"Cache" and the nonexistent observer

A foreign film makes the typical American moviegoer uneasy. We generally keep our distance, unprepared for an alien way of seeing and understanding the world. If these films can even force their way into our national distribution circuit, they still largely go unnoticed, hidden in the intimidating shadow of the Hollywood blockbuster.

Not only does Austrian writer/director Michael Haneke's new film "Caché" contain subtitles, but its ambiguous ending, complete lack of a music score, and predilection for long takes also threaten to severely limit the film's domestic popularity. Despite these deviations from classical narrative traditions (or maybe because of them), this absorbing French drama nonetheless exerts a spellbinding power. "Caché"'s self-conscious play with the cinematic image forces viewers to appreciate every shot.

Haneke's script focuses on a married couple, Georges and Anne (played by French stars Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), and their attempts to identify the person leaving mysterious videotapes at their front door. Someone secretly plants cameras in front of the couple's home and in other places, recording Georges's and Anne's movements.

One tape in particular leads the husband on a solitary journey of self-examination, forcing him to confront the buried secrets of his dark childhood. The director paces his story, allowing time for Georges's past sins to bubble to the surface gradually, and to immerse his viewers in the film's mysteries. The alluring rhythm of "Caché," however, deceives our senses. Abrupt ends to lengthy scenes and horrifying images forever shatter our complacency.

This film ponders the dual nature of an image - how it simultaneously aids and distorts or limits a viewer's perception. Similarly, some have hailed film since its inception as a useful tool for recording reality objectively. Meanwhile, other critics object to cinema's limitations; its verisimilitude merely provides viewers with a picture or visual approximation of reality, a manufactured world, and not reality in its pure form.

"Caché" investigates these contradictory facets of its being. The first shot of the film, though simple in its composition, serves as a self-reflexive meditation on its own complex ontology. The unmoving camera, positioned in an alley, keeps its focus on the front of a house for several uneventful and undisturbed minutes.

The camera's neutral stance implies a successful capturing of objective reality; the world can unfold in its self-absorbed way without any interruptions to its natural patterns. But suddenly, the director ingeniously razes the illusion he has lured viewers into. This shot begins rewinding, and we realize the film's protagonists (only voices on the soundtrack) share our privileged point of view. Here, Haneke disconcertingly reminds us of an image's vulnerability to subjective exploitation.

The director's repeated use of long takes and resistance to editing more closely resemble the actual way human beings see the world. A static long shot or a graceful tracking shot gives viewers time to contemplate the people and objects in them.

Yet "Caché" continually recognizes its own cinematic fabrications. Georges works in, of all places, a television studio, as host of a popular literary talk show. A man familiar with images and their potential for both (mis)representation and (mis)interpretation, he edits his own pre-aired broadcasts, including some footage and deleting other sequences based on what he thinks will make the most interesting show. Images and their unmistakable destructive power follow Georges home and overwhelm him, consuming his life and damaging his psyche. Part of the complexity of many of "Caché"'s images derives from not knowing where to direct our attention. The cinematographer's use of a telephoto lens in that first shot compresses the space between the family's home and buildings behind it. It all looks like the same two-dimensional structure, with no way to tell where one building ends and another begins. Viewers glance about apprehensively, searching for the place in the frame where human activity shall burst from this lifeless architectural façade. The lack of a subjective observer creates our confusion in seeing. A long take by Haneke feels like he just switched on the camera and walked away. If granted the power to tear through the theater screen, we would probably find the camera unmanned, the director's chair empty. The two "cameramen" in "Caché" - Haneke and the unknown creator of the videotapes - blot out their own existence. What an unnerving and maddening feeling, both for us and the film's protagonists.

After all, things perceived require a perceiver. Images cannot exist without someone to document them. Or can they? What better way to ensure the validity and realism of the cinematic image, its purity and essence, than by eradicating all threats of human subjectivity (i.e. someone contaminating the image's integrity by manipulating the camera eye's focus)?

The director(s) of "Caché" attempt the impossible: to allow perceptions to breathe life and form into themselves, thereby undoing the very processes of causality, and for reality to exist independently of human interference. The observer vanishes, transferring his or her power to the image itself. Indeed, one cannot deny this film's ability to transfix and possess its audience. The most brutal moments of "Caché" will haunt you long after you leave the movie theater.