Caché Review

Beginning creative writers are told to “write what they know.” Stephen King adjusts this to say “write what you know is true.” In Cache, Michael Haneke has achieved a nearly impossible Socratic wonder: he has achieved both by creating a film and characters that seem to know nothing and lie about the rest.

As viewers, we like to feel that a film has answers to the questions that it asks. It reassures us. It makes things easier. It promises us that someone somewhere has answers. Hitchcock, the master of suspense, wanted his audience to leave the theater frightened but with closure. In Rear Window, the voyeuristic injured photographer is threatened, but he is threatened because he first suspects and then he knows who the killer is. The apprehension lasts only as long as something remains in doubt: whether a crime has been committed, whether Jeffries will be attacked, etc. As the film ends, we have secure answers and a happy ending. Even more recent suspenseful fare, like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club and The Usual Suspects, seduce viewers only as long as the finale appears unknown. Successive viewings lose their punch because we already know the answer.

But every once in a while, a film asks questions and doesn’t provide answers. At first glance, Cache is a fairly simple whodunnit. Georges Laurent, his wife, Anne, and his son, Pierrot, are an upper class Parisian family. They begin receiving cryptic surveillance videos and violent, threatening drawings. This basic set up is the inverse of Rear Window. We are not privy to the machinations of who sends the tapes or why. We are placed in the role of the Mr. Thorwald to ponder along with the Georges and his family why these events are happening and who is watching. But unlike Mr. Thorwald or even Jeffries, we initially do not feel threatened of being discovered for our crimes or of being harmed for our presumptuousness. We are safely behind the fourth wall that is never penetrated. Bob Dylan asked, “Who watches the watchmen?” and film as a medium provides one possible answer: us -- strangers whose curiosity provokes them to glance and poke and prod beyond our concern. But rarely is this exploited. Even in films about voyeurism like Rear Window or the recent update Disturbia or the comedic take The ’Burbs, we are simultaneously observing the action and the observers themselves. Even as the ending approaches and the murderers zero in on the watchers, our distance protects us from accusation or culpability.

Cache does not provide this same sense of security. Given the premise, you can picture the conclusion to a lesser film: A Mexican standoff where Georges corners the kidnapper who has taken Pierrot hostage on top of a skyscraper. Georges wrestles the gun away and saves his son as the villain falls stories below seconds before every cop within a 10 mile radius arrives just in time to do nothing. Cache ends braver, simpler, and more nuanced. The effect is unsettling.

The static camera is in long range and using a wide lenses. We are looking at the entrance to Pierrot’s school from the same distance as an earlier shot. This could easily be mistaken for an establishing shot or what Ozu called a pillow shot. But the camera lingers too long. There is a crowd of students and parents are picking them up. This continues until Majid’s son appears but the camera stays wide and lets your gaze focus wherever you choose. He finds Pierrot and they have a conversation but we can’t make it out. Their posture is intriguing. Are they friends? Majid’s son does not appear to be threatening him but we can’t be sure. What does this mean? The conversation ends and the credits roll as the nondescript scene continues. How does this answer anything?

Much in the spirit of Jacque Tati’s brilliantly difficult Playtime, Haneke lets the scene and frame unfold organically – as if spontaneously. People come and go but we are left to focus or not. The concluding scene has narrative relevancy but seems to suggest that the answer it provides is meaningless. It is a simple composition but it forces the viewer to make the decision, and in doing so, reduces the impact of the meeting but elevates the film’s theme.

Like the film itself, the characters are disinterested or uninterested in passing on the knowledge they possess. Anne and Pierre are uncomfortably comfortable with each other but she admits to no affair. Majid and his son must know of the tapes but both plead ignorance. Pierrot casually dismisses his afterschool activities and his disappearance. Georges’s mother refuses to remember almost adopting Majib and won’t satisfy Georges’s questioning.

In having the most knowledge but the least truth, Georges is the film’s sophist. He expends the most time and energy trying to control and manipulate what others know and what they see. He hides information or outright lies to his wife, his son, his mother, his friends, his boss, and his adopted brother. He believes that his attempts will shield the truth from others and keep it hidden, because as a literary critic, he sees the world through the lenses of art and interpretation. He surrounds himself at dinner and at work with hundreds and hundreds of books and stories. He is Joseph Campbell investigating the Hero’s Thousand Faces or James Frazer decrypting the Golden Bough. After all, it is no accident that after being confronted with the stark reality of Majid’s suicide Georges seeks the comfort and reassurance of cinema.

But even as an interpreter among other interpreters, he cannot insulate himself from uncertainty. As the head of a literary roundtable, he interprets stories for others, but he also manipulates the discussion before it is relayed to others through the editing room. He seeks comfort in arranging the information before it is passed along to others.

The film does not support Georges's story either, though. As viewers, we reject Georges's preferred role as storyteller because we see things that contradict his narrative. The narrative's integrity is compromised by the periodic insertion (interruption?) of unknown segments. We see sequences where Majid has a bloody mouth from tuberculosis and Majid does try to frighten Georges with the knife (or do we?). Are these scenes dreams? Memories? Nightmares? Confabulations? We don't know.

Cache rejects the simple questions and the easy answers. From the film's first frames that unfold and then literally rewind, the audience is never on solid ground, and like Rear Window's Jeffries, we wonder if we can trust our eyes or the answers our view provides. But unlike Jeffries, we reach no satisfactory conclusion about the tapes or who sent them. The narrative "ends" with an antinarrative denouement that necessitates more questions. But this is Haneke's point. By allowing viewers to decide for themselves, he has created an apt cinematic model for morality where we are agents of our own plight of ignorance or knowledge and where any notion of a larger truth is hidden.