Michael Haneke

[Kino]

Jul 4, 2009 23:45:27 GMT Michael said:

Are there any possible metaphorical or allegorical implications in Cache that flew over my head? I quite enjoyed it for the suspense, but left the film feeling a bit lost and confused.

Relations between France and Algeria. There was a specific incident that was one of, if not the, jumping off points for the film. Also, guilt.

[Michael]

I thought about the guilt thing, but it felt a bit pedestrian by Haneke's standards to simply use anonymous videotapes as a symbol for it, so wasn't sure. I still quite enjoyed the film. Thanks Kino.

[Michael]

I still need to see Code: Unknown!

[Kino]

I don't think he was using the videotape as a symbol for guilt. He has brought up in interviews re: why the element of videotape. Like here.

[Michael]

Ah, nice read, thank you.

I especially liked this part:

I'm always amazed when people talk about problems like this as if they were something new. I was amazed when everybody started saying that the world was different after September 11. People with views like this must be incredibly naive. To my eyes, the world looked remarkably similar before. It's the same with the riots. What this is really about is the primal legacy of colonialism and the nations involved labouring with the consequences. And there is no one solution to this.

But people's state of mind and state security measures have changed.

[/b]

And of course this is taking us in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of addressing the problem, we ask ourselves how best to stave it off, in order not to have to confront it. Which then increasingly leads to an attempt at a totalitarian state.[/quote]

[RNL]

Haha, that's the interview David Walsh quoted on the WSWS giving out about Hidden's failings.

www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/cach-a21.shtml

[theundergroundman]

1. Cache (2005) - 9/10
2. The Piano Teacher (2001) - [blue]7/10[/blue]
3. Funny Games (2007) - [blue]5/10[/blue]

[Capo]

Yay! At least somebody's posting!

[Kino]

SPIEGEL: It sounds as if you were at odds with your middle-class existence?

Haneke: No, I'm grateful to have had such a privileged upbringing. We constantly see people in the media who are from the Third World and are trying to get to where we live. And we try to keep them out. Because we're afraid to share and fear can quickly lead to aggression. One of the characters in "Caché" says: "Just think of all the things we do so that we don't lose anything." That's a very important sentence in our society.

SPIEGEL: Are you any better?

Haneke: No. I'm just as cowardly and self-absorbed as everyone else. If an immigrant stood at my door and said: You have so much room. Can I live here? Would I let him in? No. I'm not a saint. I cultivate a certain skepticism in my films: toward other people and myself.


Spiegel Interview with Director Michael Haneke

[RNL]

That liberal moralist misanthropy comes through in almost every interview.

It's funny how he thinks statements like those are somehow less instructive about the theoretical/ideological content of his films than, say, the kind of explicit statements about French colonialism or media violence that he sedulously avoids making would be.

[Omar]

The Times declared "Cache" the best film of the decade.

But who gives a fuck about lists, anyway? ;D