"Caché:" A riddle, wrapped in a
mystery, inside an enigma

Great write-up Roger. I think you've gotten as close as humanly possible to an explanation through an analysis of the characters within the film (seen and unseen).

However, I always loved the theory of the videos being created by Haneke himself; a director intruding on the lives of the characters he's created.

Consider the role of the two young men in Funny People who invade the summer home of the family. They deliberately destroy their lives, regularly stating that they are not from the same universe of the family, but instead belong to the universe of the creator/director; their ability to change events/the past at their whim confirms this.

Can we call these two boys the manifestation of Haneke/the director in the universe of the film? Can we similarly suggest that the unseen videographer in Cache is also Haneke; a mad scientist who creates a little universe in a petri dish, and then starts shaking it to see how it all unfolds?

Dah! I hope you didn't spoil the White Ribbon for me. I loved Cache and it will be interesting to see where Scorsese takes it. I remember the person I saw it with believed that there were a lot of political undertones in the movie that U.S. Americans wouldn't get, without maps, such as...

Anyway, it has been a while but I remember thinking the son did it. I will certainly read this for the next viewing - available on Blu-Ray too - nice.

I haven't watched this one in a while but I remember thinking it had to be someone completely different. Maybe the person who left the videotape in Lost Highway. :)

I don't think that night shot of the street is a POV shot at all. It's a simple establishing shot that tells us it's nighttime, and that we are back at George and Anne's place. (If it were strict POV, like the next shot, there would be some subjective unsteadiness to it; but the camera is locked down.) In the previous scene, Georges picks up Pierrot from school and the boy gives him a drawing of a kid spitting blood. Cut from that image to this shot of the street outside the house (the view from Georges and Anne's bedroom -- a reverse angle from the "video" shot at the beginning of the film), with some breathing and rustling on the soundtrack, which could be coming from inside the room, or bleeding over from the next shot: the moving shot through the house to reveal the boy (young Majid) sitting in a window sill, spitting blood. Next shot: George and Pierrot leaving the house the next morning, walking down the same street shown in the night shot, and getting back into the car again -- reversing the movement of the previous two scenes. The car is parked near the place where he looked for the camera; the angle emphasizes the planter boxes. Georges, his back to us, notices something on his windshield -- which turns out just to be an advertising flyer. This street that runs straight up to his house is unsettling, like a corridor leading directly to/from his own hidden past.

At this point in the movie, we don't have a context for the young Majid shot yet, but Georges' memories are beginning to leak into the film. Later, we see more of Georges' memories (Majid with the ax and the chickens) without any establishing shot, just an abrupt cut from a party at Georges and Anne's. This time, we cut out of the memory/nightmare to a shot of Georges in bed, soaked with sweat. The context helps explain the previous shot of the boy spitting blood (but not completely, because we don't know the story yet).

Does any of this explain the videos? No. I think the videos are, in effect, the movie's MacGuffin -- the device that makes Georges feel his repressed memories have been exposed, that he is being "watched" by some kind of moral consciousness. (Perhaps they slipped over from David Lynch's "Lost Highway," which may be where Haneke got the idea.) What matters in the final shot is that we see some kind of association continuing into the next generation, between Georges' and Majid's sons. The movie is done with this particular story, but offshoots and reverberations continue...

Ebert: Jim, why do you need an establishing shot there? The next shot takes us away, and the shot after that is obviously the next day. All the "establishing shot" establishes is itself. Or maybe I'm missing something.

How exciting-a blogpost about a specific film hithertoo unheard and unseen ( by me )! One looks forward to "dining" delectably or a slow drink or three at O'Rourke's ( I hope I got the name of your once favourite bar ). In this bitingly cold weather I'm looking forward to this movie with my oldly favourite Old Monk rum with almost boiling hot water.

I'm "getting hold" of the movie and following your advice, postpone reading this till tomorrow, I hope.

A quote from Whitman, shared on New Year's Day by Dr. Daisaku Ikeda:

"Henceforth I ask not good fortune-I myself am good fortune."...from Song of the Open Road.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

It appears silly to say, but your biggest mistake is that you are confused film for reality. But it isn't quite as silly because for any film to work we have to be driven along by the apparent realism and coherence. The trick with great films, such as Mr. Haneke's Cache or Kurosawa's Rashomon is to both draw us in but to deny us any fruit for our efforts. We are at the mercy of whoever made the film.

But the mistake would be to say that a film such as Rashomon tells us anything about truth, our tenuous grasp on it etc. etc. There is no truth in cinema, all it does is consistently undermine our faith in it. That cinema can approximate our means of looking at the world, our explanations of the world, descriptions, accounts etc. is evidence that we really don't have a good grasp on where our world begins and ends.

So when you say that "I'll rule out Georges." It sounds like nonsense. Who is George? He is a character in the film. And why should we rule out George? What if it is the case that the whole film is a fantasy of Georges'? Throughout the film he is hiding something, repressing it and avoiding to confront it. The videos force him to face whatever he does not want to touch -- something so shameful, guilt inducing, and horrifying (perhaps to himself).

But can't you see what I am doing? I am writing about the psychology of George, who does not exist. When does George begin or end?

I don't know, really, but I think Cache is so great because who did it really doesn't matter all that much in the end. The tragedy that has happened has already affected everyone in such a way that, no matter who did it, the effect on everyone's lives will remain dramatic.

I had the chance to catch this the other week on television and I'm still puzzling over it.

I dont think Pierrot had anything to do with the tapes as they were directed towards the father. Pierrot from what I recall was only upset with his mother who he believed was having an affair with another man. Pierrot never showed any aggression / hostility towards his father like he does with his mother.

I'm going to rewatch this again sometime this week to refresh my memory.

I attended several screenings of "Cache" during its brief theatrical run in Dallas, TX. I thought Haneke tapped into the post-September 11 paranoia and created a film comparable to Alfred Hitchcock at his most subdued. Trying to "solve" the film's mystery was a motivating factor in my repeated viewings. Of course the fact that the film is one of the best films of its decade made subsequent viewings a pleasure. Not being fluent in French proved to be an obstacle in looking for clues as my attention was often focused on reading the English subtitles. After a couple of viewings I retained enough of the dialogue's translation that it afforded me the freedom to search the screen for any nugget of information that might reveal the identity of the person or persons behind the videotapes and drawings.

My conclusion was that Pierrot and Walid were primarily, if not solely, responsible for the tapes and drawings. The events that take place prior to the film's beginning are open to infinite speculation. I believe that Walid grew up hearing Majid's version of his childhood years and how they were impacted by Georges telling his parents that Majid had coughed blood.

It's not unreasonable to believe that Majid stumbled upon Georges television show and, recognizing the man as a pivotal figure from his past, decided to track him down to see how Georges life turned out. At some point Majid brought Walid along to show him the man who dramatically altered the course of his life.

Walid wanting to seek some sort of retribution for his father befriends Pierrot as a means of gaining information about Georges. Pierrot demonstrates a clear disdain for Georges in the film so it isn't too far-fetched to reason that the boys decided to perform acts with the sole purpose of making Georges life uncomfortable. Pierrot sees it as a chance to rattle his old man while Walid motives are a bit more diabolocal. Walid intends to bring this dark secret from Georges past to the surface. In a sense there is a direct correlation between Walid and Pierrot and the duo that terrorizes the family in Haneke's "Funny Games."

Where my line of thinking hits a speedbump is Majid's suicide. The film's final exchange between Walid and Pierrot is open to interpretation. During the first few viewings I was certain the two were having a friendly conversation. Two friends hanging out after school. But upon further viewings I feel that Walid is confronting Pierrot, likely over Majid's suicide.

One of the pleasures of "Cache" is the discussion that takes place among viewers after the film. It's not often that one encounters a film that leaves so much to the viewer's imagination. It's far rarer to find such a film made by someone with no interest in spelling it out. And that's one of the reason's why Haneke's film is such a success. He's given us a foundation upon which we can be as reasonable or as paranoid as we want to be.

I believe that there is no "wrong" solution to the mystery that is the film's core. I like to think that each individual's conclusions reveal a little bit about feelings and ideas previously kept hidden.

In closing, I highly recommend watching "The Battle of Algiers" paired with "Cache" as ithe two films complement each other in ways that their respective makers would never have imagined.

Thanks for reading.

In everything you've written about this movie you've left out the detail that Pierrot suspects his mother of cheating. Maybe the reason why she believes Georges is keeping something from her is because she is from him. Or, maybe the reason why Pierrot suspects his mother of keeping something from the family is because he's recently discovered what his father has been keeping from them...

Can you smell movies?

Oooo! A mystery to solve! I've never seen this movie, hang-on, Burnaby public library catalogue...

Score!

They've got it on DVD! Oh, it's not due for another week and it's been requested. Drats. Hmmm... going to Sweden, checking.... ah hah! And English subtitles are included. Awesome. :)

As I wanna see if I can figure it out, too!

Reply to: Assuming Scorsese retains the broad outline, he can (a) solve the mystery, or (b) leave the mystery hanging, as I think Haneke does. Can you get away with that in a Hollywood film, with Leonardo DiCaprio already attached as Georges?

The standards of a Hollywood film are clear. The protagonist, the character we identify with, has both an internal problem and an external one. The solution solves both of them.

Scorsese has a film called "Shutter Island" coming out. He doesn't want two misfires in a row.

Reply to: Georges felt threatened by his parent's decision to adopt the Algerian orphan, and lied in telling them the boy was spitting up blood -- an alarming signal of tuberculosis. Only Majid would know that happened -- and Georges, who isn't talking. Therefore, only Majid's knowledge could have informed the childish drawings of the cartoon figure with blood spurting from its mouth and neck. The three people who could have drawn them are Pierrot, Majid, and Majid's son....the movie also places suspicion on Majid, the childhood victim of Georges,

Maybe you could do something with the people who think they see the face of Jesus in a stain on a door, or the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast. Leo's characters has a guilty conscience and says, over and over, that the drawings show a certain knowledge, but if you look at the drawings carefully, there's no connection whatsoever. Like the double-images, where you can see a face or a silhoutte, depending on how you want to interpret it?

As I've mentioned, "The Mentalist" is a break-out hit on CBS. Raised in a carnival, trained to fleece suckers as a psychic conduit to dead relatives, Patrick Jane has a smirk that says "I know the answer and watching you figure this out is a lot of fun."

Also, Penn and Teller have revealed the secrets to many magic tricks. When you're dealing with video cameras, there's almost no trick you can't do.

I would re-think the plot line, from the standpoint that Majid is responsible for everything, and is simply clever enough to to create misdirection.

Next, how do you make Majid such an interesting character, we care about him? As you said with "Casino Royale," it was the first Bond movie where you cared about Bond. And the Treasury agent who dressed in masculine clothes.

There has to be a central relationship that the audience cares about. Butch and Sundance. Rhett and Scarlett. Frodo and Mr. Sam. Trinity and Neo.

