| Written by John Shea,
on 03-11-2005 08:03
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
The movie starts with a fixed shot of a single house on a city street. The camera does not move at all and for quite awhile nothing seems to be happening. Eventually, the credits begin to type themselves out on top of the shot, building up like a paragraph, granting no special attention to any part of the credits. After the credits, the oddest thing happens. The film starts to fast-forward. Lines appear on the screen like you see when fast-forwarding a videotape. It becomes obvious that we are not watching a live shot but instead a videotape on someone's TV.
 You could call the movie a thriller and you could even call it a mystery but neither description does any justice to the movie. The videotape in question is of the home of George (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne Laurent (Juliette Binoche). They are wealthy intellectual types. He hosts a book discussion TV show and she is a book editor. The tape was left on their doorstep in a bag with no note. Clearly someone is watching them. Soon another tape arrives, this one wrapped in a piece of paper that shows a crayon drawing of a head with what appears to be blood around the mouth. The tapes keep arriving, rattling the nerves of the couple badly. They can't get help from the police and have no idea what this person wants. Georges eventually gets an idea of who might be behind it. He refuses to discuss it with Anne, instead heading off to a rundown apartment building. He knocks on an apartment door to find a middle aged Algerian man named Majid who responds simply, “Well look who it is.”
Most movies work hard to pull the viewer in and make them forget they are watching a movie. The very nature of this film forces the audience to take a far more discerning look at the way the movie has been shot than normal. Director Michael Haneke goes completely against the grain, making it impossible to forget that you are watching a movie. The repeated use of the fixed focus surveillance shots and the way they are dropped in so that we are never sure at the beginning of a scene if we are watching another video or a live shot eventually forces the viewer question the position and movement of every single shot. Which means that we are constantly questioning just who is the observer at any moment. Is it the director, telling the story? Or is it the mysterious spy, videotaping the Laurents? At one point, taping of Georges' show ends with the same camera that filmed the show following him as he gets up and wanders the studio. Why would a studio camera do that? Or are we to infer that the spy is right there in the studio? These kinds of questions crop up constantly, forcing the viewer out of being a passive viewer and into being an active voyeur. This movie takes the voyeurism of Hitchcock's Rear Window and brings it to a whole new level where the film itself becomes complicit in the act.
The shock that occurs when the viewer realizes they are watching the same videotaped scene that the Laurents are watching rather than a live moment in the film puts the rest of the film into odd perspective. We become active voyeurs to an extent beyond even Rear Window. The question of who is spying on Georges and why becomes obsessive. It is at once a distraction and a sharpener of focus. Even still, little details that mean a lot can be missed. The very end of the movie hides a bombshell clue in plain sight. I'm not even sure that there is a definitive answer to who the spy is. The movie is maddening in its refusal to draw everything together but it is also capable of sucking the viewer in with the complex mystery. I suspect watching it multiple times would greatly help to make more sense of things. The first time around we are far more concerned with just following along to put together small clues or make clear sense of each scene as there are regular deliberate misdirections. Added viewings would certainly help weed out the red herrings and get down to the most important clues. I still suspect an unquestionable answer is to be found. Some clues seem to contradict each other, leaving no viable suspects. But then again, maybe I just missed other clues hiding in plain sight.
The movie is riddled with social commentary, just begging the viewer to try more than one way of interpreting things. The story can be looked at as a condemnation of western societies' tendency to try to homogenize culture, rejecting and smothering that which doesn't fit. It is no accident that Majid is Algerian. The way Georges treats him, abusively with no consideration of personal accountability, is a perfect mirror to France's treatment of Algeria and a stubborn refusal to admit to wrongdoing. Georges is carrying a lot of guilt about his past and how it affected Majid. And yet he insists on his innocence, never allowing even a moment of reflection to consider this. When events become too much for him to handle, he hides away in dark rooms, avoiding the light, almost as if he is afraid of what the light might reveal.
The movie does include one of the biggest shock scenes in years. A moment so sudden and so out of the blue that the entire audience gasps loudly at once. The special effect that makes this scene is so seamless and convincing that the moment packs a startling visceral punch. Not since Sam Jackson was snapped up by a shark have I been that startled by a moment in a movie. This isn't a quick boo moment that can be found incessantly used in the horror genre. It is a vital piece of the story but an abrupt shift that cannot be prepared for.
Great patience is required for the movie. It is filled with these surveillance shots, each of which has only one moment of meaning. There are also flashbacks, which are cut into the sequences in way that often makes them seem to be part of the current flow of events. People with short attention spans or those who don't want to do a lot of thinking are going to absolutely hate this movie. It challenges the viewer by toying with expected conventions and then demanding the viewer stay alert or risk becoming hopelessly lost. It is a movie I liked a lot immediately after watching it but have discovered over time that it continues to weigh on my mind, making me consider every little element for hidden meanings or deeper understanding. It is a brilliant film that I look forward to returning to, in the hopes of sorting out its mysteries and seeing what else is hidden in it.
- John Shea
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