Cache/Hidden (spoilers)
- Thread starter Ned
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Well basically I thought it was probably the Algerian man's son sending the videos in collusion with the protagonist's son. What I still don't understand is:
How did he hide the camera on that street opposite the protagonist's house?
How did he leave the video in the doorway without the protagonist seeing when the protagonist went out during the dinner party? (Was this the son?)
How did he hide the camera on that street opposite the protagonist's house?
How did he leave the video in the doorway without the protagonist seeing when the protagonist went out during the dinner party? (Was this the son?)
rewch
Well-known member
well... i would have thought that the hidden camera could have been tiny... could have been in a flower pot or on top of a car... the video in the doorway was probably just leaning up against the door, so that he didn't see it when he went out & it fell into the doorway blocking the door when he opened it... not really sure that the sender of the films was important... wasn't the point of the film that noone tells the truth? majid's son claimed that he had been brought up properly by his father & wouldn't have done something like sending the videos... but everyone was lying throughout the film... & noone ever revealed anything... except perhaps majid... all of the conversations were really about nothing... all of the dialogue between georges & his wife was empty & impersonal... the same with georges and his mother...
the collusion between pierrot & majid's son (did we ever learn his name?) seems a bit far-fetched... but with loose ends & everyone lying i suppose all things are possible...but i really think that it was one of those films the french are very good at where an idea is taken to an extreme & the scenario is made to fit the idea, so ultimately the film maker within the film is not as important as the effect of his film...
but i agree... pretty baffling...
the collusion between pierrot & majid's son (did we ever learn his name?) seems a bit far-fetched... but with loose ends & everyone lying i suppose all things are possible...but i really think that it was one of those films the french are very good at where an idea is taken to an extreme & the scenario is made to fit the idea, so ultimately the film maker within the film is not as important as the effect of his film...
but i agree... pretty baffling...
i nearly fell out of my seat when majid did the eh...."i wanted you present" thing. jawdropping. the film as a whole really sucked me in, it'll be with me for a long time yet.
oh, i thought majid's son was trying to influence pierrot in some way - like georges did when he told majid to kill the rooster. that was what came into my head first when i saw the body language anyhow.
oh, i thought majid's son was trying to influence pierrot in some way - like georges did when he told majid to kill the rooster. that was what came into my head first when i saw the body language anyhow.
Majid and Pierrot talking to each other, right?...that's what we're supposed to "discover" in that final scene, isn't it?...many critics have said that they were let on to look for something in that scene, and didn't see it...but it was the two sons meeting, right?...not something else?...it was so right there, in your face!...how could anybody miss it?
it was a very creepy ending to a film which will spook me for some time...my first reaction upon seeing the two sons meeting was that Majid now had designs on Pierrot...(guess I had a Funny Games flashback)...of course, Pierrot did disappear for that one night, and was pretty flippant overall with his parents...so, him colluding with Majid makes a bunch of sense, too...
you could just feel the air letting out of the room at the end of film, in the theater I saw it in...I live in a supposedly "intelligent" place (Cambridge, Mass.), but it was so obvious that everybody wanted the thing sewn up for them!...no loose ends...
it was a very creepy ending to a film which will spook me for some time...my first reaction upon seeing the two sons meeting was that Majid now had designs on Pierrot...(guess I had a Funny Games flashback)...of course, Pierrot did disappear for that one night, and was pretty flippant overall with his parents...so, him colluding with Majid makes a bunch of sense, too...
you could just feel the air letting out of the room at the end of film, in the theater I saw it in...I live in a supposedly "intelligent" place (Cambridge, Mass.), but it was so obvious that everybody wanted the thing sewn up for them!...no loose ends...
milkandhoney
Well-known member
how did i miss majid's son and pierrot meeting? that changes everything
very good film
very good film
henrymiller
Well-known member
diagree that "it doesn't matter" who sent the tapes; there's nothing wrong with the audience wanting the mystery resolved! the final shot would still be v. ambiguous.
borderpolice
Well-known member
henry s said:
i though the ending has a pretty obvious interpretation, following standard psychoanalytic interpretations of repression and their distorted outlets. the film demonstrated this:
(1) first with georges and how he interpreted the harmless videos. all they show is the protagonist from the outside, thus reminding him of the fragility of his understanding of how his self-perfomance is perceived by others.
(2) when Pierrot disappears, he immediatly assumes it is to do with the videos, and the police concurs.
(3) then with his wife, how goes through the roof when her sun is a bit moody and only mentions pierre. what follows is a long exaggerated exclamation of denial
(4) when Georges visits majid, and later with the latter's son, they insist that there's nothing, that they have no revenge phantasies etc. Georges never believes this, but the film offers no resolution about the intentions of Majid and his son, hence george is left with his paranoid suspicions which we are supposed to understand as deformed expressions of his (partly repressed) guilt.
(5) finally Haneke plays the same game with the audience. he hints at a connection between Majid's son and Pierrot, leaving the viewer to assume the worst, and hence having to confront his/her own paranoias.