In "Titanic,' you cared about Leo's character because he saved Rose. Yet his death made us take the tragedy of the Titanic seriously.

Majid has to be doing this for an ultimate goal, not an evil motive. That's the only way the audience can bond with him if they know he's behind it. So, go back to "The Big Con" pulled by Newman and Redford in "The Sting." The whole thing was staged to steal money and teach an evil man a lesson.

There were two reveals at the end of "The Sting," a phony FBI agent who pulled the mark out of the betting parlor, and a hired killer pretending to be a waitress. The reason the movie worked is because we felt the whole charade was for a worthy purpose, to steal money from a man who had stolen it from hundreds of others.

The audience thinks of Leo as a hero, but he's not Harrison Ford. I think we want Leo to be Jimmy Stewart. A man with such strong moral convictions, even the worst tragedy can't persuade him to do the wrong thing. In "What Lies Beneath," Harrison played against type and the movie sank. No one bought the ending.

OK, bottom line, come up with some "magic tricks" that would allow a clever Majid to be responsible for everything. But don't say so. Give the audience room to figure out the correct answer for themselves. Plant four or five clues that they can put together as they drive home from the movies and come to the conclusion, "He's the only one who could have done it." Anything else would be a cheat.

Mr. Ebert,

Cache is one of my favorite films, and I think your essay is an astute analysis and hits the nail on the head. I'd like to add an idea: perhaps Cache is not only about the destruction of memory, but the creation of false memories in order to alleviate guilt, even if the creation of these memories is not a conscious effort.

Like you said, in Cache, we only see the memories of the past through the filter of Georges' mind, and perhaps what was once a lie as a child (Georges telling his parents that Majid was bleeding from the mouth) has become the truth in Georges' adult memory of events so that he no longer feels guilty for what he did as a child. As the tapes begin to surface, they force him to reacquaint with his childhood, and his current life, as the videos are a record of hard fact in the present.

There are definitely no solutions to Haneke's film, and it seems to me the only concise conclusion is on a thematic level. I think the film definitely explores guilt: people change their perceptions of the past, or even the present, to deal with those feelings. People fear the unknown, what they can't understand or categorize. When the tapes, a factual record of the present, begin to appear, Georges begins to seek the truth, and discovers what he thought was true for a long time is not... he's lied to himself, his memories are lies.

MM

OK, that picture at the top of the article is making my mind melt. Apropos :)

One solution I think we're afraid to consider, possibly because it would betray all the attention to realistic detail, would be that this is a metaphoric observation of our own voyeurism and how such a tendency is always incomplete, that we can never know everything about the subjects we watch, no matter how much we scrutinize them, even in fiction.

What I got from the film the single time I watched it was that this is a film, wholly metaphorically or not, that deals DIRECTLY with our perception of reality, and how that there can STILL be another layer hidden beneath what we think we see.

It starts with the first scene, which seems representational of an objective camera still. We then see motion, so it must not be still. We then see that it's a recording, so it's not a direct representation of a scene. Every beat in this film is about peeling away a layer. There is an affair between the wife and a friend. There is a massacre hidden in the minds of the people. There is a connection between these two men. There is a possible conspiracy between the two boys.

All the time, peeling away, all the time, the picture is incomplete. We are compelled toward the horizon, always uncovering, but always running into something more. I wonder if there's no real point to the narrative having a single, correct interpretation, even if one is possible, because the point is that our perceptions of what we see are CONSTANTLY being overturned. We keep trying to make sense of it and keep being thrown a new set of data that forces us to look differently at what we've seen so far.

I borrowed this film from a French couple, both of whom were good friends. I pointed out the boys talking at the end, and they revealed that one of them noticed, and the other hadn't, and they had talked to others who had not seen the meeting, and those who had. At first, I took pride in knowing I was one of those who noticed, but now I'm beginning to realize that far from being a culmination, it's just one more detail among many. One more layer.

There is also something about how the people portrayed in the film deal with these hidden things. I'd have to watch it again to post my full thoughts on this, but at times it seemed like it would be best if things remained hidden, since so much happiness and stability seemed to be riding on this preservation of secrecy, yet at the same time, those who suffer from this secrecy cannot find peace until all is revealed. Not sure I can say any more than this and still be based on the film without watching it again, though.

As to why so many people missed that final meeting I think it's clear. It's not necessarily about where the kids are, although that helps us miss them, it's that often a behind-the-credits sequence is supposed to hit a single note. We're not used to a narrative continuing when the credits roll, because the credits signify that reality is now allowed to seep back into our brains. There are other films that reveal important details during the credits, though they are rare (and in my opinion, special).

One such use of final-scene revelations that floored me was the under-appreciated New Zealand film, The Quiet Earth.

I've always been a big fan of the theory that Haneke himself is sending the tapes, as detailed here:

http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/461

We know from "Funny Games" that Haneke is interested in the voyeuristic aspect of the cinema, and that he likes to mess around with his characters, and it makes sense that if anyone was going to use a movie about people being watched to make comparisons to the format itself, it's Haneke.

That said, solving the mystery doesn't matter one iota. This is a great film - one of the best of last decade - and part of Haneke's genius is that he knows exactly how to leave it to inspire great discussions such as this.

//What Haneke has done, here and other films, is demolish our faith in rational analysis.//

Reversed, I think: rationality demolishes our faith in the film; that the film must provide a panacean solution. Rational analysis is what debunks the flawed "solutions" to the film; if anything, the importance of rational analysis is emphasized by these errors

Spot on.

I have to thank those who wrote to me, challenging my own interpretations. The nature of duality that exists in CACHE might be simple or complex, but it really can get you to perhaps over-analyze things, surely what Haneke intended. He got me.

Although I join you in feeling that "Walid" is the only character I am reasonably certain must be involved, I am troubled by his motive. While I can understand why he would want to hold a mirror up to Georges, I wonder what did he hope to accomplish by staging the meeting between Georges and Majid? Could he not foresee that their reunion might dredge up the emotions that ultimately caused Majid to take his own life? In context of Majid's suicide, perhaps what troubles me more is the suggestive body language you referred to between Walid and Pierrot in the final shot. Yes, absolutely their interaction implies that they are at the very least familiar with each other. Their body language does not evoke a first time meeting. Even more so, if I remember correctly (and it has been a while since I've seen the film for the third time), the conversation goes down amicably. If we are reasonably certain of Walid's involvement, and we believe Pierrot played a role as well, then does it not disturb us to see them relating so casually, only a short time after their scheme went terribly wrong? The maker of the tapes clearly wanted to get Georges' attention by sending the surveillance videos along with the incriminating child's drawings. Once they had his attention, the tapes led Georges right to Majid (literally, the videos showed how to get to Majid's apartment). So the tapemaker orchestrated the reunion, and now Majid is dead. So what does it mean if Walid was behind it, and the film ends with the interaction we see?

...and yet, on another level, the film hits you in such an indescribable way that it doesn't even matter who made the tapes. I've always been struck by the scene in which Georges disrobes and closes the curtains, and goes to sleep during daylight. At that point I feel like it makes no difference to him who started it. Something else has emerged in the film, something more mysterious than who made the tapes. By this time I'm thinking about Georges, and Majid, and what they were feeling. Then there's that final shot and I'm back to trying to solve the whodunit.

Why is it that you only find this kind of discussion in the States, not in Europe (well, at least not in Germany or France)? Why not just enjoy a film for what it is? Who cares who shot the videos? And for that matter, who cares about the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or the box in Barton Fink? Honestly, I never thought too much about who shot the videos. I've seen Caché four or five times. The first time I didn't notice Pierrot and Majid's son in the last shot. But even if I had, I wouldn't have been any more (or less) confused. What stayed with me after every viewing was the effect these videos had on the characters in the film. Auteuil and Binoche are so amazingly convincing as a married couple facing a crisis. And the actor playing Majid...wow! But anyway, I know you feel the same way. What I don't understand is why there always has to be a solution to be found? Can't it just be possible that the filmmaker is toying with us? Because I think that's what Haneke does with his final shot. He wants us to keep guessing and analysing even if there's nothing really to be found. That doesn't mean that I think the film is pointless. On the contrary, Caché is rather important and makes perfect sense as a statement about what the French did to Algeria and the fact that the past will never be forgotten, that there is always something or someone to remind you of it. I just can't help but think that beneath this "message", Haneke has a helluva lot of fun fooling us with bogus hints. But hey, I'm not complaining. Cause after all, that's just another reason why his films are so good.

Ebert: Regarding your openung question: Funny. Most Americans would probably say it's exactly the opposite.

Excellent commentary, Roger. I saw "Cache" a few years ago and assumed it was Pierrot, acting out of revenge for some unspecified crime of his parents. (I'm not even a Haneke fan and I greatly respect Cache.)

Scorsese is an amazing director, but his movies tend to be all about giving the audience the maximum amount of information possible (think of the digressions in Casino about how the money's laundered, or the obsessive research behind "The Age of Innocence."). He's too straightforward for the murkiness of Cache, in my view--Soderbergh might be a better choice.

Does Caché really require a conventional solution regarding the identity of the person who made the surveillance tapes? I like the explanation, that it is simply us who are observing and that the family is aware of this. This would fit with the highly symbolic nature of the film concerning post-colonial guilt. (The perhaps imagined killing of a rooster - the symbol of France - by young Majid is certainly not a coincidence). It is how people react when they know their hidden secrets are known to others and that they are being watched. Notice how Daniel Auteuil's character reacts aggressively towards an African-French cyclist after he knows that his past with Majid is known to others.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

Fascinating analysis! I've followed this story since last week and I keep coming up with different theories as well as garnering more appreciation for this wonderful film. And yes, I would like to offer a response to your inference of 'Walid' as the sender.

Why would Walid send the tapes considering the fact that he will indirectly cause his father more psychological harm as well as inadvertently causing his own father's death?

Btw, have you considered the possible theory around, considering his previous "break the fourth wall" style, that Michael Haneke himself is sending the videos?

Thanks!

P.S. Been a great fan since I was 13(I'm 20 now) and just wanted you to know that you've shaped my still 'developing' taste in films. I would also like to say that even Scorsese should not touch a film like this and even suspect he may have bought the rights in order to keep the inexperienced Hollywood cash cows from remaking this. And please, no Ron Howard!

Ebert: I suggest that the tapes could come from someone no in the film. Many people here suspect Haneke. Possible but unprovable, and in violation of the training audiences get from most other films. Deeper and deeper.

Reply to: It will be a Scorsese film. He can (a) solve the mystery, or (b) leave the mystery hanging, as I think Haneke does. Can you get away with that in a Hollywood film, with Leonardo DiCaprio already attached as Georges? Will the mass American movie going public let him get way with it?

