Voyeurs, watchers, peeping toms, whatever the terms you want to attribute to yourself, we all partake in this activity in some fashion or another. I hope not the peeping tom one cause that is just weird and probably illegal. Anyways, when we watch films or television, we all engage in the act of voyeurism. While the term itself has more of a negative connotation, a sexual one if you will, we all watching movies to get a glimpse into something that we aren’t generally exposed to. It’s the dirty little secret that we all have, wanting to uncover something about someone through the act of looking into their lives. Films makes this a safe activity for us to engage in, but some films take the aspect of voyeurism and expand upon it. Instead of watching people’s lives through a particular looking glass, films like American Beauty and The Truman Show, are more of the safe versions of storytelling that utilize voyeurism to its advantage. We peer into one’s life, without ever really getting any secrets, just surface information. The personalized nature of the film means we care just a bit more and are wrapped up in the characters ongoing dilemmas.
There are films though that take the voyeur angle and weaves a story that eventually unravels before your eyes. Secrets, intimacy, and hidden pasts all come out just by the act of watching someone. Caché is a French film that hides in plain sight, watching, waiting and uncovering truths and secrets about a particular family that starts to tear apart the protagonists, all from an unflinching point of view.
From the outside, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), Anne (Juliette Binoche), and son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) are the typical middle-class European family, but when a series of mysterious videotapes accompanied by morbid drawings reveal that someone has been monitoring their house, Georges begins to suspect that his past has come back to haunt him. It was during France’s occupation of Algeria that Georges wronged a young Algerian boy named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), and as the enraged father and husband begins tracking down his former friend, the line between victim and predator becomes increasingly blurred. – Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Director Michael Haneke setup a paranoid feeling for the film Caché by never revealing the point of view in which the movie is shot from. So many times in this film, you aren’t certain from what perspective and what location you are watching the secrets and actions of the subjects in the film from. You are kept at a distance, the subjects framed just off center and in wide shots, all this adds to the heightened perception that you are being watched…always. Haneke is known for some strongly filmed mysteries and thrillers, which Caché builds up throughout the entirety of the film. It’s like ascending a wobbly, spiral staircase, not sure if the structure will hold to the destination, but when it does you are immediately pushed off the top. The movies builds to a tight tension and then breaks the tension at the end of the flick. I won’t spoil the ending or conclusion cause, well, there isn’t a clear one.
The film all centers around these mysterious video tapes and drawings that accompany them being sent to the family over the course of days. The videos are just singular in their point of view, but it slowly develops into something more than just watching the protagonist leave the house or go to their car. The more paranoid that Georges gets, the more the videos and messages start to reveal. It isn’t that the video is uncovering more of the truth, but the character is the one revealing all the dirty secrets he has. Through no fault of the videos, Georges is the one unraveling the story, not the videos. It’s just watches and never acts.
It’s unsettling to watch a film that puts you behind the viewfinder of the camera covering the family as they slowly break apart in front of your eyes. But just watching and not interacting, the story unfolds because of the protagonist and his hidden secrets. It’s funny the title of the film both in English and French meaning, try and hide the truth. Whether it’s the truth about what the family has done or even the truth about the ending. The film destroys the household, a place where people should be able to stay and hidden, even in plain sight, but just gives the slightest nudge to get the characters going. Often times we get uninterrupted shots of video just sitting there, watching and waiting for the target to come across the lens and then nothing. We would think that the videos or the person doing the taping would intervene more and act as the detective for the mystery, but it’s the subjects that give us the dirt. While the ending is ambiguous upon first viewing, the film just has so many layers of intrigue and mystery that it requires additional viewing and a closer look at what we are glimpsing at. A very well done thriller and mystery film that propels the story with the littlest of nudging.
*images via (1) and (2)
