FEBRUARY 8, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 1

Some of the best cultural commentary comes from those who work from the outside, looking in. Paul Verhoeven and Lars von Trier have made films about America in a way that gets at the heart of our cultural problems, in a sharper and more direct way than most who operate inside the US. This concept, though widely applied across various art media, is not unique to American cinema. Caché is a French film, made by an Austrian, dealing with France's painful relationship with Algeria. Michael Haneke’s quiet suspense movie about an upscale family tormented by video tapes of their home and secrets of their past, shows a certain command of history, memory, and responsibility.

The tapes surround Georges Laurent, the husband and father of the family. The opening shot is telling of the entire movie: a static shot of a street and townhouse, capturing daily life. Eventually Georges leaves his home to go to work. Georges is being watched, and this is unsettling in its own tense, quiet way. The tapes are delivered to his home, wrapped in child-like drawings of morbid scenes. In one, blood comes from a boy’s mouth. In another, a neck is severed with blood spraying out. Underneath these obviously creepy moments, there is a layer of darkness, of secrets and obscured information, underlying everything that provides the film’s true suspense.

This obscurity is the film’s hallmark. There is a level of mistrust that pervades Georges and his wife’s relationship that speaks to this larger Algerian issue that serves as a backdrop. One of the video tapes shows Georges’ childhood home, and it is here that he begins to suspect someone. He won’t say, he won’t admit to his wife who it might be, denying his past by failing to give voice to it. Yet Georges eventually must deal with it, and only then do we understand who he suspects and why he has insulated himself from responsibility and memory.

In the 1960s, as a child, Georges’ parents employed an Algerian couple with a boy his age, Majid. The couple disappeared after the violent 1961 Algerian demonstration in Paris and Majid was left with Georges’ family. Slowly, delicately, we see the painful relationship between the two boys. Georges tells his wife of how Majid used to bleed from his mouth and frighten him, and how he tricked Majid into killing their rooster. We get the feeling that had Majid been seen not as a French immigrant but as a French national, a farm equivalent to breaking a window would not have been the action that got him sent away. When Majid sends a tape revealing his rundown apartment, Georges goes to confront him. His confrontation is out of anger from the tapes, but Georges is also operating out of self-preservation. He wants to suppress his past, suppress and ignore the memory of how he treated the boy, and how he continues to treat Algerians. This sentiment is reinforced when he lies to his wife about meeting Majid, only to be undercut by another surveillance tape of the two men talking.

If we do not give light to something, it cannot be seen, and this mirrors the tumultuous link between France and its exploits in Algeria, as well as its immigrant Muslim population. It is there, always, under the surface, waiting to be brought up but always obscured, similar to America’s underlying racism that shadows each societal move. Georges and his intellectual conversations and dinner parties work to pull him, and his class, away from the world. The television in the background shows images of war and strife and hints of Algerian uprisings of the past, serving to remind Georges that this is not a problem that is going away. Yet it is not enough to simply display it and make it available. Acknowledging the pervasive and penetrating racism and religious bigotry that scalds both our cultures forces us to do something about it. And as Georges sits at his table, eating and not watching the blatant reminder, he embodies the ignorance of the xenophobic majority. It takes something personal, something horrifying to get him to seriously watch and absorb.

Caché primarily grips its audience with tension, leaving Georges’ final meeting with Majid, the sole instance of violent horror, all the more shocking. Georges is welcomed into the apartment. Majid steps back and slices his throat in front of him, spraying blood on the walls, mimicking one of those knowing drawings. It is unexpected and frightening, heightened by the low, static camera unfazed by the horror. Georges returns home, but the true ending comes in the film’s final shot that leaves it somewhat unresolved, allowing us to meditate. France’s troubles have no easy solution, demonstrated in the racially charged riots that rocked the suburbs of Paris as recently as summer of 2005. It is only natural to end in this way.

Michael Haneke’s other films have dealt with the struggle of the outsider, condemning or highlighting the indifference of the upper class. Perhaps there is something personal here, perhaps the Austrian is struggling in his own way to penetrate French culture, while still reacting to it. Haneke has hit a nerve, whether it is in the surveillance style of the entire movie, reminding us how unsettling it is to be watched, or the culture problems that pervade, Caché begs a visceral reaction in each of the directions it finds itself. And, in the end, this is another example of the best cultural commentary coming from someone who does not need to preserve his or her self-image, who can operate outside and see a country and all its people’s flaws in full.