At this point, we have to flesh out an alternative version, to the point where we can "see" it. As James Cameron says, fans think "Avatar" popped out of his imagination, but it was the end result of a collaboration between actors and technicians, hundreds of them.

The first problem is, no one in the United States knows what "the Algerian war" was. Or cares. The audiences in Paris obviously know and care.

Reply to: The film recalls an incident during the Algerian War when the bodies of hundreds of Algerian immigrants ere found floating in the Seine. Among them may have been Majid's parents. This tragedy has been all but erased from the French public's memory. It doesn't want them.

I think you want some kind of tragedy.

What I would do is, after Georges goes to visit Majid, Majid doesn't commit suicide with a knife. Instead, he goes into a public place, possibly a church but maybe a place of work, and shoots people. Later, Georges walks among the corpses, wondering if his actions as a 6 year-old set the events in motion.

Reply to: Let's pull back to consider the whole film. Much of it involves the relationship between Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche). The tapes breed discord in their marriage.

If Anne has been having an affair, her lover might have sent the tapes, trying to break up her marriage to "Mr. Perfect." She would have told him exactly what her husband does to bother and annoy her, and part of it could be watching video tapes to find material for his TV show.

I think it's too much of a coincidence that the image on a tape leads Georges to Majid's apartment, and Majid says, "Oh, while you're here, I have to kill myself." But if the tapes were just a clever rule to get him there... no, that doesn't make sense, either.

It would be a cool twist if Georges walked into artist's studio, and on the wall was a mural that looked exactly like the inside of Majid's apartment. The camera could have filmed the mural, giving the impression the camera was in the actual room.... Or, there was another house in a different part of the city that looked the same from the outside.

For American audiences, the "relevant" event is the fact that a gunman opened fire on a crowd and killed a lot of people. That's the tragedy that Americans fear, as much as the French remember bodies floating in the river through Paris.

The wife's lover was trying to break up their marriage, and Georges saw things on the video that were vague, and he added things from his own memories. When he goes back and looks at the tapes again, he realizes his mistake.

The end scene would be the wife moving in with her lover, and Georges realizing they're perfect for each other, and everything has turned out best for his wife. And then, we wonder if Georges made the tapes himself. Maybe the "revealed truth" is that Georges didn't have the courage to divorce his wife, but he knew she would be happier with this other man. Every time she spent an afternoon with him, she came home happy. (Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow in..??? A perfect murder?)

Sorry, but this post is a little bit bogged down in "reality" and technical/ literal possibilities for my liking.

For one thing, I believe it is clear that the movie is less about the actual events being portrayed as it is about the treatment of Algerian immigrants to France in the 60s -and how the terrible events in a particular riot was papered over by the French government, media and, ultimately, by the people of France themselves.

The final scene, to my mind, shows nothing more than a kind of hopeful dialogue being opened now among children and descendants of both sectors of that shameful past.

As for specifics... I can't really recall the exact drawing, but might it be possible that Majid made the drawing either a long time ago and/or during a particular period of ill-health, then later discovered by his son, who investigated further, which brought him eventually to instigate the events as outlined in the movie. ?

Also, I have a video camera that switches itself on with sound. Perhaps (and this is a somewhat shakier explanation I agree, since the movie was set and shot a few years ago when such devices were far more expensive -and big), Majid's son installed such a device because he feared his father was on the brink of committing suicide.. or for security reasons.

Either way, as I say, it's more to do with the past coming back to haunt one's successes than it is about any particular couple and who is looking at what.

For that reason, the _only_ way to remake Cache to an American perspective would be to compare proceedings to a US-centric traumatic event and perhaps imply tacit agreement between the government, media and people of the US (in general) for the terrible actions that ensued.
Far be it for me to suggest what this event should be. Wounded Knee perhaps.

But will Scorcese's remake have any of the subtlety of Haneke's film? If the mystery is merely to do with camera perspective and who-drew-what then I think it will miss the whole point of the film. And probably win an oscar.

I think it is a little too clever of Haneke to propose that you cannot be sure of history. It negates critical analysis in favor of a hip, post-modern nihilism. It is almost a decandent point of view.
So whenever I like Haneke's films it is more for their demonstration of style and technique than for their content. Consider The White Ribbon, which again, is constructed so that all solutions are possible. Certainly the kids must have something to do with the crimes, but can we really be sure? The film points to other perpetrators, demolishes the assumptions it has been careful to establish and then ends as if there was a big meaning hidden in that.
When I talk about the film I always use the expression "Zen-like", and what I mean by that is a sort of musicality that pervades Haneke's films - themes that are repeated and then dissolved - and the joy in that is the joy of watching a well-oiled machine. But of course what I really mean by it I can never know.

Thank you Mr Ebert for your insightful analysis of CACHE. It's been a while since I saw the film on it's first release in England, so you'll have to forgive any errors I make in my following memories of the film. In a way though, that points to my understanding of it, which is to say that ALL memories are unreliable. We usually therefore can't take what a character describes about the past until we somehow 'see' it through what we usually consider as a character's subjective flashback, in film narrative. But what if that isn't the case here? What if the POV we see here is in fact not a subjective one at all, but the OBJECTIVE view of 'time' itself as a viewer, with the camera recording the ACTUALITY of the moment, much in the same way a video can do the same thing, leaving us as the viewer to SUBJECTIVELY make our interpretation in the audience. We are used, as you clearly make clear from your analysis of the individual character's motivations, this POV to be fixed to specific characters,(out of space) cont

(cont) but what if that's not the case here? What if, as you came to the conclusion of in your analysis, that the hidden video POV's placer is also 'hidden'? But what if that placer isn't a person at all but as I said earlier SOMETHING else OBJECTIVELY 'recording' the moment. It could be 'time' itself as a posited earlier or even 'the director/god'. Personally I go with the idea that somehow all the 'recordings' of images in the film are somehow 'projections' of the repressed HIDDEN 'memories'/collective 'guilt' of the 'society' viewed in the film. I came to this conclusion because of the perceived IMPOSSIBILITY of that first recording (the camera's POV, is shown by George's investigation of the street outside to my eyes, to be at least 10ft in the air above a car in the centre of the road, where clearly no camera could be positioned). Because of this unreliable POV, I then took all subsequent 'recordings' also to be physically impossible, and hence my conclusions r.e. the 'omnipresent' HIDDEN POV. Thank you.

Ebert: That's possible. Also disturbing, because the film has set us up to expect we can deduce a solution. Most films have a POV belonging to the director, but this one, centering so much on the source of the tapes, seems to rule that out.

When I watched the film for the first time, i was furious by the end. I didn't, immediately anyway, think that any one character that we had seen within the film had sent the tapes and for this I was angry, at Haneke, of course. I recognised Walid with Pierrot at the end but i didn't rule out that this could be their first meeting but it does seem unlikely that this is the case. However, if Walid was the one sending the tapes he would know what Pierrot looks like from them. This also assuming he watches the tapes before sending them. That's all this though, right? Assumption. I feel that if we did push for an answer it would lessen how we see the film. A mystery man with no motive is more chilling than knowing who did it and their motive.

It's not in my nature to just leave things though and in the end, I think Walid did do it. I have no doubt that Majid confided in his son what had happened when he was a child and Walid realised the circumstances his father (or even himself) were in were not by chance but for a reason and he wanted some sort of revenge and in the course of his actions maybe even caused his father to kill himself (then placing the blame on Georges, in the confrontation at Georges work). Fascinating film by a fascinating man.

One of the most fascinating studies of voyeurism and the activity involved in simply seeing something.

Film often lends itself to such passivity; so many audiences relax and disengage from the story, the images, the sheer noise and vitality of a movie. Here, in an uncanny manner, Haneke thrusts us into a mess of information and ideas and doubts. He cuts off our little heads and watches us flop around on the floor, gushing theories and explanations.

He wakes me up. And that's why I admire him so. I could go on and on...

Question: Why didn't you ever review Haneke's first film The Seventh Continent?

I cannot wait to see how Scorsese interprets the mystery of it all.

Haneke is one of my favorite living directors. I've always held the opinion that it was Walid and Pierot together.

I love Scorsese but I'm extremely skeptical to a hollywood remake of 'Cache.'

I just bumped this movie to the top of my Netflix queue. I did this because it's a movie I want (need?) to see. I also did this so I can read this blog entry.

You say that there are three people who knew enough about the childhood events to be able to send the drawings - Georges, Majid and Walid. I may be completely off my rocker here, but I think that there's one other person you're overlooking: Georges' mother.

This is a stretch, I know, and I'm going to stretch it even further: I think that two of the flashbacks to Georges' childhood - the one with Majid coughing blood and the one of Majid beheading the rooster and coming at him with the axe - are made up. Or at least, completely unreliable. These scenes show us what young Georges wanted to see, not what actually happened. Georges says that he told his parents that he saw Majid coughing up blood, and that they didn't believe him. They had a doctor examine him, and he couldn't find anything. Then he told his parents that Majid cut the head off the rooster 'to scare him'. So we know that Majid did not actually cough up blood, and we can assume that he wasn't a homicidal child, attacking another child with an axe. Yet this is what we see in these scenes. Therefore, I would suggest that both of these scenes are the result of Georges' mind trying to deal with the guilt of having Majid taken from his house. He has altered his memory so that he thinks Majid actually did these things, and that's why we see them.

In your previous post, you said that "a moving camera implies a subjective viewer" and that "a stationary camera is objective". Watch these flashback scenes again. In both of these 'unreliable' flashbacks, the camera is moving - either panning or zooming, with a few quick cuts, suggesting that these are completely suggestive - they are a story that Georges' mind has told himself. Compare this to the final flashback scene of Majid being taken away. At the end of the film, Georges has been forced to confront everything about his childhood and, having taken two pills and relaxed into sleep, actually remembers something real, and so we have a stationary shot of Majid being taken away.

So, back to Georges' mother. I'm not suggesting that she is the one behind either the tapes or the notes, but when I look back on the scene where Georges visits his mother, I have to think: what does it add to the movie, besides telling us that she is old and infirm? I think that we have to pay close attention to the rest of the scene. When Georges mentions Majid's name, she says "I'd forgotten all about him". Clearly, by the dark look that comes over her face the instant his name comes up, she does remember him. She tells Georges "It's not a happy memory. As you know only too well." Well, Georges doesn't know too well at this point. He still thinks of Majid as the kid coughing up blood and coming at him with an axe. So when he mentions it to his mother, he brings it up in a lighthearted kind of way. Yet she knows that there's something wrong with him. How? Similarly, Majid seems to know that Georges' mother is sick - has someone been in contact with both the mother and Majid?

Again, I'm not suggesting that Georges' mother did it. I just think that, if people are looking for a connection between Pierrot and Walid, then their 'shared' Grandmother would be a good place to start.

I hesitate to employ the hackneyed word "spoiler" here, because no one in his right mind should read this without experiencing the film. I won't even bother with a plot synopsis. You've seen it.

no one in his right mind should read this without experiencing the film.

