Another interesting film by Haneke. Some points...
1. "Cache" revolves around Anne and George, a wealthy Parisian couple who receive several mysterious videotapes in the mail. These tapes contain ominous surveillance footage of the couple's house.
2. Anne is a publisher and George interviews academics for a television programme. Both disseminate information, him images, her print.
3. George's television sound-stage resembles his dining room, a large bank of novels/cassettes filling the wall behind each. Both locations are self-consciously "stages" being "filmed". Both always "under observation".
4. George and Anne, our bourgeois couple, are constantly framed by books, tapes and libraries. They are pinned down by symbols of cultural superiority. It is precisely their comfortable lifestyle, their cultural status, that is under attack by the videotapes.
5. The film makes several references to the 1961 police massacre of Algerian protesters, an event which has come to symbolise the growing unease between France and Arabic minorities.
6. We learn that George once knew an Algerian called Majid and conspired to have him evicted from his parent's house. Because George mistreated Majid, he suspects that Majid is vengeful and responsible for sending the tapes.
7. George's relationship with Majid eventually becomes a metaphor for France's violent relationship with Algeria (and the West's relationship with the Arab world). George at first denies mistreating Majid. He denies trying to "kick Majid out of his home" and refuses to talk about his act of betrayal. The tapes thus become a form of ontological evidence, less a record of violent history than a set of penetrative eyes, searing into George's guilty soul and shaming him into confronting his past.
8. Majid commits suicide in front of George, an act which he hopes will finally push George into accepting responsibility for ruining his life. George and Majid's narrative is thus symbolic of France's national violence toward Algerians and Arabs. The Other is firstly violently evicted, disregarded and later the cause of profound guilt.
9. After the suicide, George visits a theatre. This is another common Haneke theme: cinema as trauma avoidance.
10. Unlike George, Majid lives in a fairly dilapidated apartment. Haneke draws repeated juxtapositions between class and wealth. In France's passionate intellectual liberalism, the hugely disadvantaged Arab underclass still struggles to live their lives as free people in a so-called liberal country.
11. Majid's son asks George if he feels responsible for Majid's death. George once again washes his hands of all responsibility. George then goes to sleep and has a dream about Majid. The implication is that France continues to avoid confronting its dark past, even as it is haunted by its guilty nightmares.
12. The film ends with a shot of George's son and Majid's son talking outside a school. Some interpret this to mean that the younger generation has learnt to reconcile their differences and get along. More likely, the last shot foretells the Muslim riots that began in Paris' suburbs and soon spread out across France. The next generation does not "solve" anything when it learns from political history, rather, it has a tendency to become increasingly reactionary, bitter and violent. Yes, people who ignore the past regularly repeat history's mistakes, but equally so, people who are aware of history often violently attempt to force change.
13. Haneke leaves clues linking "Cache" to the tapes received by the couple within it. He stresses the artifice of both and implies that it is he, as director and "god", that is mailing the tapes to George as a means of "provoking" his film "Cache".
14. The film's final shot is itself a "surveilance tape of children". As the parents "taped the adults" so too does Haneke "tape" the children. This tape becomes "The White Ribbon", the kid's of tomorrow becoming just another violent link in history's unending chain.
15. Using brief television reports on the global war on terror, Haneke subtly juxtaposes the couple's paranoia with a more global paranoia.
16. Haneke frequently states that film "lies 24 frames per second", a line which Brian De Palma coined in the late 60s as a response to Goddard's "Film is truth 24 fps". Cinema sublimates desire, is cathartic and engenders voyeurism; Haneke's cinema undercuts this.
17. The film is shot to resemble the surveillance tapes which George and Anne receive. This style is similar to CCTV security camera footage; long takes, fixed shots, cold and dispassionate.
18. The film highlights the dangerous irresponsibility of suppression. Not only does it suggest that wilful amnesia is a fine escape for suppressing unpleasantness, but it manages to implicate "media" as both a tool for suppression and a tool for needling out and confronting truths.
8.5/10 – Many similar films were released between 2003 and 2005. "Munich", "Paradise Now", "A History of Violence", "Kingdom of Heaven", "Road To Guantanamo", "In This World", "Our Music", "Ararat", "Cache" etc etc, all deal with national/religious violence and colonialism.
"Munich" and "Heaven" go for dishonest equivalency, "Paradise", "World" and "Guantanamo" side us with the victims, Godard's "Our Music" declares current art impotent to tackle these issues, whilst "Violence", "Ararat" and "Cache" opt for a more cerebral approach. Of these films, Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" is possibly the most effective, if only because it so deftly packages its heady ideas within a deceptively trashy exterior. (Following this wave of films were a wave of "9/11 blame taking movies" - eg "Changing Lanes", "House of Sand and Fog", "The Visitor", "Babel", "Crossing Over", "Gran Torino", "Interpreter", "Little Children", "Monster's Ball", "The Terminal", "Towelhead" etc etc)
The downside of all these films, though, is that they all parrot what Kubrick did 25 years earlier, and with far more grandeur, in "The Shining". Haneke himself cites "The Shining's" elaborate labyrinth of history, genocide and denial as an influence and visually quotes (along with "Clockwork Orange") it several times in his earlier "Funny Games".
