The Code of Silence

CODE INCONNU (CODE UNKNOWN)
Michael Haneke, 2000

Ah. The feeling of wanting to say something but can't say it. This dilemma is what Austrian auteur Michael Haneke explores in Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages (otherwise known as Code Unknown).

It all started with a piece of thrown garbage. From there we see a series of vignettes about various lives, people who are trapped in various worlds of silence.

Jean (played by Alexandre Hamidi), an angst-ridden farm lad, is sick and tired of his emotionally distant father (Sepp Bierbichler). He runs away to live with his brother, an out-of-the-country photojournalist (Thierry Neuvic). Instead, Jean finds his brother's girlfriend, Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche), who gives Jean the key to their apartment. Being the douchebag that he is, Jean throws a piece of garbage at Maria (Luminița Gheorghiu), a foreigner begging on the street because she just lost her job as a newspaper vendor. Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a Frenchman of African origin, sees Jean's rudeness and demands Jean to apologize to the old lady; when Jean refuses to do so, the two guys fight, causing the police and Anne to enter the scene.

Communication, or the lack thereof, takes the center stage in Code Unknown. In this film, Haneke shows us different kinds of muteness: physical, foreign, forced, and self-inflicted.

Hollywood's Gift of Remakes

Fueled by repetitive remakes, Hollywood now gives us The Gift. No, it's not that movie wherein Katie Holmes bares it all. This one is a blatant remake of Caché, Michael Haneke's 2005 film about a man's vengeful past.

Made ten years after Haneke's film, The Gift borrows quite a lot of plot elements from Caché: the videotapes are now a series of gifts, the Paris neighborhood turns into a Los Angeles suburb, Daniel Auteuil is now Jason Bateman (they kinda look alike though), Maurice Bénichou is now Joel Edgerton, and Juliette Binoche is now Rebecca Hall.

Who I Think Sent/Made the Videotapes in "Caché"

Although I've said before that Caché's main plot is NOT about who the perpetrator/s of the videotapes is/are, I still like to give my two cents on who might be responsible for the tapes.

(WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead.)

I think these people are the...

(Seriously, you shouldn't read ahead if you still haven't seen the film.)

...these people are the ones that could be responsible for...

(You're still reading. Watch the film first.)

A Hidden Place Called "Guilt"

CACHÉ
Michael Haneke, 2005

My films are intended as polemical statements against the American "barrel down" cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.
- Michael Haneke

The other night I was contemplating on what film I should rewatch: The Exorcist or Caché. Le exorcist ou Caché. The overrated one or the underseen one. I wasn't really in the mood for something Hollywood, so I decided to ditch The Exorcist for Caché.