Okay. I got that far and didn't proceed to read any further than the bottom of that paragraph.

So, like, did I get the right mind part correct and display high-level thinking skills. Or did I pass the in-my-right-mind portion and fail the IQ portion of the test? Or did I fail the right mind part and pass the IQ portion? Or perhaps I have shown that I am not in my right mind while simultaneously exhibiting a degree of intelligence well below the norm. [Don't answer that Tom Dark. I need an unbiased opinion here.] Somebody give me a clue. : )

I think it's important that the final scene where Majid's son and Pierrot meet looks like it could be yet another videotape: it's shot from a stationary camera, and it has the same detached feel as the previous tapes. But if this another videotape, that would mean that someone else than Pierrot of Majid's son was behind the tapes, because someone is watching and filming them here. Who is it then? You may have noticed that earlier in the film there's a very similar detached shot of the front of Pierrot's school. In this scene, however, we find out it's Georges observing the school while he's waiting for Pierrot to come out. The similarity between the two shots made me think it's Georges observing the school in the final scene too.

It's worth noting that the scene before the last one, where young Majid is dragged to the orphanage, also looks like one of the videotapes. But it cannot be, because this is clearly a memory of Georges. This made me think there's a connection between all the stationary shots in Caché. There's a reason Haneke uses the same technique with certain scenes that are revealed to be videotapes, and with others that most likely aren't videos, such as the scene where Anne's boss is flirting with her. All the stationary shots in the movie are shots fired by Georges' subconscious, shots that reflect upon his guilt, his fears, his hopes. The stationary shots awaken his repressed guilt about what he did to Majid as a kid. They reflect on his suspicion that Anne is cheating him with her boss. (It's odd that the boss's name is Pierre, and Anne's son is called Pierrot. A conincidence?) And in the end they seem to validate his hopes that the future generation (Pierrot and Majid's son) might find the sort connection he and Majid never had.

If you look at all the stationary shots in Caché, it becomes obvious that the person who they address is always Georges. These scenes function to rouse memories and emotions which he has long repressed, but which he needs to acknowledge. This makes me think that Georges himself is behind the videos, that on some subconscious level he realizes that he needs to face these things, even if on a more conscious level he tries to fight against that realization. There's no practical answer to the mystery of the videotapes. If we look at it from a logical point of view, it seems absurd to think Georges has shot the videos and send them to himself. But the function of the stationary shots in the movie (both the actual videos, and the shots that may or may not be videos) is not logical, they work on a more metaphorical level. And on that level I think they are products of Georges' psyche.

The obvious inspiration for Caché is David Lynch's Lost Highway, where similar videotapes are sent to a man for a similar purpose. It seems the explanation for the tapes is the same in both movies too.

Ebert: True, the stationary shots seem to have...a mind of their own.

Haneke in the interview on the DVD as much as says he constructed the film to be unresolvable.

What if the camera wasn't hidden by any of the characters in the film? Not so sure that Haneke follows all of the unwritten codes of film like you imply - remember the character talking directly to the audience in Funny Games? That POV was Haneke's, yes?
What if all of the hidden camera shots were shot by an all-seeing entity like the director? Penetrating the fourth wall from the other side?
Thoughts?

Damn you, Roger - I haven't seen this film. How dare you write an entry that I can't read???

You owe me one now.

Ebert: So see it, already!

Couldn't Walid have acted on his own, inspired by the childhood-stories he heard his father tell? As for Walid contacting Pierrot in the final shot (I only noticed it after Haneke's remark in the interview, damn him), could he be threatening him, trying to find a new, harsher way to get to Georges, after his father's suicide?

I don't know... But I'm up for a discussion of The White Ribbon. A film I thought was better, because of its incredibly precise direction, but also because there was a little hope (the touching romance of the teacher and his girlfriend).

Oh, a little correction, in your review you write a child is murdered in the film, but actually the child is only blinded.

I saw the film back when it first came out on DVD, and haven't seen it since (unfortunately). My memory isn't perfect, and so perhaps I have certain facts wrong. But let me take a stab at some questions.

I think you've done a fine job at discussing the various possibilities of who could have done it. But the thing that always got to me about the "Pierrot" explanation, of him working alone, was the issue of motive. Of course we could dismiss the idea of motive because the film itself opens the door to so many possibilities, but I think that's cheating ourselves. What exactly does Pierrot gain from making the tapes? And furthermore, if he's working with Walid (which I think is a better explanation, though again, not perfect), what does that say about his knowledge of Georges past?

Walid's motive seems clearer, especially given the confrontation he has with Georges after Majid's suicide. If Walid knows about what happened to his father, and why it happened, as a result of Georges, then it makes at least logical sense that perhaps Walid would want to seek some kind of revenge on Georges. We cannot know, as we don't know what Majid has told Walid about Georges.

But then where does Pierrot fit in? Maybe there is a scene that clarifies this that I've simply forgotten, but I just cannot find a logical motive for Pierrot's direct involvement in making the tapes, even if he knew about them.

More than ever, I am convinced there is no answer, that it is a mystery which cannot be penetrated. I will happily rule out Georges. If Pierrot is involved, it cannot be without the help of someone else; because of the tape which originates from Majid's flat, the co-conspirator(s) would seem to be either Walid or Majid. Or both. Or neither. Not only did Majid convince me of his innocence, but so did Walid.

Anyway, I think I prefer the film as it is, without an explanation. The way Haneke executed this story, it is one of the most seductive movies of the past ten years. Human beings, and especially the average moviegoers who, forgive me for saying, probably never saw the film in the first place, seek patterns and require closure. Trying to solve the mystery of Cache is about as useful an exercise as trying to solve the mystery of, say, Mulholland Drive. In movies like these, it is not the answers which are the point, but the questions.

I could talk about Cache for hours at a time. So could you. So could, I imagine, most of the people who will leave comments here. Moreover, I think most of us would talk about it with exuberance and joy. This is Haneke's triumph.

By the way. The final shot leads me to believe Walid and Pierrot do indeed know one another. When they move to the bottom of the frame, their faces and body language as they are talking suggest a certain comfort with one another. A familiarity. But that's just what I saw, and no, I don't believe it lends any weight to the theory that they colluded to make and send the videotapes. I don't know what this means, but believe me, that doesn't mean I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Ebert: To repeat: "I don't know what this means, but believe me, that doesn't mean I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it."

We're all in the same boat.

Logic pointing to Walid's involvement is startingly clear and well presented. As is the realization that no explanation is satisfactory. And that that perhaps is Haneke's intent. Brilliant work.

Is that true about Scorsese optioning the remake rights? That would be disappointing. I had heard Ron Howard was set to make an American version a few years ago, but I didn't know Scorsese was on it now. I wish he'd get on with making Silence rather than remaking a film which surely can't be bettered.

I wonder why Scorsese is making remakes of films - films that were good in the first place - these days. My first reaction is a skeptical one: isn't there something lazy about piggybacking off the success of movies that have earned acclaim elsewhere but haven't been seen widely in North America? And why would a master like Scorsese want to put himself in a place where, instead of doing something original himself, he's going to have to outdo himself just to equal the film he's remaking? But giving him the benefit of the doubt, I can only imagine that Scorsese, being the student of film that he is, must be so enamored of the craft side of filmmaking and the possibilities of storytelling and retelling, that concerns of originality or of making a film that might always be considered runner-up to the original don't even occur to him. Maybe that indifference is the mark of a real artist - not overthinking it, just enjoying the work. I'll hope for the best.

there's also tremendous evidence suggesting the juliette binoche character was having an affair with pierre, their best friends, and if pierrot found out about it, he'd have a motive. (although it is unclear WHEN pierrot would have found out)

1. during a scene towards the end where binoche tells georges pierre and his wife are over visiting, georges tells her he wants to be alone. binoche tells 'them' off screen they should leave, but georges looks out the window and only sees pierre leaving, suggesting he was the only one over.

2. pierrot means 'little pierre' i believe

3. if it was indeed walid making the videos, he would have seen evidence of the affair, and brought it to pierrot, convincing him to help.

The other big theory which there is ample evidence for, and I'm sure other people will discuss in detail, is the notion that Haneke himself sent the videos through the 4th wall.

Wonderful analysis. You had many readers frustrated by your assertion that a "smoking gun" could actually be found (now we know this is not exactly true), and that it appeared at a specific point on the DVD. Many, like myself, assumed that the seemingly insignificant shot of Georges walking his son to the car and finding a flyer on the windshield (for a restaurant? Some thought camera equipment) was what you were referring to, and how we labored over it! Oh well.

I was particularly fond of your acknowledgment that someone outside of the narrative could have been involved. In this story, we don't know who the characters know. Maybe Majid confided in a close friend the way he must have confided in his son about his childhood trauma. Maybe his son is uninvolved, and in the final shot is only beginning a new, currently unseen plot with Pierott.

Or maybe it was Anne. What is she not telling us?

Haneke works our expertise in deciphering montage to get us to worry at this situation, but brilliantly provides us with an object that does not allow resolution: as with The Turn of the Screw, or Julio Cortázar's stories, or other narratives in which we are presented with a dilemma, many of us will opt to force some kind of closure because leaving the story open makes us feel uncomfortable; we want our art to resolve what life does not. Others will delight in the unsolvability itself, because that is the way life often is. Either way, I will be watching this movie over again before I go to see The White Ribbon when it opens.

Phil and d.a. I think remakes have been getting bad raps for the last decade or so because of the type of remakes that have been prevalent, which are mostly those of old TV shows and pop-culture references.

But remakes have been around for a long time now, and I don't see anything wrong with a filmmaker who might have seen something in an original that he feels he could do better or perhaps explore in another way.

There are no rules as to what should be remade or not. I balk at the attempt to remake THE THIRD MAN or LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. But there have been great remakes as well like THE FLY, THE THING, STAR WARS (based on Kurosawa's HIDDEN FORTRESS), etc. And in the end, imitation is the best form of flattery, as it puts a spotlight on the subject being remade.

Walid must have been involved. I wonder if Walid was a smimmer. The film shows Pierrot in swim class early on. Maybe that is how they knew each other? Regardless of who was the perpetrator, Cache was an exceptional film and I'm glad this blog post is open to commenters to discuss it.

Roger, you repeatedly cite basic rules of film, but if there is one thing we know for sure about Michael ("You can never know") Haneke, it is that he gleefully violates those rules. His metier is skifull maniupulation of viewers' expectations.

I agree that George's memory is the source for all of the flashbacks, but I don't trust the film to provide reliable information regarding possible placement of the cameras, or for the cameras to adhere to constraints such as power supply.

In interviews with the Austrian press Haneke speaks of his contempt for mainstream Hollywood, and of his desire to shake up the conventions of film. I'd be very interested to hear what lies behind the ego and hubris. What influenced him, and what does he respect?

