, and it’s for this same reason that he invites Georges to his flat for a climactic scene: “I wanted you to be present.” In other words: ‘Don’t just look away—look at this. Look at what you did. Acknowledge the anguish you’ve caused me.’

This may be the only method Majid has of getting Georges to understand the damage he caused him. After all, Majid has become nothing but a distant, foreign reminiscence for him now. When the memory resurfaces, Georges dismisses Majid as vindictive, of being wracked by ressentiment, and pathologically disturbed. That our affluent protagonist is so untouched by the wrong he committed to Majid is evidenced by the fact he struggles to identify Majid, even as he stands before him. The now middle-aged Algerian man is barely surprised: “You wouldn’t have recognised me, huh? Out in the street, you’d have walked right past me.”

While this line of dialogue perhaps alludes to Majid’s involvement in sending the tapes, hinting that Georges walked right past him in the first recording, it may also be emblematic of something larger: a nation’s lack of knowledge regarding their own colonial history. Even if it were presented right in front of them, they wouldn’t even recognise it. Or, perhaps it reflects his refusal to address the consequences of his actions, a steadfast unwillingness to confess. In other words, even when we have the object of our crimes placed before us, we will still find ways of ensuring nefarious deeds remain hidden.

In this respect, the title of the film also alludes to the unknowable self: how much about ourselves do we obscure from the rest of the world? More aptly, how much do we keep hidden even from ourselves? Jehanne-Marie Gavarini writes about how Georges hides behind the image of his “picture-perfect nuclear family,” who conveniently serves as a “screen for Georges’ secretive past and validate him as a coherent subject.” He keeps his identity concealed from those closest to him: his mother, his wife, his son. There are facets to his personal life that he’ll deny even to himself.

However, the power of video is undeniable, and its potency is on full display in Caché. While Majid’s version of events could be easily dismissed if it were communicated only verbally, there is something irrefutable about visual media; though both Georges and Anne try to ignore the tapes, they are each transfixed. The video itself serves as a violation: the stillness of their everyday existence has been ruptured. A cassette, the physical manifestation of the past’s intrusion upon the present, shatters the harmony of their upper-middle-class lives. Or at least, the illusion of this tranquillity has been irrevocably marred.

Perhaps it’s because of how there’s something alien about being watched, having every move scrutinised for some unknown purpose. However, the key difference between the surveillance present here and in a film like The Conversation (1974) or The Lives of Others (2006) is that the powerful are being stalked and surveyed by the powerless, and so the act of watching itself takes an ideological slant. At times, we can’t be sure if we’re watching Georges and Anne, or if we’re watching someone watch Georges and Anne, and so we instinctively take on the perspective of someone ostracised, living impoverished on the fringes of a wealthy society. 

All of these ideas, though unspoken, lie hidden within the film’s plot structure, and it makes for an uncommonly unnerving film. Information is bled out over the serpentine narrative. We’re never truly certain of what’s happening, or who’s involved. This creates a uniquely mysterious film: even as we’re led towards a neat conclusion, do we settle for a logical explanation? Or are more cosmic forces at play, as though the universe was righting itself? Though it’s seemingly the only rational explanation, I believe Majid and his son when they claim they had nothing to do with the videotapes.

And so, what explanation is left to us? Perhaps it really is karma, some ineffable presence that’s causing Georges to take stock of his life. The ambiguity that’s created throughout our story is augmented by the Proustian imagery that leaps into the frame, as though jumping from right out of Georges’ subconscious. The imagery in Caché is often dreamlike, emerging from the depths of one’s memory to create a disconcerting threshold between reality and imagination, truth and fiction. It never threatens to disturb Haneke’s realism, but this preoccupation with the unknowable does suggest there are potentially other, more ethereal forces at work.

Yet it’s only to be expected that a director such as Haneke could gently lead us to reject the rational in favour of more abstract explanations; his directorial style is habitually disquieting, and his films like Caché or The White Ribbon (2009) often lead to more questions than answers. The Austrian auteur keeps explanations concealed, and maintains a slow, unnerving pace that feels methodically discomfiting. It’s the silent, almost aggressive stillness of his works that makes Haneke so immediately identifiable.

Perhaps it’s because there are so few directors who understand how to use stillness so effectively; much like Ozu, Haneke is capable of imbuing these pauses with great poignancy. As he demonstrated with the deliberately tragic pace of Amour (2012), as though mirroring the ceaseless, unrelenting march of mortality, moments of stasis are occasionally capable of conveying more thematically than words.

However, unlike the Japanese virtuoso, Haneke’s also capable of transforming stasis into something far more ominous. The insidiously unmoving camera in Funny Games (1997) discomforts the viewer to the point of nausea. Similarly, in Caché, the simplicity of his direction is superbly effective: the sublimely still cinematography can only serve to unsettle the audience. All it takes is a wide establishing shot of a suburban home, the knowledge that somebody outside is looking in, to create cause for alarm.

This sense of unease is only amplified by the two incredible central performances. In the leading role, Daniel Auteuil is subtly mesmerising. One can instantly tell that he’s lying (the nuances to his expressions and proprioception are wholly believable), yet we’re never certain why. Meanwhile, Juliet Binoche delivers a career highlight, conveying hysteria in the most understated of ways, while simultaneously making herself worthy of suspicion.

Yet while suspicion abounds (from multiple characters and in different directions), the secrets of each individual remain enigmatic. The potentially scandalous nature of Anne’s relationship with Pierre is kept obscure. The full extent of Georges’ childhood behaviour may well still be concealed. And the details of Pierrot’s conversation with Majid’s son, which could possibly hold the key to the whole mystery, is forever hidden. The truth slips through the cracks of the floor, and we won’t try to find it in fear of what it may unveil.

By the end of the film, it doesn’t truly feel as though the mystery has been unravelled. We’re left pondering the question: how much do each of us have hidden in our lives? How much of our past behaviour would we be ashamed, or even terrified, to admit? In Haneke’s definitive thriller, we see how the stories that haunt us most are the ones we never tell. The memories that wake us in the middle of the night are the ones we guard the most. And the relationships we’ve made, and have tried so desperately to forget, are the ones which we keep forever hidden.

FRANCE • AUSTRIA • GERMANY • ITALY | 2005 | 118 MINUTES | 1.78:1 | COLOUR | FRENCH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: Michael Haneke.
starring: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot, Bernard Le Coq, Daniel Duval, Nathalie Richard, Denis Podalydès.