A Masterpiece
Added 1/22/2010
This film requires some patients on your part; not common quality among many people these days. This is not an easy watch, or really a flick that is comfortable to watch with an entire family of many ages. I'm 24 and found this film absolutely fascinating and intriguing and have enjoyed seeing it many more times again, and again. I played this for my mom - she hated it; the same with my brother, lol.
I suppose it's a "watch by-yourself"-type of film, I dunno.
An A+ drama.
Stop rating if you havn't seen the film.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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concise and unpredictable
Added 1/7/2010
Characteristic of what I think defines the well-crafted French film: concise, in that it leaves in just enough to keep in coherent, and unpredictable, in that it leaves out enough to keep even "clever" viewers guessing and on edge. A suspense-thriller without kicks and car chases. Daniel Auteuil is grand, as always, and the rest of the cast is excellent. The actors milk moments of patchy dialogue with convincing body language and subtle facial expression.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A voyeurs dream!
Added 12/7/2009
I think what is so startling about `Cache' is that, when all is said and done, we are left with a `is that what this was about?' kind of feel that makes the atrocities that play out all the more haunting. Auteur (yes, that is what he is) Michael Haneke is known for his obsession with violence. He has tampered with the natural human tendency to react to and with violence many times (maybe most notably with `Funny Games') and each examination brings us closer to the same conclusion; there is no conclusion. With `Cache', Haneke explores the unraveling of a man's life and how he choices to react to the situation he has put himself in.
The marvelous Daniel Auteuil plays Georges, a talk show star who finds himself (and his family) being tormented by a series of videotapes that are being left at his doorstep. The tapes are harmless, yet chilling. They are basically hours of footage, the first of Georges' house, the second of the home Georges grew up in, the third of a rainy drive to a crummy apartment. The tapes don't seem to say much, but to Georges they say a lot.
Like I mentioned, for me it was the realization that `that was all' that really made me shiver. This is a film that will shock you with his abruptness (just wait until the 89 minute mark) but will also shock you in its resolve. The point is not to show the atrocities that lead to the atrocities but to show that sometimes atrocities are a direct result of something much more minor in comparison.
Did Georges' actions really warrant his punishment?
Haneke is a brilliant director, and the way he drenches each scene in this feeling on claustrophobia is just masterful. There is this incessant need to dissect each sequence, from start to finish (I literally watched the opening and closing segments three times in order to take in everything), but the truth of the matter is that the film really is meant to be taken for face value (at least that's how I take it). The more you try and pick apart a hidden (the word `Cache' means just that; hidden) meaning and motive the more you diminish the real core of the film. The fact that the ending feels like a `letdown' for me is what makes this movie so clever.
Haneke baited us, and then pretty much told us that what we wanted just wasn't realistic.
The performances across the board help propel this film into the eerie depths of reality it needed to embrace, especially from Auteuil. Binoche is also outstanding in her conflicted paranoia and Maurice Benichou is unforgettable in his few short scenes.
UNFORGETTABLE!
This very same year we saw the release of `A History of Violence', a film that sported a huge following and showed director Cronenberg exploring the deep-rooted instinctual tendency of violence. For me, Haneke's interpretation of the same subject is vastly superior and all the more chilling. It is in this films soft and subtle crevices that one finds the most depth (watching a man get into bed has never been more chilling).
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Slow, slower, Cache!
Added 11/29/2009
I always loved the movies by Haneke, and hold him as the best European director right now. I just loved Funny games (both versions). But this one I was just a big disappointment. I can understand that the idea of the film IS that the plot is supposed to be hidden from the viewer, but in the end it's just becomes boring. Great actors help to make it watchable the first hour, but then you start looking for the fast forward button on the remote...
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Paris, 17 October 1961
Added 10/11/2009
Secrecy, amnesia, conscience? A thriller or an allegory? Or mainly an essay on film theory?
I was prepared not to like this film. I had hated director Haneke's previous Funny Games: not mindless violence, but intelligent, sadistic, senseless violence.
The reviews here on Hidden are mixed. Some of those who expected a thriller are disappointed or even bored.
The naked story (trying to make sense without spoiling it): a wealthy Paris family is being stalked. The stalker sends tapes, which at first show only that he has watched their house. Then he sends a tape of the husband's childhood place. Then a tape leading to a certain apartment in a recognizable street. The husband has a hunch from the start, but dissembles. His lies disturb the relation with his wife. The 12 y old son has his own puberty problems which add to the thriller layer of the story.
The husband visits the apartment and claims that nobody had been there. The next tape shows him in conversation inside the apartment.
The tape story drags on a bit. Our sympathies are entirely with the wife, who is almost unreasonably reasonable, under the circumstances.