(My personal favorite Haneke film is 'Code Inconnu', which seems to have attracted scant attention among English-speaking audiences.)

I've always held it was the two sons working together in rage against the older generation for forgetting their own sins. But perhaps you're right, and I should not assume that the meeting on the steps is not their first, and it is an attempt at reconciliation. But I have trouble seeing it that way; the first impression is one of collusion.

The following is a close reading I wrote for a class at the University of Nebraska. We spent a lot of time entertaining and discussing the idea.

It is not left a mystery who made the videos that were received by Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) Laurent. It was director Michael Haneke. “Cache” examines the consequences of the so-called fourth wall being broken from our side. We’ve seen Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s “Breathless” and “Pierrot Le Fou” sharing his wisdom with us personally. We’ve seen a sadistic murderer wink at us in Haneke’s own “Funny Games”. These are characters in a film addressing their audience. Now here is a film that turns the tables, and allows the fingers of those behind the camera to meddle in the lives of their subjects.

The opening shot of the film, an image of the Laurent home that we will soon identify as a video recording, does not attempt to hide this idea. We notice the peculiar placement of the camera. It is several feet above the roofs of the cars in the alley and several feet from the wall of the building on the left side of the shot. We see later in a reverse shot of the alley that the building does not have balconies either, so that possibility is dismissed.

So how is the camera situated where it is, and perhaps even more importantly, how is it out of sight? The only logical person who could have both suspend the camera where it was and do so without being noticed is Haneke himself, as no ordinary movie character is ever aware of the crew and equipment. If there is a higher power at work in this world of ours, we can’t see the strings either.

Further evidence to suggest that Haneke is responsible for the video tapes can be found in the film’s visual tone outside of the videos. Often, Haneke uses long, still shots to mislead us. Are we watching the film, or is this another video? One such example occurs at the forty-six minute mark. A new scene is introduced with a long, still shot of a familiar structure. The camera is obviously out in the open, as it was in the first shot, and no one is acknowledging it. After a few moments however, a shot that earlier would have indicated through voiceover or rewinding that we’d been watching a video instead cuts to a shot of Georges, looking at a window at what we can assume to be the image we just saw.

This should be an ordinary, setting/character scene setup, but because the videos are so similar in construction to the visual style of the film we are no longer certain. The shot of Georges is followed by a tracking shot down a hallway that is identical to the one in the video until Georges steps into the shot and disrupts the imitation. What does this prove? It doesn’t necessarily prove anything, though it does suggest that the maker of the film and the maker of the videos are practicing very similar techniques, and may in fact be the same person.

This is a relatively easy to conclusion to reach, but it begs a more difficult question. Haneke may be making the tapes (technically speaking he is regardless), but how are the Laurent’s receiving them? To what extent is Haneke a part of this universe? Assuming he is responsible, we know that his camera is invisible (to them, not to us. A key shot shows the film camera’s shadow cast upon the wall of the alley) and thus incapable of interacting with Georges and Anne on a physical level. They can’t see the camera, but they can see the tapes. They can’t see Haneke either, but somehow these tapes are still reaching them. Somehow these videos are a mediator between the physical and metaphysical realms of Cache’s reality.

Many reviews have falsely stated that the Laurents are being “sent” these videos, but there’s no proof that that is actually the case. Even Anne has the sense during the dinner party (28:30) to say that Georges and she were “receiving” the videos. This is more important than it might initially seem.

With one exception we will get to in a moment, each video is introduced to us as the Laurents are watching it for the first time. We never see one arrive in the mail. They simply seem to materialize when the story deems it necessary.

We see Georges come into possession of one of the videos only once, during the dinner party. The doorbell rings and Georges opens the door to go outside, deduces that no one is out there and then returns to find the video cassette in the doorway. We know that Georges opened the door to go outside, so the video had to have been placed there after he had stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Camera placement is pivotal in this moment. The camera pans to the left as Georges makes his way down to the door, then follows him outside, halting at the gate. With the camera suspended in this narrow gateway, we are left with the conviction that no one snuck in behind him. The camera does cut away to a pair of perspective shots, but we remain firm in our convictions because the brief shots establish that Georges is keenly aware of his surroundings and that someone trying to sneak in behind him would surely be seen.

But still the question remains – How did the video tape arrive at a position that it could not have arrived at until after Georges opened the door? Who did we miss? Who snuck past the camera? The answer is simple. It’s not about who snuck behind the camera, but about who was already behind it in the first place.

Cache is an open-ended cage, its microcosmic society exposed from behind by the hand of Haneke himself who, by both observing and reporting, has created a film we must watch with one foot in the door. Film is in many respects a form of voyeurism. The reason Cache is effective is because it evokes the unease of watching from too near. It does more than expose the Laurents. It exposes the audience as well.

Ebert: A most perceptive reading. And, yes, that tape seems to materialize.

What bothers me about the Haneke-as-deus theory is that it introduces a wild card. It essentially means that no analysis of the film is relevant, because nothing need make sense and no character actions need be significant.

Therefore, the film would have the appearance of a whodunit but with no who and no dunnit.

Now I want to go back and do a close analysis of Haneke's interview on the DVD. It was under his own control. He has obviously thought through every implication of the film, and so there may be things he's saying in a particular way, or not saying, that could be clues.

I haven't finished the article or read all the comments, but will so forgive me, but i have a strange out of the box insight, not my own i read it somewhere, to answer the question "It has to be a POV, but from whose?", the answer is actually rather simple.

The POV is the director's and Haneke is the protagonist sending the videos, it is his comment about blurring the line between fiction, reality and truth, therefore "Most films have a POV belonging to the director, but this one, centering so much on the source of the tapes, seems to rule that out" is correct except he can't be ruled out as he is guilty to perpetuate the story. Crazy but works.

Will comment more when i have finished and hope i haven't made an idiot of myself....

Roger,

First thank you so much for including "Cache" in your great movies collection and for bringing more attention to one of the most deceiving films I've ever had the pleasure of seeing and to its director, Michael Haneke, whom I regard as one of the world's best current filmmakers.

Let me start with my favorite shot from "Cache": Georges is hosting his book chat show. The show is ending and the camera angle - as we, the viewer, have been trained - suggests that we are viewing this scene from the POV of the studio cameras. The show ends. Then Georges gets a call and walks off to talk in privacy ... then the camera, without cutting away, pans to watch and listen. The camera move, like the movie in general, goes against all we think should happen.

The thing I really like about "Cache" is all the ways it can be read, all the different interpretations. To me, the movie is about the camera, about the power of the image, about how a simple static image reveals truths that are hard to dispute when they are unfolding in front of you in real time.

One of Haneke's major themes has always been the audience and their relationship to the material he's showing us onscreen. Are we supposed to cheer for the family or the killers in "Funny Games?" Are we cheering for the wife when she seemingly gains the upper hand only to have our stomachs drop to the floor (or start screaming in anger) when the character (and the director) literally rewinds the film on us? There's no escape. All we have been trained to expect, all we have been trained to wait for from years of watching movies gets pulled out from us. We're watching a thriller, a mystery with no solution besides the fact that there is no solution.

To me the movie comes down to this: You can do bad, evil things, selfish childish things that you think effect no one but in reality have great consequences. Someone is watching. The images that play out in the background of the Afghan war come to mind. And even if history forgets (the mass killing of the Algerians) someone will remember ... even if that someone is you and your conscience. Or maybe it's God?

Maybe just maybe the whole mess that Georges has gotten himself into is a byproduct of his conscience? Maybe we're all looking "Cache" a little too literally ... but again that's the fun thing about this movie: Trying to wrap your head around it.

Thanks again, Roger.

-Daniel H.

Dear Rodger;

I have "Cache" in my cue. I cannot wait to read this post after I've seen the film. I always read or re-read your reviews and comments after I've viewed the film. It invariably improves my appreciation of it even when I disagree. ("Avatar" for instance. Dumbest Cameron script ever. "Lovely Bones" wasn't that bad. I'm a bull-moose Dawkins skeptic and I still enjoyed it some.)

Every now and then I'll subject someone to Haneke's "Funny Games" re-make to see when or if they will ask me to shut it off. I am pleased to say no one has lasted more than an hour ...sorry to say I watched the whole thing.

I have just finished watching "Caché" and whoaaa! What a great movie!

What was Haneke's purpose with "Cache?" - Roger

To look in the mirror and own the truth of what you see there, however unflattering:

"As seen in H.G. Clouzot's 1944 thriller Le Corbeau (now available on Criterion), France has a sizable murder of "ravens" — anonymous, denunciatory letter writers. In Caché, the weapon has been updated from anonymous letter to anonymous videotape. Apparently, the amount of letter writing worsens during times of political repression in France; Pauline Kael notes that the Gestapo threw away dumpster-loads during the occupation.

The repression at the heart of "Caché" is the Paris police's slaughter of some 40 to 400 Algerian protesters on Oct. 17, 1961. No accurate number exists yet, but the first figure is likely too low, and the last is likely too high. The matter is still only half-disinterred. The incident is so controversial that there was public grumbling from France's right-wing when a discreet plaque was dedicated to the massacred in 2001." - Richard von Busack, Metroactive Movies

As for who did it, I think the answer can be found by asking why? Which relates to the above...

Pierrot attends the same school as Walid.

I'm guessing Majid saw Georges on TV one night and upon recognizing him, the story of his tragic childhood came pouring out as he related past events to his son, Walid.

Pierrot's Dad is famous; he's on TV. And how Walid knew the guy's son went to the same school he did. Maybe they even share the same classes and stuff, etc.

Point is, Walid knows about his Dad and Georges. He tells Pierrot. One thing leads to another, and they come up with a plan! Pierrot lives within walking distance of the camera and so he's the one able to turn it on and etc.

NOTE:

The house is located on the street corner of Rue des Iris in the Cité Floréal district in Paris' 13th Arrondissement. If you stand outside their front door (with your back to the door) and look straight-up that light-colored worn cobblestone street where he parks his car, there's a tree at the far end (yes, I have looked at the Google satellite map images of that street. There's a tree.) It's the only place you could have set-up the hidden camera in order to get that exact view; which is higher and somewhat of a down-shot.

Someone was driving a car while video taping what they could see through the windshield. It's possible to drive with one hand, but it's awkward to see where you're going if you have to drive while looking through a view lens.

Walid was driving and Pierrot was filming.

Walid was able to stash the camera in the apt.

When Pierrot disappeared, he was meeting-up with Walid get the camera back. That's why he was gone for hours.

Pierrot wasn't close to his parents; they were too distracted and pre-occupied by their own bourgeois concerns/careers to notice how little he thought of them for it. When you add the discovery of what his Dad did - I think Pierrot was the one who hatched the plan (payback, revenge, make his Dad suffer, etc) and that Walid was only too happy to help.

Note: the science fiction book Pierrot is reading in his room is Chien-de-la-lune, by Eric Man. There's a clue there; smile.

