A question or two about Hidden (or Cache)

Yep, "an exhilarating ordeal" is exactly how I'd describe it, too!:

Hidden (Cache) (2006)
Reviewed by Matthew Leyland
Updated 23 January 2006



Don't bother getting comfortable when you sit down for Michael Haneke's Hidden (Cache). Soon as this quietly terrifying film starts, the unease starts to fester. The premise is fiendishly simple: Parisian couple Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) start receiving videotapes of their home from an anonymous stalker. But there are many layers to this mystery, some of them tied directly to France's colonial past. Part paranoid thriller, part political allegory, Hidden's a terrific return to form for Haneke.

His last film, Time Of The Wolf, was imposingly grim but didn't grip. This one never lets go. Who's sending the increasingly personal tapes (there are drawings, too), and why? Could it be an obsessive fan of the TV books show Georges hosts? Or is it, as Georges becomes convinced, something to do with his childhood ill-treatment of an Algerian boy?

"AN EXHILARATING ORDEAL"

Without bashing viewers over the head, Haneke raises questions of guilt, responsibility and complacency that have global implications. Yet he never gets distracted from the business of building suspense, keeping things so taut you worry the film'll snap in the projector, taking your nerves with it. Finessing the merciless technique of Funny Games and The Piano Teacher, Haneke subjects us to an exhilarating ordeal of long takes, no music, and in the second half (that's all the warning we'll give) one almighty moment of shock. But he doesn't play by traditional thriller rules, leaving audiences to work out whodunnit from a clue discreetly buried in the final shot. Even if you don't spot it, you'll come away satisfied. And possibly shaking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/01/17/hidden_2006_review.shtml

This refers to the bit that I missed. I should have read these reviews before going to see it! So frustrating.:

.... And the movie's last scene, an exterior before a crowded public building, does provide a resolution of sorts, even if Haneke denies it. (Watch closely what happens in the lower left of this tableau.) ......

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/mmx-060113-movies-review-cache,0,2296240.story

So, I'm going to have to sit through the whole film again for the last few seconds? No one else has seen it?

Over dinner a couple of days ago with my friend, A (who'd seen the film), we discussed the ending. She'd seen (what I'd missed) of the final scene. The rest of the dinner was spent in arguing different interpretations of what those final few seconds might have meant. We didn't agree about it after ages of talking!

... So I've come to the conclusion that it was one of those films that led you to find your own conclusions to the drama. (I've read through heaps of reviews that all come to different conclusions since seeing the film.) My understanding is that the final moments of the film were political in intent : that the sons of the two families were finding their own resolution, despite their fathers' very different & conflicting (political) histories. But my friend disagreed strongly & saw it quite differently. I guess it just shows you what a subjective experience film (& other media) can be?

ooh, I'm going to have to see this one, Olga!

Glad you mentioned it, I love a good mystery/thriller, and I hadn't heard of this one before.

Now I want to see that movie...


Reminds me, I never figured out the end of Bertolucci's Besieged. I need to see it again.. It wasn't as complicated a movie as Hidden though.

Yeah, cypher & osso, go see it! Then you, too, can be as confused as moi! :wink:

Osso, I haven't seen Besieged. Do you recommend it? The Conformist is one of my all time favourite films. Beautiful!