(6) the final szene has various alternative interpretations, that of a collusion between the two sons having been mentionend here already. Another one comes to mind when one consideres the colonialism-subtext that the film works with. It could be something like this: the children of the colonialisers/victims don't give a shit about their parents problems and live happily everafter. Alternativly: previous generations' problems get passed on to their children.
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borderpolice
Well-known member
henrymiller said:
the film would be banal hollywood fare if the mystery had been resolved.
or at best an ironic comment on mainstream scriptwriting techniques.
rewch
Well-known member
borderpolice said:
am inclined to agree about this point... several people i have spoken to have told me that it was obvious pierrot was in collusion with majid's son because georges had abused him...
with regard to the sending of the videos whatever majid & his son say IS ignored by georges (for whatever debatable reasons), but the audience too finds their protestations of innocence implausible... pierrot is too young to be the sender... no? & someone required access to majid/his son's appartment... presumably one of them... on the other hand in regard to point 5 majid's son's revenge is even more effective for his denial to georges that he sent the tapes...
my head hurts... but i think you've got most of it...
borderpolice
Well-known member
rewch said:
I didn't think that too plausible: pierrot is too dopey and useless, as one tends to be when coming to terms with puberty's energy rush; in addition there's the age difference. But it is certainly a possible option. my immediate reaction was: majid's son is gonna abuse the kid in some form now (having just seen Chan-wook Park's magnificent Vengance trilogy may have built up like expectations in me), but then i though: hey why should they give a shit about their dad's problems?
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rewch
Well-known member
there's definitely a tension between georges' guilt & paranoia (or not), majid's son's reasons for revenge (or not) & the final scene with its possibilities of corruption... or not...
saw the film about 2 weeks ago & am still thinking about it... i have to hand it to haneke, though my g-f thinks i've missed the point completely... but she is an afficionado of french cinema...
saw the film about 2 weeks ago & am still thinking about it... i have to hand it to haneke, though my g-f thinks i've missed the point completely... but she is an afficionado of french cinema...
vernoncrane
garrett dweller
i dunno... i loved "hidden", it seems to be the film that " a History of Violence" promised to be and wasn't quite.. and anyone who can help me clarify my thoughts on it would be welcome... my take on it was that Georges is effectively sending the videos to himself.... i say "effectively" in that the videos themselves are largely impossible....the confrontation between Majid and Georges could only have been filmed by Majid or Georges (how could his son have known where they would go or when he would arrive) and I think that within the context of the film we believe that Majid isn't responsible for the videos that are " terrorising" Georges and his family... ("terror", a laden word at this juncture is a word that gets used a lot, though as was pointed out earlier, all that's really happening, at least at first is that George and his wife are being forced to see themselves from "outside", to know that someone is watching them. being watched and surveyed is the province of the others, and George and his wife are semi-traumatised by this simple fact of surveillance)...
if you view the action of film from Majid's perspective, assuming he's not implicated in the videos, then Georges is an all powerful, malignant figure who, by his intimacy with authority, parents and the police (state) is capable of ruining his life as a child and who later turns up from nowhere, not seeking reconciliation but setting him up once again for serious trouble, accusing him of stalking his family and kidnapping his son, having him arrested.. this makes Majids suicide in front of Georges coherent, this is what Georges has driven him to... it's hard to understand why Majid would embark on the project of sending Georges videos knowing that it will cause him trouble... I also think that we believe Majid's son's denials, would he willingly set up a situation that resulted in his fathers suicide? and even if these were the unintended consequences of his actions, wouldn't he be extremely cautious about the possibility of Georges involving the police and later repentant and riddled with guilt for his role in the tragedy?...
i assume then that the videos can't literally exist and that they represent the process of Georges acknowledging the existence of past crimes, even if he isn’t yet seeking forgiveness for them.. he is absolutely the villain of the piece, a decent, cultivated bourgeois monster, lying to his wife, hounding a man to death and refusing to show any remorse to or interest in Majid's son....it's " Funny Games" turned inside-out
so i'm going for the psychoanalytic approach, that the videos are the "symptom" of the return of Georges repressed guilt... a tremendous displacement…the sequence where Georges finds the video in the doorway only on returning to the house, then hides it in his COAT POCKET before reluctantly showing it to his guests and a making the situation public....the impossible video of his interrogation of Majid which his wife gets first and which finally forces a full confession from him (don’t we assume that George’s would have hidden it had he got it first?)...the possible further, mysterious displacement of guilt from son to mother over her “friendship” (though why she would go to her lover to weep over her husbands hiding secrets from her if she really were having an affair makes such an affair highly improbable ) etc..
the problematic and unassailable point in the film is that the videos are both imaginary and real, others witness them, they cant be said to be purely in George’s head, but they are also impossible to have filmed and no-one is responsible for them, and its that tension, among many others in the film that for me make it so disruptive, engaging and powerful....
