Before venturing into cinema, Haneke studied philosophy and wrote & directed for German and Austrian TV. He made his feature film debut with The Seventh Continent (1989), and continued to make movies throughout the 90s, notably Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994), but it wasn't until the release of The Piano Teacher (2001), a film adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel, that Haneke gained international acclaim, including the Grand Prix at Cannes. On the back of this success, Haneke would see his critical stock surge with a series of award-winning movies, including Caché, The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012), and Caché for me remains his most innovative, daring and disturbing movie. Caché (meaning "hidden" in French) is a psychological thriller which has elements of horror and class conflict, mixing some of the best aspects of his earlier movies, like the unsettling mood of Time of the Wolf (2003) and the complexities of city life and class dynamics of Code Unknown (2000).
Caché's story revolves around Georges (Daniel Auteuil), a TV literary review host, and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche). Their tranquil upper middle-class life is disrupted when they begin receiving mysterious videotapes on their doorstep. The tapes are genuinely unsettling, containing long, static shots of the front of their house, tapping into fears of surveillance and the sense of being secretly observed. In this way, the movie is clearly indebted to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, but with an even more sinister feel. As the couple tries to unravel the mystery behind the tapes, Georges becomes increasingly paranoid, leading to tension in his relationships and causing him to dredge up buried secrets from his past. This includes a nightmarish scene from Georges' imagination of a chicken being slaughtered by the young farmhand, Majid, who then turns the bloody axe on him. The clues in the videotapes help Georges track down the adult Majid (Maurice Bénichou), who is living in a small apartment in a housing estate in Paris.
Part of Haneke's intent with the film is a meditation on colonialism and the theme of individual and collective responsibility. When the director learned of the French government's decades-long denial of the 1961 Seine River massacre, which lead to the death by drowning of 200 to 300 Algerians, he incorporated memories of the event into his film. Caché isn't just specifically about France and its postcolonial legacy, but is instead a wider reflection on guilt and a moral tale about the perils of not accepting responsibility for our actions. When Georges goes to visit his mother at their country estate, her reluctance to talk about Majid and how his family abandoned this young Algerian boy just after he was orphaned, works as a metaphor for how France also sought to sweep its secrets under the carpet. The film is a departure from conventional thriller tropes, employing a slow-burning narrative that explores themes of guilt, paranoia and the consequences of unresolved past actions. Caché also contains one of the most shocking scenes I've ever witnessed on screen, which left me reeling for days the first time I watched it.
Caché received widespread critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2005. Haneke's direction was particularly praised, especially the extended, unbroken shots that create a sense of unease and tension, and the way he deliberately withholds information, forcing viewers to actively engage with the film and draw their own conclusions. As with Code Unknown, we see modern politics – in this case, the Iraq war – intruding into the lives of middle-class people, and how the legacy of historical events such as the Algerian war continue to have consequences. Haneke also shows us how this pain passes down through the generations, with Majid's son more aggrieved about the injustice than his father, while the relationship between Georges and Anne and their son Pierrot is dysfunctional and marked by continual tension. In the mysterious school steps shot that runs over the end credits, we see Majid’s son speaking to Pierrot, leaving us to ponder if the videotapes were in fact a collaboration between the two of them to exact revenge on an arrogant and unrepentant Georges. Haneke leaves it all unresolved.
P.S. The film stars two actors (Daniel Duval and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) who would later appear in my favourite French TV show, Engrenages.
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