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Hidden (2005)

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From Time Out London

A smart marriage of the thriller genre with a compendium of strong ideas about guilt, racism, recent French history and cinema itself, Michael Haneke’s eighth feature is an unsettling, self-reflective masterpiece. It opens with a lingering, static shot of a bourgeois Parisian home. We watch as a woman leaves through the front door. Strangers stroll along the street. A car passes. Birdsong permeates the soundtrack. So far, so very normal; but what are we looking at – and why?

The question is rudely answered when rows of static appear and the image blurs and then begins to fast-forward. It’s an illusion: we are, in fact, watching a video that’s been sent anonymously to the owners of this house, Georges and Anne Laurent (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), a wealthy, middle-class couple who are ostensibly paragons of the Parisian intelligentsia. Georges is a French version of Melvyn Bragg and hosts a literary discussion show on TV; Anne works for a high-brow publisher. Once this visual trickery is revealed, we watch as the pair agonise over this sinister intrusion into their ordered lives. Who’s been filming their house? And why?

For the Laurents, it’s the start of a horrific upset that mirrors the disturbing breakdown of familial comfort that characterised Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’, ‘Time of the Wolf’ and ‘Benny’s Video’. Nor is it the first time that Haneke has confronted us with a discomfiting use of video within a film: the killers in ‘Funny Games’ alter their own narrative with a remote control while the murderous kid in ‘Benny’s Video’ is obsessed with the medium. This time, we’re immediately upset by and suspicious of Haneke’s opening video-volley. Can we trust him, we wonder, as the film continues? Are we always watching the main narrative, or further video recordings? Is there even a clear difference between the two? The introduction of these recordings – which crop up several times – makes this a multi-layered affair. Perception is all. Interpretations are plenty.

The tapes continue to arrive at the Laurents’ home, the shelves of which are full of books, videos and a large TV that sits, suggestively, centre-stage. Some tapes arrive with childish drawings that hint at violence. Haneke also introduces vague, intermittent flashbacks of a young child that are increasingly revealing. The tapes and the flashbacks, we are led to believe, are linked and Georges becomes convinced that the videos are connected to an Algerian, Majid. He locates and confronts Majid and his son (allowing, in one scene, for a particularly jolting and unexpected coup de cinéma ).

All the while, Haneke crafts the fabric and routine of Georges and Anne’s lives with cold precision, only to upset their habits violently at regular intervals: witness a sudden knock at the door during a civilised dinner with friends, or a whisper in the ear from Georges’ producer at the end of his chat show. The effect is to plant unease and suspicion at every turn. Auteuil and Binoche support this sense of implosion with superb performances.

But who is sending these tapes? What do they mean, for Georges and us? The entire film could be read as an expression of Georges’ guilt and hidden turmoil relating to his own past. The tapes are expressions of Georges’ psychological state as his darkest memories are finally unearthed in middle-age. If anyone can be accused of sending the tapes, it’s Georges, at least metaphorically. To interpret ‘Hidden’ any more literally is to miss the point. This is largely a character study – the study of a repressed man and the chaos caused when the valve is finally opened.

Yet, at the same time, Haneke presents this parable within the framework of a thriller. As such, he asks us to accept his film on both a literal and a metaphorical level. The logic of the genre – the desire to ask ‘who did it?’ – is a trap. It makes us complicit in Georges’ wild accusations that the Algerian might be responsible for this terror. We are forced to share his accusation, one that that hints strongly at France’s continuing, uneasy relationship with its immigrant population. It’s here that Haneke’s film leaves the personal behind and becomes a reflection on an entire society – a society famed from the outside for its commitment to progression and ideas. Georges and Anne are, on the face of it, enlightened, educated liberals. Yet Georges and Anne look elsewhere for a scapegoat for their own, very personal problems. Georges and Anne are us.

Author: DC

Time Out London Issue 1849: January 25-February 1 2006

User reviews of this film

usman khawaja said...

Posted on May 20 2008 20:08 dave calhoun has written a wothy review of a great masterpiece

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on May 20 2008 20:00 hanekes tribute to the hidden dead from 17-10-61;
Papon ,a nazi collaborator ordered the massacre of at least 200-1000 peaceful demonstrators during the algerian war,drowned or shot in the heart of paris.
this movie is a socio-political hidden innuendo in the form of a refined and re-invented revisitation of the event and its reverbrating consequences,its victims are actually the guilt-ridden french conscience that tolerated a state sponsored concentration camp and brutal police killings intentionally,the satire or observation works in the form of a modern couple who are receiving violent messages ,the reaction of the spouses to each other is natural as the wife rebels against the husband's guilt ridden belated confessions to the root cause of their persecution,
haneke is a master and he deploys images to explain and suggests rather then talk about both the horrific event which rendered an 8 year old boy an orphan and then the NORMAL jealousy of a 6 year old which led to ruining the life of the orphan in a state orphanage.
but the optimisim is about the next generation that the last shot so skilfully devises as two polar cultures come together in the compound of a school,and you understand the character of pierrot,laurents son and his possible liaision in the event itself of terrorising his own family.
This is simply genius-the orphan majid and his reactions are overwhelming ,while you cannot judge the laurent family or george -so who is to blame-PAPON,WHO WAS CONVICTED OF WAR CRIMES IN 1998,for deportation of jews and then the algerian massacre in the heart of paris over pontsaint-michel-this is a masterpiece,a modern classic attired as a slick thriller but it will haunt you as the imaginary nightmare that charles laurent undergoes as his guilty conscience perturbs him -death is no punishment but a liberation ,it is a tortured soul that suffers eternally and the hidden becomes an overt tribute to the politically and racially massacred victims of france from st.Bart's day massacre to the recent police conflicts with africans in parisian suburbs ,
mr .haneke's hidden is the most important socio-political thriller ever made as it talks of a mass national guilt in the context of individuals ,but hits it's nail right on the head just like haneke meant it to be -the movie is titled hidden but it's message is a noble ,humane ,liberating truth which makes a true parody of the trashy last few decades .
this is a modern day great classic which is possibly only comparable to pan's labyrinth in it's context of teror on children's minds but psycholigically it's far superior to that as it indulges in not judging the french or laurents but looking at the future in it's finale great moments .
en core .
usman khawaja

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Jan 09 2008 16:25 This was an outstanding example of the uses to which film can be put.This film-maker Haneke is on the outsider circuit of world cinema,especially the best of European cinema.He seems to cover subject matter usually only found in good literature(cf. Camus' The Outsider and The Fall).He can be compared with Bergman in the quality of his subject matter. There are also nods to the voyeurism of film as in Hitchcock(Rear Window?)I loved the slow-burn nature of this film.The way the screen is blank footage where nothing seems to happen. We see a house facade,a street in a comfortable bourgoise area.It has thriller elements,the mystery videos, the child drawings offered like specimens in the solution of an awful crime. This comes into the smug,French middle class existence.Haneke feels a forgotten long ago incident: the drowning in the Seine of 260 Algerians who were making a peaceful protest,this becomes the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl of the film. He localises it in the story of the adopted algerian orphan who Auteil shares his home with until he starts to tell lies to his mother to get rid of him. Hence the subject of a gulty conscience, the West's complicity in the suppression of colonial subjects.The acting of course is brilliant, the use of video-playback to try and retrace the source of the videos. The implication is that algerian orphan's life could have been different.There is a shocking scene which I wont reveal.The marvellously ambiguous ending left open, with the camera(this director's) left running where Auteil's son is led away by the immigrant's son, whether for benign or malevolent ends or because he is an accomplice.It's not a who-done-it.As Wittgenstein said:'The World is everything,that is the case'.

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