if you view the action of film from Majid's perspective, assuming he's not implicated in the videos, then Georges is an all powerful, malignant figure who, by his intimacy with authority, parents and the police (state) is capable of ruining his life as a child and who later turns up from nowhere, not seeking reconciliation but setting him up once again for serious trouble, accusing him of stalking his family and kidnapping his son, having him arrested.. this makes Majids suicide in front of Georges coherent, this is what Georges has driven him to... it's hard to understand why Majid would embark on the project of sending Georges videos knowing that it will cause him trouble... I also think that we believe Majid's son's denials, would he willingly set up a situation that resulted in his fathers suicide? and even if these were the unintended consequences of his actions, wouldn't he be extremely cautious about the possibility of Georges involving the police and later repentant and riddled with guilt for his role in the tragedy?...
i assume then that the videos can't literally exist and that they represent the process of Georges acknowledging the existence of past crimes, even if he isn’t yet seeking forgiveness for them.. he is absolutely the villain of the piece, a decent, cultivated bourgeois monster, lying to his wife, hounding a man to death and refusing to show any remorse to or interest in Majid's son....it's " Funny Games" turned inside-out
so i'm going for the psychoanalytic approach, that the videos are the "symptom" of the return of Georges repressed guilt... a tremendous displacement…the sequence where Georges finds the video in the doorway only on returning to the house, then hides it in his COAT POCKET before reluctantly showing it to his guests and a making the situation public....the impossible video of his interrogation of Majid which his wife gets first and which finally forces a full confession from him (don’t we assume that George’s would have hidden it had he got it first?)...the possible further, mysterious displacement of guilt from son to mother over her “friendship” (though why she would go to her lover to weep over her husbands hiding secrets from her if she really were having an affair makes such an affair highly improbable ) etc..
the problematic and unassailable point in the film is that the videos are both imaginary and real, others witness them, they cant be said to be purely in George’s head, but they are also impossible to have filmed and no-one is responsible for them, and its that tension, among many others in the film that for me make it so disruptive, engaging and powerful....
henrymiller
Well-known member
what makes you say that?
would an actual criminal case be banal if solved?
borderpolice
Well-known member
henrymiller said:
bo, but the aura of urgency, of importance in "actual criminal cases" derives from the assumption that it is real, unlike in films which are watched under the assumption of artificial creation for some explicit purpose, like the viewer's entertainment or enlightenment. the latter would be destroyed by predictable plots a la holly wood
rewch
Well-known member
apparently haneke wrote dialogue for the final scene between majid's son & pierrot & then effectively drowned it out with hubbub & traffic noise... he has said he will never reveal that dialogue & as the actors involved were unaware it was the final/pivotal scene they're unlikely to remember it...
apparently he also said he was annoyed that everyone has developed an obsession with the maker of the videos & that he regrets setting it within a thriller-type genre as both of these things are essentially irrelevant...
so we're all barking up the wrong tree & the film is about communication & real or imagined bobo guilt
apparently he also said he was annoyed that everyone has developed an obsession with the maker of the videos & that he regrets setting it within a thriller-type genre as both of these things are essentially irrelevant...
so we're all barking up the wrong tree & the film is about communication & real or imagined bobo guilt
henrymiller
Well-known member
i'll choose what's important in a film, if u don't mind herr haneke!
it wouldn't particularly change anything if we found out who sent the tapes. it wouldn't make georges' response any less equivocal, or undermine the film's theme. i don't really like the idea that the tapes are 'emanations' of guilt or whatever.
also the 'open ending' thing is a predictable euro art-house meme anyway!
it wouldn't particularly change anything if we found out who sent the tapes. it wouldn't make georges' response any less equivocal, or undermine the film's theme. i don't really like the idea that the tapes are 'emanations' of guilt or whatever.
also the 'open ending' thing is a predictable euro art-house meme anyway!
vernoncrane
garrett dweller
i guess there's always the possibilty tha the film is just finally incoherent.. that all its elements pull against each other.. this final scene that opens up another set of possibilities that have to be resolved by the viewer could be a bold exercise in taking the films "solution" out of the frame/hands of the director or it could just be that he gave up and thought a cryptic, portentious ending was better than a ponderously resolved one...though i'm with Mr Miller re directors telling us what the film's "about". i mean.. how does he know? plus it's naive of him to make the video element so key to the drama, tension and resolution of the story and then expect the viewer to ignore it. and im with Henny in the idea that these "open" endings are somehow intellectually more sophisticated than narrative closure...arguably David Lynch has been getting a free ride on that particular hobby horse for too long
anyone seen "Time of the Wolf"... i wasnt overly impressed by The Piano Teacher and thought Funny Games was brilliant if a bit flawed so i'm keen to see both Code Unknown and TTOTW just to get a better handle on Haneke...
anyone seen "Time of the Wolf"... i wasnt overly impressed by The Piano Teacher and thought Funny Games was brilliant if a bit flawed so i'm keen to see both Code Unknown and TTOTW just to get a better handle on Haneke...