Obviously, Walid didn't expect his Dad to commit suicide. And while I can't lip-read French, body language reveals all:

The gist of the conversation on the school steps, which actually starts higher-up near the doors, is that it's okay, we're good, don't sweat it, etc. Walid even gives him a parting smile.

So they're totally Zen with it. They don't have any issues with one another. Just the world their parents belonged to.

Whew! Okay, off to bed now, chuckle!

Roger -

Thanks for revisiting such a classic film that has haunted me since I've seen it. The timing of this blog is impeccable because I JUST watched this a second time last night after viewing at music box 4 years ago.

My theory last night is the same as it was originally. I believe Walid and Pierrot worked together to make the films. Majid confided to Walid the circumstances and traumatic incident in his youth. Walid being a strong willed young man has the motive and forms a friendship w/Pierrot. Pierrot appears to be substantially younger than Walid and most likely looks up to or even worships the older Walid. Pierrot, an impressionable 12 year old, may have motive with various disapointments in his father and ALSO believes his mother is having an affair with a family friend. Helping Walid with the videos is his way of saying "I see you for who you are" and plants the seeds of guilt in BOTH parents to analyze mistakes they may have made in life. Walid saying "I had nothing to do with the tapes" seems believable and he might mean in that situation that he actually didn't create them (Pierrot did) but clearly he passed along the story to Georges son.

Either way, I LOVE films that allow you to bring your own interpertation to them and keep you guessing even years later. Both Cache and Mulholland Dr were among my favorites of the decade. Roger, do have any other recommendations for films along these lines that have haunted you and kept you guessing over the years?

“I'll rule out Georges.”

hmmmmmmm.....

Images lie. History lies. We lie to ourselves.
Perhaps Georges, by way of the film, embodies those three things.
One wants to think the reason it can’t be Georges is that it is not a rational conclusion.
Is Haneke telling us that the rational ordering of images, history (memory), and conscience amounts to a bunch of lies?
And yes, Georges as the solution is intentionally problematic, as is rational (linear) analysis of a Haneke film problematic.

Mr. Ebert:

Can you actually confirm that Mr. Scorsese is planning to direct the "Cache" remake? I, too, saw it on his IMDb page as "in development" (in what role, it doesn't say) but I have not found a single report announcing that he plans on directing it. Do you know something we don't?

With Marty especially, it's a bit confusing trying to figure out what he's going to direct considering how many films he's linked to. Just recently it was "announced" that he would likely direct "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," and he's supposed to be helming the Frank Sinatra biopic, and he's been talking about "Silence" for years (and there were even casting announcements for that one!), "The Wolf of Wall Street" was announced, "The Long Play" was announced, "The Last Duel" was rumored, the Teddy Roosevelt biopic was announced, there were the one or two rumored reunions with DeNiro, etc, etc. Where does "Cache" fit in with all of this, do you know?

Sir,although the film doesn't 'conclude' all its riddles,im pretty sure that Haneke would want us to believe that georges probably deserved the treatment he got.
I personally think Walid shot those videotapes as the one that shows the way to Majid's room is shot at a height pierrot could not have shot from.
Majid can be ruled out as knowing anything about the tapes at least Before his first conversation with georges,as later georges wife says the tape ran like that for 1 hr after the conv. has ended.
Also if Majid didn't kno about the tapes and Walid was shooting those tapes wasn't Walid responsible for bringing georges back into Majid's life and so he should share the blame for his father's death?wouldn't Walid also have a 'dead man in his conscience'?

P.S.-I don't kno if you have noticed it but in the dinner party(around 20-30mins into the film) that gets disturbed by a knock on the door,when georges goes out and stands in front of a blue car,we see for a split second a shadow shifting in the reflection on the car.

"The children did it," I hear.

Oh Roger, how could you? I'd seen "Caché" so I read beyond your spoiler warning. You did not say you'd be spoiling "White Ribbon" too.

Ebert: Trust me. I didn't spoil a thing.

I like "Cache" precisely because the solution is obscure(d). Who made the tapes? Well, the word "made" reminded me of mad Bill Blake, who looks at the "fearful symmetry" of his Tyger and asks (with mingled curiosity, awe, and trepidation), "Did He who made the lamb make thee?" Neat question; in a sense, the answer is "William Blake," since Blake wrote the companion Song of Innocence, "The Lamb," and of course the Song of Experience, "The Tyger." I'll take the same answer for "Cache": He who made the film made the tapes; like Blake, Haneke is the Creator, and it's the rest of us who look on it and decide whether it is good--then live in the world created. Fine with me.

I see two options myself: 1. bad writing, or 2. an extreme post-modern interpretation in which the videos sent to Georges are the film itself, Michael Haneke's 'Cache'. This doesn't fit with anything else in the tone of the film, but it does make sense. If we have to go that far to make sense of a film, isn't something wrong?

The brilliance of this movie is not that it makes logical sense, but emotional sense. I also missed the meeting at the end my first time as well. But when I was able to rewatch that meeting, I didn't get the impression that it was a key to the mystery. It felt more like healing. Here were two families forever changed by something one person did to another. It happened and it can't be taken back. What if the two sons knew nothing of the tapes? What if they're just casual friends?

We all knew who really made the tapes and the drawings. Haneke did. He made these people examine themselves again, feel off kilter, and move the movie into action. These decisions may have permanently damaged their lives, but the pain does not have to live on through the lives of the sons.

Haneke obviously sent the tapes. It's his way of being slyly Brechtian and self-reflexive. Just like he's sending little tapes out to Pierre, he's sending one big tape out to France. Just like he's trying to interact in the lives of the actors in the film, he's trying to interact with the lives of the French.

Having seen the film a third time yesterday, I'm impressed by the many theories and possibilities Haneke actively taunts us with. As a lawyer I consider this to be a rich text that might even be worthwhile discussing in a trial advocacy course.

Allow me to bring up something I believe Haneke wants us to think about, but which I haven't seen discussed yet: the possibility that Majid's death wasn't a suicide, but rather a murder with Georges as the culprit. I know, sounds insane, but let me lay out a case (of sorts).

1. The "objective" static shot in which we see Majid commit suicide can't be taken for the gospel truth (as is par for the course with Haneke). Remember, we see two shots of Majid as a child coughing up blood, yet the rest of the story (including Georges's admission) points to Georges lying about Majid coughing up blood. We know Georges is reluctant to admit this awful truth to his wife, and when it finally comes out he is guilty about it. If Majid really did have TB, this wouldn't make sense. Thus, I believe a few of the shots are compromised and represent the fantasies and repressed thoughts of Georges.

2. After Georges returns home after Majid's death, he acts very guilty. He quietly sneaks up the stairs, goes to the bedroom, closes all the curtains and keeps the lights off, as if he doesn't want to be seen by anyone. He asks his wife to make up a story to the guests, then badgers her excessively for the details of what she told them - as if he's thinking about his alibi already. He seems to dislike his wife's explanation to Pierre that he's having a "problem." Then he sits in a chair, slumped over, as he explains his story to his wife, with his entire body language and speech affect saying "I just killed someone and I might be going to jail for a long time." His wife, who has already shown she's capable of telling when Georges is lying, seems skeptical of his story. Sure, this might all be explained as Georges being aware that the suicide would make him a suspect, but I think he's actually acting like a culprit. Did he even call the police right away? We see him leaving the apartment alone, and no police are present.

3. Later when he is confronted by Majid's son, his reaction is "I'm sorry about your father's death, but I refuse to be incriminated by you," and the way he says it rings completely false to me. Meanwhile, Majid's expression throughout the encounter seems to be saying, "I know my father didn't commit suicide. I know you're guilty."

4. We know Georges has a short temper that might lead to violence (remember the encounter with the bicyclist that almost ends in a fight?) We know he is capable of lying to others. Even as a six-year-old child he was cunning enough to come up with a series of unusual lies that led to Majid being taken away by social workers.

5. Aside from anger, his other motive: he may be afraid of the stories of his past being made public to his viewers and to the executives in charge of his show. Remember, too, that he has a new show in the works, but it's currently being scrutinized (with the decision being delayed indefinitely.) His boss also seems concerned about the whole matter. Instead of giving the tape to Georges, he "destroys" it, which struck me as particularly odd and untruthful. I think he's keeping it and showing it to the other executives who are on the fence about the new show. Georges has a reason to keep the entire back story under wraps for good.

I don't know if I even buy this theory myself, but it's something else to consider in this fascinating film.

Ebert: You approach the film from a evidential POV, which I find fascinating. I can imagine a law school exercise in which charges would be brought against either or both of the two sons, and the prosecution and defense are both limited to the film itself as the only "testimony."

Ok, that is one seriously trippy image of Michael Bach's.

So onto the film. By sheer coincidence, I saw “Caché” for the first time last Thursday night, went online the next day to read your 2006 review, and came across your Jan 13 great movie review as well. I was so excited by the timing and intrigued by the “smoking gun” that I had to watch the first part again. About twenty minutes – by my cell phone – after I started the movie, I saw something I found tremendously exciting and sent off a delirious email to Answer Man. Only problem is, I'd been interrupted a few times and had only gotten to the 10:38 mark in the film. (This I found out later, after I got the counter running.)

And what I saw at 10:38 (and again at about 13:25 in the rewind) was the obvious shadow of a large movie camera complete with tripod that shows in the headlights of Georges' car when he pulls in one night. I've since looked around the internet a bit, and it seems lots of people have seen the image. A few have wondered if it's a sloppy mistake. Some are annoyed at what they take to be a pretentious device on Haneke's part. But it excited the heck out of me. It's something Georges couldn't possibly have missed, had he and the camera been existing within the same dimension. At the same time, I'm told Haneke is too careful a director to leave a shot like that in by accident, let alone to have it show up twice.

This strengthened my initial impression of “Caché” and my feeling that Haneke sent the tapes into the fictional world of “Caché,” just as the God of the Judeo-Christian bible sent the locusts. That doesn't rule out someone in the film also being involved with them. Maybe that's a contradiction, but in my mind, when one is talking about multiple dimensions, there might be multiple answers. There's something beautiful and exciting in that possibility. For me, anyway.

And as far as who that someone(s) in the film might be, I think your reasoning makes a lot of sense. And now I have to go watch the film again. I'm turning into a movie maniac, and it's all your fault! :)

Haneke enjoys messing with people's heads. Funny Games was the same. it was a stunt and people took the bait and history just repeated itself with 'Cache'. Just accept that the tapes serve a metaphorical function and move on I say.

"What if all of the hidden camera shots were shot by an all-seeing entity like the director? Penetrating the fourth wall from the other side?
Thoughts?"

this is a theory that is gaining a bit of traction. I believe it. Haneke likes to be provocative. He set up a film in the guise of a thriller and had a completely different agenda, leaving the audience hanging, on purpose. He is the modern master of obfuscation and misdrection.

