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.

Haneke Ranked

At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him.

– Michael Haneke

Along with Schubert, Romy Schneider, Helmut Berger, Christoph Waltz, and vienna sausage — I refuse to include The Terminator — Michael Haneke is one of Austria's national treasures.

(Just some trivia: Haneke is somewhat related to Waltz.)

I often recognize a Michael Haneke movie every time I see one. Abrupt transitions. Random shots of mundane things. Static shots. Isabelle Huppert. Susanne Lothar. Juliette Binoche. The names "Anne" and "George" and their variation. Long shots. And no music, because according to him: "usually music is used to hide a film's problems."

Rebellion Against Routine

THE SEVENTH CONTINENT
Michael Haneke, 1989

Have you ever felt drowned in your routine? So drowned that you want to off yourself like a goldfish jumping out of an aquarium?

The Schobers are a well-off Austrian family who plans to migrate to Australia, the seventh continent. But why the f*ck would they leave behind a good life just to risk it all in a place they've never been to before? Michael Haneke aims to answer that question — and the ones in this essay's first paragraph — in his existential feature film debut, The Seventh Continent.

The Seventh Continent shows the life and routine of a middle-class family. The film is divided into three chapters: 1987, 1988, and 1989.

A Brutally Honest Love Story

AMOUR

Michael Haneke, 2012

In 2012, Austrian auteur Michael Haneke made one of the most emotionally intimate films of the 21st century: Amour. Remember that Adam Sandler song from The Wedding Singer? That somehow describes Amour.

Anne and Georges (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) are an octogenarian couple, blissfully married for a long time. Both are retired music teachers. Their forte: the piano. They live by themselves in a Paris apartment. Their only child (Isabelle Huppert) already has a family of her own, and is somewhat emotionally detached from her parents. (She cares more about trivial things like profiting from her parents' house.) One day, the couple suffers a major blow in their relationship when Anne suffers from dementia and then stroke.

Village of the Damned

THE WHITE RIBBON

Michael Haneke, 2009

Children scare me sometimes, especially über precocious ones. Scheming and seething adults in the form of cute and supposedly innocent children. You know, those kids who look at you as if they can read your very thoughts while mentally indicting you for having those thoughts — whatever they may be. The alien kids in Village of the Damned, the children of the corn, and the young ones in The White Ribbon. Yeah. You better not mess with them.

Cinematography: The White Ribbon

THE WHITE RIBBON (2009)

Director: Michael Haneke

Cinematographer: Christian Berger

Aside from its meticulously woven story and its meditative rural setting, the other thing that is worth checking out in The White Ribbon is its Bergmanesque cinematography.

Christian Berger is said to have drawn inspiration from the works of Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer.

"CABBAGE DAY!"

(If you like crappy American movies, you'll get that joke.)

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.