1. "Cache" revolves around Anne and George, a wealthy Parisian couple who receive several mysterious videotapes in the mail. These tapes contain ominous surveillance footage of the couple's house.
2. Anne is a publisher and George interviews academics for a television programme. Both disseminate information, him images, her print.
3. George's television sound-stage resembles his dining room, a large bank of novels/cassettes filling the wall behind each. Both locations are self-consciously "stages" being "filmed". Both always "under observation".
4. George and Anne, our bourgeois couple, are constantly framed by books, tapes and libraries. They are pinned down by symbols of cultural superiority. It is precisely their comfortable lifestyle, their cultural status, that is under attack by the videotapes.
5. The film makes several references to the 1961 police massacre of Algerian protesters, an event which has come to symbolise the growing unease between France and Arabic minorities.
6. We learn that George once knew an Algerian called Majid and conspired to have him evicted from his parent's house. Because George mistreated Majid, he suspects that Majid is vengeful and responsible for sending the tapes.
7. George's relationship with Majid eventually becomes a metaphor for France's violent relationship with Algeria (and the West's relationship with the Arab world). George at first denies mistreating Majid. He denies trying to "kick Majid out of his home" and refuses to talk about his act of betrayal. The tapes thus become a form of ontological evidence, less a record of violent history than a set of penetrative eyes, searing into George's guilty soul and shaming him into confronting his past.
8. Majid commits suicide in front of George, an act which he hopes will finally push George into accepting responsibility for ruining his life. George and Majid's narrative is thus symbolic of France's national violence toward Algerians and Arabs. The Other is firstly violently evicted, disregarded and later the cause of profound guilt.
9. After the suicide, George visits a theatre. This is another common Haneke theme: cinema as trauma avoidance.
10. Unlike George, Majid lives in a fairly dilapidated apartment. Haneke draws repeated juxtapositions between class and wealth. In France's passionate intellectual liberalism, the hugely disadvantaged Arab underclass still struggles to live their lives as free people in a so-called liberal country.
11. Majid's son asks George if he feels responsible for Majid's death. George once again washes his hands of all responsibility. George then goes to sleep and has a dream about Majid. The implication is that France continues to avoid confronting its dark past, even as it is haunted by its guilty nightmares.
12. The film ends with a shot of George's son and Majid's son talking outside a school. Some interpret this to mean that the younger generation has learnt to reconcile their differences and get along. More likely, the last shot foretells the Muslim riots that began in Paris' suburbs and soon spread out across France. The next generation does not "solve" anything when it learns from political history, rather, it has a tendency to become increasingly reactionary, bitter and violent. Yes, people who ignore the past regularly repeat history's mistakes, but equally so, people who are aware of history often violently attempt to force change.
13. Haneke leaves clues linking "Cache" to the tapes received by the couple within it. He stresses the artifice of both and implies that it is he, as director and "god", that is mailing the tapes to George as a means of "provoking" his film "Cache".
14. The film's final shot is itself a "surveilance tape of children". As the parents "taped the adults" so too does Haneke "tape" the children. This tape becomes "The White Ribbon", the kid's of tomorrow becoming just another violent link in history's unending chain.
15. Using brief television reports on the global war on terror, Haneke subtly juxtaposes the couple's paranoia with a more global paranoia.
16. Haneke frequently states that film "lies 24 frames per second", a line which Brian De Palma coined in the late 60s as a response to Goddard's "Film is truth 24 fps". Cinema sublimates desire, is cathartic and engenders voyeurism; Haneke's cinema undercuts this.
17. The film is shot to resemble the surveillance tapes which George and Anne receive. This style is similar to CCTV security camera footage; long takes, fixed shots, cold and dispassionate.
18. The film highlights the dangerous irresponsibility of suppression. Not only does it suggest that wilful amnesia is a fine escape for suppressing unpleasantness, but it manages to implicate "media" as both a tool for suppression and a tool for needling out and confronting truths.
8.5/10 – Many similar films were released between 2003 and 2005. "Munich", "Paradise Now", "A History of Violence", "Kingdom of Heaven", "Road To Guantanamo", "In This World", "Our Music", "Ararat", "Cache" etc etc, all deal with national/religious violence and colonialism.
"Munich" and "Heaven" go for dishonest equivalency, "Paradise", "World" and "Guantanamo" side us with the victims, Godard's "Our Music" declares current art impotent to tackle these issues, whilst "Violence", "Ararat" and "Cache" opt for a more cerebral approach. Of these films, Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" is possibly the most effective, if only because it so deftly packages its heady ideas within a deceptively trashy exterior. (Following this wave of films were a wave of "9/11 blame taking movies" - eg "Changing Lanes", "House of Sand and Fog", "The Visitor", "Babel", "Crossing Over", "Gran Torino", "Interpreter", "Little Children", "Monster's Ball", "The Terminal", "Towelhead" etc etc)
The downside of all these films, though, is that they all parrot what Kubrick did 25 years earlier, and with far more grandeur, in "The Shining". Haneke himself cites "The Shining's" elaborate labyrinth of history, genocide and denial as an influence and visually quotes (along with "Clockwork Orange") it several times in his earlier "Funny Games".