If Scorsese remakes it, it won't be like Haneke's version, and not just for Hollywood considerations either. Haneke is more of an intellectual film maker. Scorsese, in the other hand, is more instinctual. Haneke almost speaks like a social scientist in interviews. He has a more deeper understanding of human psychology, and he is intent on using that information against the viewer ;-)

fun games indeed.

I agree with the 4th wall theory above. None of the characters were responsible for the tapes. They were filmed by Haneke himself, outside of the world of the film. His choices in "Funny Games" support this theory as well.

A friend of mine a few years back made a film that was about making a film. There were several "movie within a movie within a movie" scenes. Someone at a Q&A asked him which scenes were the "real" ones. My friend replied "None of them were real. It's a movie."

Interesting thing about "Caché": it's less about the mystery and more about the allegory. It's definitely an allegory for colonialism, otherwise Majid wouldn't have been Algerian, Georges wouldn't have been French, and so on. The tapes are Haneke's version of a MacGuffin. Make something happen, even the most nonsensical of things, that will throw everything into disarray and watch what happens.

Hi Roger,

re your statement: "What Haneke has done, here and in other films, is demolish our faith in rational analysis."

Seeking to deliberately confuse or disrupt rational analysis may have been his aim but that implies that his focus is on how clever a filmmaker he is. Cleverness, when abused, tends to annoy or confuse the audience, though confusion isn't always a bad thing. He gets to fudge with the facts, revealing on what he wants. Doing that and not pissing people off too much may be a laudible achievement.

In no way does this demolish faith in rational analysis, but it does illustrate that sometimes there is no way to collect enough data for rational analysis to lead to an unambiguous solution. Your JFK assasination reference being a good example in "real life". In the fictional world of film, Cache is simply an example of deliberate obfuscation of facts - a wholly different matter.

I'm jaded enough to think that the "solution" to the misleading clues may actually have been left on the cutting room floor by accident. Or that having done so previously led to the cleverness in thinking that led to the ambiguity here.

Whether deliberate (cleverness) or accidental, we still get the feeling that we've seen a "complete" film. That no resolution of the objective mystery is satisfying, perhaps the real story is the failure of trust in the relationship.

But the discussion does inspire another viewing of the movie.

Best wishes,
Don

From a literal in the story/ plot sense, I saw the ending as possibly: 1) The start of something devious on behalf of 'Walid'-- maybe he was planning on hurting the kid, or up to something... but more likely 2) They were connected for another reason and neither knew about their father's relationship. Maybe Walid was a mentor, like a student teacher or something. Maybe his cousin or nephew or someone went to the school and they knew each other as acquaintances.

It doesn't feel like a threatening interaction, it seems harmless.

It could be that they were in cahoots, but that really doesn't make sense either. I like the other two ideas more, and I never saw Pierrot as a dangerous kid. Walid is made to be potentially dangerous, for sure.

When I watched the film the first time, on DVD, I didn't notice the interaction. The people were too small. I watched the interview with Haneke right afterwards, and of course played the last part of the film again.

It's a testament to the film, I guess, that it doesn't ultimately matter what Pierrot and Majid's connection is... but then again.... YEAH, maybe it does matter. It seems like it does. In fact, IT DOES. but we'll never know, because that is the idea behind this ending, I think.

The story is largely about guilt, I think. Georges commits a horrible act as a kid, but he is able to forget about it, and more or less forgive himself. But when he gets a sign that he has caused suffering, the guilt comes back, strong, along with a rage (which is justified because he feels he and his family are in danger) and it reminds him that he suppressed it before. He is able to justify his actions to himself, I think because he was just a kid and didn't really know how he had selfishly ruined Majid's life. But he must have thought about it over the years, even if only for seconds at a time, and it has hurt him. Sins hurt both parties involved.

I watched the film about a year ago again, and the ending was again confounding but in an odd way satisfying. What I thought to myself, both times was "Well, that's another story."....

It's a fascinating film, for a number of reasons, and I put it on my Best of the Decade list. I was actually just talking about this film last week with a friend who just watched it, and it does say something that we didn't spend much time focusing on the ending. We talked much more about the psychology of Georges, the wife, Majid, and about the way it was shot: the camera shots are deliberately uninteresting-- he makes you look at every part of the frame, searching a simplistic canvas for clues. He's saying LOOK CLOSELY, but the joke is you'll never figure it all out. Is this a life view? I think so.

I haven't seen his new film yet, but CACHE was the first and best Haneke picture I've seen, though I greatly admire most of the others I've seen by him (THE PIANO TEACHER, BENNY'S VIDEO and the original FUNNY GAMES all were tough viewings that sparked long, long conversation and ultimately respect for him as an artist). He is a filmmaker who creates conversation, sparks debate and makes us examine ourselves. He's an artist of ideas, just as post-modern novels are novels of ideas. Most of us still prefer thick, emotional realism because it's so emotionally direct and can be so joyous, but there really is something to be said for a distinctive, ice-cold provocateur like Mr. Haneke.

I love Scorsese, but doesn't he do too many remakes? Haneke is such a subtle director and so restrained that it will be interesting to see what he does Scorsese does with it. Considering how much he changed "Infernal Affairs," one really can't guess what he'll do to a much better film. I can't say I'm not stoked when it comes right down to it. It won't be an improvement, just a different take, and will probably spark all kinds of conversation. Yeah, I'm stoked.

Great post!

Mr. Ebert,

As you've said about other movies, it seems to me that "Cache" functions as a sort of lithmus test for an audience. You've reasonably pointed out that there are several possible conclusions to be drawn from the film, or none at all, and whichever you may latch on to could speak volumes about yourself as a filmgoer.

After watching the film (just the once, so far, which must be rectified) I did notice the two children speaking on the steps, assumed they must have planned and executed the recording/sending of tapes together as a punishment on Georges for his presumed arrogance. Walid would certainly have thought Georges arrogant based on his father's testimony of past events and Pierrot may have come to that conclusion simply in the misjudgment teenagers have toward their parents.

This is probably the easiest solution. To me, whether or not it is accurate is rather beside the point. I agree that there might be other possibilities, but to assume this one self-contains my enjoyment of the film. It becomes a highly intelligent thriller, with a tidy, almost missable, ending. Whereas for you, your enjoyment seems to lie in the fact that there isn't a tidiness about the movie; it's anarchic games with the audience is its primary pleasure.

The fact that both of these readings of the film, satisfactory in their own right, must be the hallmark of a great movie (and a great director). I've never heard of a similar conversation, for instance, about "Air Bud."

Thanks again for another thought-provoking post.

Good god.

Now I'm reading the bloody responses to a blog entry I'd be crazy to read and getting info I shouldn't get about a movie I never heard of till this damn blog.

It's like a wheel within a wheel. Or the circles that you find in the windmill of your mind.

Somebody stop me!

Just wanted to thank you Ebert for igniting this issue regarding the film...I am thoroughly fascinated by this movie 'Hidden'. The internet buzz that this seems to have created coincides almost exactly with my viewing of the film for the first time.

One aspect I've yet to see addressed (and its nothing to do with the tapes, so I'm sorry about that) is the arrest of Majid and his son when the are carted off to the police station...Majid & son in the back and Georges sitting up with the driver. I think this scene is crucial to the film and possibly Majid's suicide. Its almost like Majid could be vicariously reliving the murder of his own parents through this scene. This scene would be even more powerful if we were to assume that Majid really knew nothing of what was going on re Georges & the tapes. Was it not the French police that were accountable for these murders in the first place and here we have Majid in the back of a police van...possibly for reasons totally unbeknownst to him?

I'm just surprised that I've not seen it mentioned...but it could just be me with one of my theories...just thought I'd put it out there.

I have just remembered another interpretation of the last shot. It is of school steps, filled with kids. I remember thinking that the mistakes that seem like nothing in school will have devastating effects for some. That at this innocent looking, everyday-looking school, little crimes were being committed, little acts that will wound later. And that these kids have no idea how tough being an adult will be.

What a great freakin' movie!

Never seen it. Can't read the blog. Will see it soon. Commenting out of habit?

Bought my g/f that rice-cooker for Christmas. She loves it. Thanks.

Interruptus of movie at 60 minutes mark till morning, it is immensely suspenseful and enjoyable, a bit like Rear Window.

I've only tried to watch two Heneke films, the odious Funny Games, in both languages. No desire to further subject myself to this pretentious, superficially arty trickster. The fact that he is so adept at fooling the French should tell all that there is to be told. Puzzle movies almost never endure: a notable example is Solaris, which Soderberg deconstructed, in his puckish way, to a not-very-interesting shaggy-God story( Thanks, John Simon)It was understandable when undergraduates at Midwestern Universities troubled their young minds over such at coffee shops in the 60s. It's a little....retrograde, to see it happening again. Granted, its risky to extrapolate from two crummy movies when I haven't seen the others. I can't imagine Kieslowski, or the Bergman of, say, Skammen, making Funny Games.

Here at midway point and going by the title of the post it stupidly occurs to me that we ( Ebert and Rest ) are watching a video called Cache which is about some Mr X watching a video of a couple watching videos he, Mr X, has been delivering to said couple. Like Microsoft Windows.

If there be any point to that.

I have only seen the film once, at its North American premiere in Toronto, so my memory of it may be sketchy (following your Great Movies review, however, I added it to my ZipList).

I have always thought that the observer was never introduced as a character in the film. Much has been made (and said here) of the final shot. When I first saw it, I made the assumption that it was another tape being filmed, bookending with the opening shot. If this is the case, then the two sons are unaware that they too are being filmed by this unmet character.

The only other possibility I could think of was that if it was one (or both) of the sons that began the filming cycle, there may be a different observer filming this last scene we see. For example, does Georges suspect the two boys and is now watching them, thus turning the tables. After all, are we not all at times observed and observers?

Reply to: I came to this conclusion because of the perceived IMPOSSIBILITY of that first recording (the camera's POV, is shown by George's investigation of the street outside to my eyes, to be at least 10ft in the air above a car in the centre of the road, where clearly no camera could be positioned).

A standard trick of misdirection. The video shows a different house. The goal is to make the victims THINK they're under surveillance, but... how was it done? They found a house that looks the same and filmed there. They painted a mural of the inside of an apartment.

OK, looking at this from Hollywood, and maybe Scorsese's style, the wife has been having an affair with a man who is her "Soul Mate", who is consumed with lust for her, who can't stand the idea of her going home to her husband every day. He wants to create the fear that they're being stalked.

He needs a FALL GUY. He needs to point the finger at an obvious suspect, so the wife won't connect the videos to him. Hence, if you go frame by frame, you see the name of the street where the Fall Guy lives.

The audience needs to believe that the Soul Mate is acting from pure motives. ie, in Titanic, Rose is engaged, but she meets Jack Dawson and realizes, "This is the life I really want." He thinks the threat of being under surveillance will push her buttons, and make her leave her marriage.

