Cache’

The film Cache’ by Michael Haneke is not usually a film I would watch, let alone a film I’ve seen before. It has an abundance of different aspects from other films and watching it in a different language made it that much harder to understand. This movie was not my favorite at all, and I’m not really sure I even understood it at all. The film opens up with a long shot of Georges and Anne’s house being recorded with a stationary camera. I think showing that the camera is stationary is a big deal in this film… it shows that what we see and how we see it is controlled. I think Micahel Haneke is known for his style and point of view in this movie. He directs the movie to be controlled, to have a control of what the viewer sees and only what we’re supposed to see. I think there are plenty “hidden” in this film. The most “hidden” question is who was sending the tapes. By the end of this film, I’m still not sure who was recording and sending these tapes to the Laurent family. If it was Majid, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t have told Georges the truth if he was planning on committing suicide… but then who set up the camera recording Georges threatening Majid when he visited him the first time. I think this question is meant to be hidden and left for the viewer to decide. It could very well have been Majid’s son. For example, he got very defensive about his father when he was arguing with Georges in the bathroom towards the end of the film saying he took away a good education from his father. It sounds as if Majid’s son had envy towards Georges for his father. Something else that I think is hidden that I noticed at the end of the film during the credits, which I absolutely loved, was that both Majid’s son and Georges’ son, Pierrot, meeting outside of his school. What is the relationship here between the two? How did they meet? What are they possibly talking about? Has Majid’s son been updating Pierrot about everything that was going on? Another message that is “hidden” is Georges’ secrets and how they make him feel. The real focus shifts from an outside threat to one that is hidden with Georges’ character. In both the beginning scene and final scene, the camera was stationary… allowing the point of view of the audience to seem as if we were voyeurs. As if we were prying in on someone’s life and watching them until we’re satisfied. I feel as if that is how I felt this entire movie, I felt as if I was watching and watching until I was satisfied with the film… until something happened or we figured out who was sending the tapes, but it never quite happened.