February 1, 2006
If you’ve never seen a Michael Haneke film, it’s probably best to start by telling you what not to expect. First of all don’t expect music, either background music or any proper songs. Don’t expect lots of lively camerawork and choppy editing. Don’t expect warm, sympathetic characters that are easy to identify with. And most of all, don’t expect an entirely comfortable experience.
Hidden is a very tense, semi-allegorical thriller. It concerns Georges (Daniel Auteil), a TV presenter who presents a chin-stroking literary discussion programme. His wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) works in publishing, and they live with their pre-teen son in an affluent arrondissement of Paris. Their comfortable existence is gradually taken apart when someone starts to leave videos cassettes on their doorsteps. These videos show long static shots of the outside of their house, seemingly from just over the road, but Anne and Georges can’t find any camera. Subsequent cassettes come wrapped in creepy child’s drawings, of faces with blood coming from the mouth. These seem to remind Georges of something that happened when he was child, something to do with Majid, an Algerian boy who lived with his family.
To appreciate Hidden, you need to bear in mind the fraught relationship between France and the Arabs of North Africa. Algeria was once a French colony, and from 1954 to 1962 Algerians fought a guerrilla war of independence against France. Particularly relevant to Hidden is an event in 1961, when a demonstration in Paris was violently broken up by French police. 200 Algerians were murdered, and their bodies dumped in the Seine.
Haneke uses Georges' predicament as a way of discussing France’s attitude to its current and historical treatment of Algerians, and more broadly, the west’s treatment of the whole Arab world. Georges' attitude is ‘I know I did something bad, but hey, it wasn’t that bad, was it?’ The audience is compelled to ask if Georges' ‘punishment’ fits his crime, and there is a creeping, dreadful sense that Georges, and by implication, the whole of the western world, is responsible for sins we couldn’t atone for even if we wished to.
Haneke conveys this sense of dread brilliantly. The long static shots, only some of which are taken by the mystery video camera, give you an unpleasantly long time to think, and the plot twists its way inexorably towards some horrible conclusions. It’s a film that lingers in the mind like an unpaid debt.
I have to admit, I have never found Daniel Auteil the most appealing leading man, but Juliette Binoche is superb, suggesting internal disintegration behind a cool, almost heartless exterior. I also liked Maurice Benichou, who plays the sad, defeated Majid.
Hidden is an important film, a kind of starting point for exploring the problems that lie at the heart of the world’s most pressing dilemmas.
Hidden is a very tense, semi-allegorical thriller. It concerns Georges (Daniel Auteil), a TV presenter who presents a chin-stroking literary discussion programme. His wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) works in publishing, and they live with their pre-teen son in an affluent arrondissement of Paris. Their comfortable existence is gradually taken apart when someone starts to leave videos cassettes on their doorsteps. These videos show long static shots of the outside of their house, seemingly from just over the road, but Anne and Georges can’t find any camera. Subsequent cassettes come wrapped in creepy child’s drawings, of faces with blood coming from the mouth. These seem to remind Georges of something that happened when he was child, something to do with Majid, an Algerian boy who lived with his family.
To appreciate Hidden, you need to bear in mind the fraught relationship between France and the Arabs of North Africa. Algeria was once a French colony, and from 1954 to 1962 Algerians fought a guerrilla war of independence against France. Particularly relevant to Hidden is an event in 1961, when a demonstration in Paris was violently broken up by French police. 200 Algerians were murdered, and their bodies dumped in the Seine.
Haneke uses Georges' predicament as a way of discussing France’s attitude to its current and historical treatment of Algerians, and more broadly, the west’s treatment of the whole Arab world. Georges' attitude is ‘I know I did something bad, but hey, it wasn’t that bad, was it?’ The audience is compelled to ask if Georges' ‘punishment’ fits his crime, and there is a creeping, dreadful sense that Georges, and by implication, the whole of the western world, is responsible for sins we couldn’t atone for even if we wished to.
Haneke conveys this sense of dread brilliantly. The long static shots, only some of which are taken by the mystery video camera, give you an unpleasantly long time to think, and the plot twists its way inexorably towards some horrible conclusions. It’s a film that lingers in the mind like an unpaid debt.
I have to admit, I have never found Daniel Auteil the most appealing leading man, but Juliette Binoche is superb, suggesting internal disintegration behind a cool, almost heartless exterior. I also liked Maurice Benichou, who plays the sad, defeated Majid.
Hidden is an important film, a kind of starting point for exploring the problems that lie at the heart of the world’s most pressing dilemmas.