Sins of Omission - Entry #81: La pianiste/The Piano Teacher (2001)

Running Time: 131 minutes
Directed By: Michael Haneke
Written By: Michael Haneke, based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek
Main Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoit Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel

A+ PERFORMANCE FROM HUPPERT

SINS OF OMISSION - Entry #58: Amour (2012)

Running Time: 127 minutes
Directed By: Michael Haneke
Written By: Michael Haneke
Main Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, Alexandre Tharaud, William Shimell
Click here to view the trailer

CREAM OF THE CROP

I've got three more entries to present to you and they're definitely the cream of this crop. This was my second viewing of Amour and it definitely stood out both times. I REALLY need to see the rest of Haneke's filmography, because I have a good feeling I'm not done including Haneke movies on my list. This joins Funny Games and Cache to make it three for the German born director.

RATING: 8.5/10

1009. Cache/Hidden (2005)

Running Time: 117 minutes
Directed By: Michael Haneke
Written By: Michael Haneke
Main Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Benichou, Walid Afkir, Lester Makedonsky
Click here to view the trailer

SHOW YOURSELF!

Watched this like a week and a half ago and am just now getting around to writing up the review. It's all good though, as I've seen Cache twice in the past twelve months - seeing it for the much anticipated first time last February and seeing it again last week, as part of the horror film list I've been working on. What's that you say? A horror film list? Yep. Check it out here.

The opening credits roll over top of a single shot of the home of the Laurent residence. We're not sure what to make of it yet - after all, it's simply the opening credits. However, the credits eventually stop rolling and voices emerge - the voices of Georges Laurent (Auteuil) and his wife, Anne (Binoche). They're watching a videotape - which contains the same shot that we're seeing; the exterior shot of the Laurent residence. We learn quick that someone has filmed the front of the Laurent house and left the videotape on the their front porch. Nothing fancy - just someone simply saying, "I'm watching you". It certainly startles the Laurent's - who keep their son Pierrot (Makedonsky) in the dark about the eerie video cassettes. A few days later - another videotape, more of the same. Then later, yet another videotape - this one being delivered wrapped in paper. On the paper? A drawing of a stick figure face, throwing up blood. This jogs Georges' memory and he begins to have nightmares about a young boy his family nearly adopted when he himself was just a boy - a boy named Majid. The story goes that Majid's parents, who worked for Georges' parents, were killed in the Paris Massacre of '61, which saw hundreds of Algerians lose their lives in the streets of France's capital city. Georges' parents, feeling sorry for the now orphaned boy and an obligation to their loyal, former workers, decide to adopt the boy. This, naturally, sends Georges into a fit of jealousy, who sabotages Majid's adoption. It dawns on Georges that the one sending the tapes is clearly Majid, who after all these years if finally ready to take revenge on Georges for depriving him of a proper upbringing. However, things get a little more complicated - primarily for us, the viewer - when Georges confronts a now adult Majid. Let's just say that a few watches couldn't hurt...

SPOILER ALERT!

When I watched Cache the first time (January 30, 2015, to be exact), I took to Letterboxd to let some thoughts pour out of me. just to get something down on paper so that when I mentally revisited Haneke's 2005 film, I'd have a point of reference. After re-reading it tonight, it's clearly the ramblings of a confused, angry movie goer. Angry because I've been blunt before about my hatred for unresolved films. Leaving the audience to fill in the blanks for you is, in my opinion, just another way of saying, "I couldn't come up with and/or come up with a way to film a proper ending - so we'll leave it open ended. I'll call myself artsy for doing so and you get to decide what happens to the characters, so I don't have to". Someone sitting around a campfire, telling tales, wouldn't all of a sudden stop when it got near the end and say, "okay, you figure out the rest". However, I'm kind of poised to just give Cache a pass. The damn film is so mysterious and so intriguing that just flat out telling us the answers at the end, would somehow be going against the whole aura of the film - the aura being one of deep, dark, secretive mystery. With a film like this, there are no clear cut answers and some of the creepiness of the movie lies in the fact that there may not be a clear suspect.

