Blog #8

Caché (2005)

Directed by Michael Haneke

The film, Caché, by Michael Haneke tells the story of a man and his family being stalked and haunted by a person from childhood. There a lot of aspects of this film that show us a new edge we have not seen throughout the course thus far. This is a psychological thriller film, which was both interesting and creepy. The cinematography evoked throughout the story helped with tone shifts of suspense, fear and anxiety. With the tone shifts in mind, the audience becomes more involved in the story. The audience views a lot of the film through a “voyeur lens”. The director uses point of view editing where the audience shares the same view as the character (or in this case, a camcorder) in the film. We watch the tapes of the family as though we are the camcorder recording them. I thought this was a very effective technique and made each scene way more intense.

In the first scene of the movie, we are looking at the family’s apartment. We see a rewind occur and the main characters appear through tapes. Georges, Anne, and their son Pierrot are the main focus of this storyline. Georges is being haunted by his past acquaintance, Mijid; a boy who was apart of his family space at one point, but then given up for adoption. We see these clues through Georges dreams of his childhood. Georges did not seem to like Mijid when they were young. In many of the flashbacks we see Mijid being violent and gruesome (chicken’s neck cut off/coughing up blood). Mijid appears to be resentful towards Georges and how his life turned out because he is still upset that the family gave him away.

This film, at times, felt very slow and not exciting. I was picturing there to be more action and thrill involved. But, I was intrigued by the ambiguity of the final couple of scenes. Although we said Mijid kill himself, his son was still trying to get answers from Georges. At some moments the audience questions why the son would even like to speak to Georges after his father just took his own life. In the very last scene before the credits roll, we see Mijid’s son find Pierrot at school and talk to him. We are not given any context other than the son’s body language; seemingly stressed out. This leaves the audience questioning: what’s next? I enjoyed this aspect and am excited to discuss further.