Let me say, if this was a thriller and nothing else, it would come out here with about 3 ½ stars from me: interesting enough, but not overwhelming.
But of course, say some, this is an allegory about France's guilt from the Algerian independence war.
There was a massacre in Paris on October 17 in 1961, when police killed somewhere between 200 and 300 Algerians; this happened, if I am not mistaken, after a demonstration. Sounds like Iran? Exactly!
The husband is digging into his memory and he finds ugly things. His parents had been about to adopt an Algerian boy when he himself was 6. The adoption was cancelled under ugly circumstances. The husband prefers to keep the lid down. The truth comes out in his nightmares. The final scene is possible only under sleeping medication.
The allegory interpretation says that the husband symbolizes France. He tries to forget his personal October 17.
The cinematography is based on the integration of the tapes into the story, to the extent of confusing us, certainly on purpose. We don't always know right away if we are here or there.
I am sure that generations of film students will find material for their thesis in this film.
In the end I am so fascinated that I can't avoid giving 5 stars, against my initial instinct. (And I had the added problem that my DVD was French without subtitles, so I lost some of the verbal communication, eg during the dinner party conversations, when no context helps in figuring out the conversation. It turns out that to some extent the language problem forced me to focus harder on the visual communication. Maybe one ought to watch more movies without tone, at least for the second time. If they are worth it. And one should watch only movies that are worth watching twice. Or have I said that before?)
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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A Masterpiece
Added 1/22/2010
This film requires some patients on your part; not common quality among many people these days. This is not an easy watch, or really a flick that is comfortable to watch with an entire family of many ages. I'm 24 and found this film absolutely fascinating and intriguing and have enjoyed seeing it many more times again, and again. I played this for my mom - she hated it; the same with my brother, lol.
I suppose it's a "watch by-yourself"-type of film, I dunno.
An A+ drama.
Stop rating if you havn't seen the film.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
concise and unpredictable
Added 1/7/2010
Characteristic of what I think defines the well-crafted French film: concise, in that it leaves in just enough to keep in coherent, and unpredictable, in that it leaves out enough to keep even "clever" viewers guessing and on edge. A suspense-thriller without kicks and car chases. Daniel Auteuil is grand, as always, and the rest of the cast is excellent. The actors milk moments of patchy dialogue with convincing body language and subtle facial expression.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
A voyeurs dream!
Added 12/7/2009
I think what is so startling about `Cache' is that, when all is said and done, we are left with a `is that what this was about?' kind of feel that makes the atrocities that play out all the more haunting. Auteur (yes, that is what he is) Michael Haneke is known for his obsession with violence. He has tampered with the natural human tendency to react to and with violence many times (maybe most notably with `Funny Games') and each examination brings us closer to the same conclusion; there is no conclusion. With `Cache', Haneke explores the unraveling of a man's life and how he choices to react to the situation he has put himself in.
The marvelous Daniel Auteuil plays Georges, a talk show star who finds himself (and his family) being tormented by a series of videotapes that are being left at his doorstep. The tapes are harmless, yet chilling. They are basically hours of footage, the first of Georges' house, the second of the home Georges grew up in, the third of a rainy drive to a crummy apartment. The tapes don't seem to say much, but to Georges they say a lot.
Like I mentioned, for me it was the realization that `that was all' that really made me shiver. This is a film that will shock you with his abruptness (just wait until the 89 minute mark) but will also shock you in its resolve. The point is not to show the atrocities that lead to the atrocities but to show that sometimes atrocities are a direct result of something much more minor in comparison.
Did Georges' actions really warrant his punishment?
Haneke is a brilliant director, and the way he drenches each scene in this feeling on claustrophobia is just masterful. There is this incessant need to dissect each sequence, from start to finish (I literally watched the opening and closing segments three times in order to take in everything), but the truth of the matter is that the film really is meant to be taken for face value (at least that's how I take it). The more you try and pick apart a hidden (the word `Cache' means just that; hidden) meaning and motive the more you diminish the real core of the film. The fact that the ending feels like a `letdown' for me is what makes this movie so clever.
Haneke baited us, and then pretty much told us that what we wanted just wasn't realistic.
The performances across the board help propel this film into the eerie depths of reality it needed to embrace, especially from Auteuil. Binoche is also outstanding in her conflicted paranoia and Maurice Benichou is unforgettable in his few short scenes.
UNFORGETTABLE!
This very same year we saw the release of `A History of Violence', a film that sported a huge following and showed director Cronenberg exploring the deep-rooted instinctual tendency of violence. For me, Haneke's interpretation of the same subject is vastly superior and all the more chilling. It is in this films soft and subtle crevices that one finds the most depth (watching a man get into bed has never been more chilling).
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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