Let's say, hypothetically, that videotapes of the same sort as Cache, start showing up on your doorstep, tomorrow morning. 1) You'd be freaked out, I'm sure and 2) You'd start theorizing.about who was leaving them. Maybe it was no one important at all? Maybe it was just some random guy with too much time on his hands, who picked a random address out of a hat and said "BINGO, let's mess with someone's head". Sure, that solution really doesn't work here, because you have to factor in the drawings that accompanied some of the tapes. But maybe the drawings were random too and the only conclusions Georges could draw was that they had come from someone whom 1) he saw bleeding from the mouth once and whom 2) he saw decapitate a chicken once. Perhaps the perpetrator was someone hired by Georges' mother. Perhaps Mrs. Laurent got wind of the lies that her son told about little Majid and decided that, as she lay on what was probably her death bed, she'd get one over on her son for telling lies to her. Far fetched, sure - but for all we know, that's the answer.

If you read Roger Ebert's review of the film, he basically flat out says that the answer is that the sender of the tapes is Majid's son and Pierrot working together. Pierrot placing the camera at his home and Majid's son placing the camera at HIS home. But for me, that answer is just too easy and doesn't provide the sort of "knock your socks off" answer that I'd want out of this movie. After watching the movie last year, I theorized that maybe the perpetrator was Georges himself, suffering from split personality disorder and subconsciously forcing himself to deal with the guilt he's always felt over the whole Majid affair. Again, this is a very far fetched solution - but again, it's possible. Another solution I came up with last year was that maybe the perpetrator was Pierre - the best friend of the Laurent's, who clearly had a thing for Anne - a "thing" that Pierrot was clearly in the know about.

Thus ends the guessing game portion of the review...

Otherwise, I really loved this film. Damn, was that a nice house or what? From the wall of books, to the nifty little bread basket - the Laurent home has to be one of my favorite houses in all of cinema. Except, I could never live there because of the whole - someone filmed it and thus, made it creepy. Cast is great too, as Binoche always turns in at least a good performance and while I've never seen Auteuil before, I really dug him here. The character development is also something to behold, as we're not only dealing with the videotape storyline, we're also dealing with the rocky marriage of Georges and Anne, played to perfection by the two leads, all the whole in the midst of this big mystery. There's not just the one facet, but the one, two punch, as we're given something to sink our teeth into, while we're waiting for the next videotape to be delivered.

The poster compares the film to a Hitchcock movie, but I disagree and would have to put Cache into a class of it's own. Never was Hitchcock THIS secretive about his motives, never did he explore voyeurism to such a personal degree and never did he tackle a rocky relationship the way Haneke explores the trust issue between the Laurent couple. While I'm sure Haneke was inspired by Hitch, he certainly is adding his own flavor to the mix. In conclusion, this is one film where I agree with the device not to give us complete, clear cut answers. It just wouldn't be doing it's own plot justice if it spilled all the beans. I'm pretty sure it was Haneke's endgame to make a movie that people could turn over in their heads, try to figure out and beat their brains out over, all the while making something that didn't wholly not make sense. While we're never given the answer, we're given plenty of options on what the answer could be and one REALLY good idea of what the answer probably IS. Big thumbs up for Cache, one that I can see myself enjoying for years to come and cementing Haneke as a favorite director of mine.

RATING: 8.5/10  Some of you may remember that Cache managed to make it into my personal favorites list last June, thus immortalizing it on the walls of my own personal movie theater.

February 22, 2016  10:27pm

922. Funny Games (1997)

Running Time: 108 minutes
Directed By: Michael Haneke
Written By: Michael Haneke
Main Cast: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Muhe, Arno Frisch, Frank Giering, Stefan Clapczynski

FUNNY...OR RATHER...NOT SO FUNNY GAMES

So this evening I decided to take a break from the Woody Allen Week project and take another look at a movie I saw a few years ago, "Funny Games". For those interested, it is currently streaming on Netflix and is actually a really good film, which Haneke liked so much, he developed a shot for shot remake of in 2008.

The film opens on a very pleasant, happy looking family, consisting of father Georg (Muhe), mother Anna (Lothar) and son Georgie (Clapczynski), driving to their lake house to enjoy a vacation. As they drive along, Anna and Georg play a game, forcing each other to guess the classical music piece blaring from the radio. They eventually arrive at their lake house and as they begin to settle in they hear a knock at the door. At this point, Anna is alone in the house, while her husband and son prepare the boat down on the lake. The knock at the door belongs to Peter, a young man who claims to be a friend of the neighbors. Anna doesn't doubt this, because as they were driving up they did see two young men with the neighbors, whom they themselves did not recognize. She invites him in and he asks to borrow some eggs. Once the eggs are given, they are broke and four more eggs are given, only to be broken as well. When Peter's friend, Paul, joins him, the boys remain calm and very polite, but insist on more eggs. Georg eventually finds his way back to the house, only to find his wife distraught, wanting the young men to leave her home immediately. Georg can't make heads or tails of it, but sides with his wife in asking the gentlemen to leave. The men put up a bit of a fuss and in the process break Georg's leg with a golf club...and that's just the beginning of their 12 hour reign of terror over the family.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

Let's start with the good, shall we? First of all, I love the subtlety of this film. Nothing is ever over the top and all the emotions and pain that we're witnessing is very real and very heartbreaking. Haneke reminds us that crooks and criminals aren't always stupid and shows us the horror that these two young men, possessing mass amounts of cunningness, can inflict. Haneke also reminds us, in the midst of our horror, that we love watching it unfold, as Paul breaks the fourth wall, giving us eerie winks and talking directly to us. In fact, one of Paul's lines is something to the effect of "we wouldn't want to disappoint our audience", in reference to the criminals leaving and ending their hostage situation with the family. As far as the cast goes, everyone does a superb job. I was especially fond of Paul, who tended to remind me of Alex from "A Clockwork Orange", as he was dressed in white and definitely resembling a "droog". Anna and Georg were great too, spilling out their emotions at the appropriate times and going full throttle and making me wince at times at the sheer horror and pain in their voices.

Now, the bad...shall we? When discussing the bad parts of "Funny Games", there's really only one part to discuss and I'm sure if you've seen the film, you know where I'm headed. Near the end, Anna manages to grab a rifle and shoot Peter, causing Paul to scream "Where's the remote!" and rewind the film to the point just before Anna shoots Peter. Paul gets back to where he wants to be, stops Anna from grabbing the gun and finishes his job on the family.

Now I really have to question why Haneke did this, because for the life of me, I can't justify it whatsoever. I'm just not sure why, when you have such a fantastic movie going, when all of your players are nailing it and you're telling a hell of a story, why you'd want to stop the momentum of your own movie and do such a silly thing. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that just because I can't justify Haneke's decision, doesn't mean that there is no justification for it, but I just don't get it...I'm sure there's a reason, but I just don't get it and even if I did, doubt that I would agree with it. The move totally took me out of the movie, and while I still enjoyed myself, definitely lessened the enjoyment overall for me. Going back in time a bit, I'll point to one other spot where there may have been able to be improvement and that's the spot right after Georgie is killed, where for minutes there is nothing going on. Now I'm not calling this bad, because after all, their son was just murdered in front of them, so the reaction is justifiable. But it also took me out of the movie for a bit...not as much as the remote scene, but just a bit.

RATING: 7.5/10 Despite that one scene that I mentioned, this film really is great, with powerful performances and heartbreaking, raw emotion and a great plot. I definitely need to add some more Haneke films to my watch list, as this is the only one in the "1001" book.

MOVIES WATCHED: 207
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 794

February 8, 2011 10:36pm