Reply to: Ebert: That's possible. Also disturbing, because the film has set us up to expect we can deduce a solution. Most films have a POV belonging to the director, but this one, centering so much on the source of the tapes, seems to rule that out.

You've got to have a theory of the crime. Otherwise, it's a cheat. People waste their time trying to figure out the clues.

You mentioned the JFK assassination. It was a real event. If you put the clues together properly, you CAN figure it out. In a crime drama, you've got to follow the same format. You've got to work out exactly how the crime happened, and who did it. You can throw in red herrings, and misdirection, because any criminal Mastermind is going to include those as part of his plot. It's going to look like the Fall Guy did it, and 75% of a jury will always vote to convict the Fall Guy.

but, in a Scorsese movie, the audience is smarter. The audience figures out who really did it. Who had motive.

I don't think the plot in the original movie translates very well. OK, you're a boy, and there's a woman who has been hired to clean your house. You don't like her kid, but you feel a sense of duty to be civil. Then, after the woman is killed, your parents announce they're going to adopt the kid and split your inheritance with him.

I wouldn't feel a lifetime of guilt over saying "I don't want this jerk in our family." In France, maybe they're supposed to feel guilt over Algeria, but this isn't national politics. This is letting a kid you don't like move in. So, either of the two obvious suspects has a weak motive.

But the Soul Mate who's having an affair with the beautiful wife, he's got an emotional motive. It's the moment when Chris Pine and Olivia Munn split up. Or Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. We like Brad, but we're glad to see him with Angelina. He just wasn't right for Aniston... and I don't think Leo is right for, well, anyone. I like having him drown before the rescue boats arrive. Same for the marriage at the start of the movie. Let it die naturally.

The example that comes to mind is Sharon Stone's marriage to DeNiro in "Casino." Yeah, Sharon Stone is hot, but she's also high maintenance. A mob guy needs a dame who... maybe this Soul Mate is mobbed up, and lives by a Code where you get rid of your rivals. that's Classic Scorsese.

I don't like the two sons because their motive isn't clear. After your father commits suicide, doesn't that change the game?

Mr Ebert, I think you have overlooked a couple of elements. I think the movie sets up Majid as a victim in all of this, but I believe he is the one responsible for the tapes. If you go back and watch the conversations between Majid and Georges, Georges is still a little afraid of him. It's not all guilt with the twitch filled aggression that he displays, it felt more like fear was coming from Georges.

Think about it: the flashback that Georges has involving the chicken concludes with Majid coming toward him with an ax. When Georges discusses Majid with his wife, he talks about the lies that he told to have him sent away, but in his flashback we see that Majid may have had TB. Isn't it possible that Georges was scared to death of an older kid who regularly terrorized him - who has resumed that role in his life all of these years later. Has Georges been miscast as the one to blame?

Why would Majid - with a teenage/early '20s son - pick now to commit suicide? This is the only part unclear to me, if he has nothing to do with the tapes. The suicide was clearly filmed (pov of the camera falls in line with that) - who else would know to roll tape at that moment when Majid's son is nowhere in sight.

My guess is that Majid was acting alone - and not such a great guy to begin with - as his final revenge, and upon his death his son was presented with the what happened. The final scene may be depicting a new friendship found through something horrible, not co-conspirators.

If John Barth supposes that the key to the treasure is the treasure, then Haneke says: The mystery has no answer. The mystery is the answer.

I seem to be one of the few movie loves who thoroughly detests this film. Certainly much of it resides in the "unresolvability" of the story. I'm in the "don't waste my time" camp (recently brought back to my attention by the RedLetterMedia 70-minute Phantom Menace review) and for me to not have a hint of resolution thereby leaving me with a handful of characters and situations I really care nothing about...well I just felt I had wasted my time. Or rather, my time was wasted. Perhaps that's also what Haneke was going for. Maybe that could have been a pull quote for the DVD back cover - "Sure to waste your time."

But I will offer my take on the memory of the boy with blood in his mouth. First off, I do not believe Majid completely. In my mind he and/or his son are responsible for the videos. Pierrot may not be completely innocent, but I think the Majid's son is complicit.

I also believe Georges's memory is not to be trusted. They have a dreamlike quality to them and I believe that he simply made up the whole situation (or heavily embellished it) in order to get Majid thrown out. He was jealous and insecure and did not like hosting this outsider. The drawings trouble him so much because his lie(s) is/are coming back to haunt him.

The big lie clearly destroyed Majid's life or at least his maximum potential. He has never gotten over the "wrongful dismissal" and this is either his or his son's way of getting retribution.

But in the end, I really don't care because nothing in the film helped me to care anything for any of the characters. Majid is the one you feel the most empathy for, but he commits suicide before you know much about him. Ugh. Well, at least I know which Scorsese film I'm *not* seeing next year...

I was so puzzled when I saw the movie few years ago, about the exact same thing: who made the tapes? And the explanation that I like the best is that the audience did it, like, you and me and you Mr Ebert are documenting the story that is happening on the movie screen. So, viewer is at the same time a participant.I have no idea if this could be the explanation, but this solution seemed like the most logical one to me. I'm curious what is Scorsese's adaptation of the movie going to look like. Europeans do not shirk from dread heavily weighing in their movies, but Americans, not so much.

I absolutely love this film and greatly enjoy your analysis, so I hope your will forgive an obtuse question. It has maddened me since I saw the film and every time I've revisited it on DVD or in you writing.

To be blunt: If the information contained in the last shot is so crucial to the mysteries of the film, then why is do you and Haneke consider it such an achievement that so many people miss it? Why is this preferrable?

I understand this makes me sound like I'm demanding to be spoonfed information, but I assure this is not the case. I've had no trouble enjoying ambiguity in everything from Mulholland Drive to Last Year at Marienbad. I even appreciate the shot in question. But the thing is, I DID miss the meeting of the characters the first time through. When I did find out through you what I had missed my immediate reaction was that Haneke was not playing fair.

Is it not mysterious enough that these two characters know each other without making play Where's Waldo to find that out?

Well... I admit that for the most part I was fairly mystified by the film. I found it difficult to come up with any distinct answer. By the end I was a bit at a loss to even try. Not that this is any way a disparagement to the film. Cache is incredibly engrossing. I wasn't quite sure if I was off when I interpreted the ending a bit differently. I can't remember how exactly it was done (I seem to remember the final shot being of husband and wife, I guess I have that mixed up), but I got the impression at the end of finding out that the we're actually looking through the hidden camera the whole time. These clips that are sent are not very different from what we ourselves get. I felt like the whole thing was a big meditation upon the actors being themselves watched by the filmgoers. We're the hidden ones... anyways, if that's off, at least I liked it at the time. Either way it's way better than Lynch's most overrated "The Lost Highway" that's way less interesting using a similar subject matter. Marty will certainly do it pretty well. Glad he's making it. I just hope he continues with Leo. Leo would be good here... Oh yeah, and JFK is definitely one of my favorite of all time.

I was re-reading your Great Movies write-up of The Up Documentaries, which reminded me of this film. I was imagining what I would be like if I had been chosen to participate in a series like Up. Its possible that the way I live my life would be different if I knew that an audience would be watching it and judging me (and that I would have to rectify my not following up on childhood dreams). If I knew there was an audience, I might be motivated to do more volunteer work, or otherwise live a life that would more impress (or inspire, or be more admirable to) the audience.

Interesting that when the characters in Cache are being watched, it fills them with paranoia over past sins. If you know there is an audience, it changes the way you act. None of this has much to do with anything, I suspect, but just thought I'd mention it.

I believe that Caché never really ‘ends’; rather it cuts off arbitrarily. In that wide but dense take outside a school, we [almost don’t] see Pierrot and Majid’s son talk. Haneke’s parting shot is no final revelation but another secret, a hidden pact. The visual, overloaded with detail though it is, fails spectacularly as intelligence, for we can not hear the conversation. Who made the tapes?

I guess you could say the camera is nowhere in Caché because it is everywhere. The viewer is the one to whom all images are addressed and to whom all images submit themselves. We watch from the cool, unlit shed of our indifference, not unlike a shed in the old country house, a neat outlook which is the only perspective on Majid’s agonizing childhood abandonment. This archetypal traumatic scene is neither pure memory nor pure experience. That leaves us with only one possibility: It is only pure cinema.

I wrote a long essay on the film a few years back. Here it is: http://widescreenjournal.org/index.php/
journal/article/view/12/8.

Roger, don't worry about this spoiling Cache for those of us who haven't seen it yet. The above attempts at explanations are at least as incomprehensible as the movie. If anything it just makes it more of a challenge when people see it - see if we see something you all have missed. Of course it could be like "Who Shot Nice Guy Eddie?" in Reservoir Dogs - someone made a mistake in the filming and the director decided to leave it like that to add to the confusion.

I scanned quickly through the responses, so forgive me if someone's mentioned this before...

The problem I have with Walid being involved is that if the film is largely about guilt and the videos are intended to bring Georges' guilt to the surface, why does Walid also not feel responsible for his own actions leading to his father's death. Or at least we don't really see him reacting to his father's death to the same extent that he (if we go with that analysis) expects Georges to.

My way of examining the film is to accept all of the static shots as being from the same POV, and by extension the same viewer. Us, or Haneke or maybe Georges psyche...

I feel that in order for the tapes and drawings to come from a character in the film the solutions don't work, logically or for the film.

Either way, I like the film without knowing.

One pitfall with your "Majid coughing blood" as a smoking gun is this:

You also see a "flashback" of Majid decapitating a rooster, after which he approaches Georges (who is standing in the back of the "room") menacingly.

Georges explicitly admits this is a fabrication at a later point in the film. As these two scenes are presumably (excluding the fixed camera scene where Majid is taken away by car) both from Georges point of view, it stands to reason that they are both fabrications of a child's mind, in time transformed into truth.

Considering Georges admitted the rooster accident was a provocation and a fabrication after the fact further leads me to believe the scene where Majid coughs up blood is also a fabrication, portrayed as a nightmare.

Building on the theme of Guilt as Actor, the scene more than anything else, shows Georges' subconscious experiences as his comfortable live unravels.

I like Haneke. Seen three of his films(including Cache) two times each. Another once. But must admit I don't get him. Did a little looking around. Found a former student of Haneke had spent over two years on a documentary of the director. This is a quote from the him:

"I always say film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth." Godard take note.

When asked at the end if the documentarian had been able to discern anything approaching the truth concerning Haneke, her short answer was "yes and no." OK.

All very confusing. Then here Roger speaks of the likelihood of Walid moving the camera, but is less sure of Pierrot's movements at critically times. Then Roger guesses that Heneke deliberately kept some 'uncertainty' relating to such matters-the smoking gun around point 20:39- the talk of a 4th wall.

EUREKA. I begin to see. Unresolved character movement-Newton's real world laws of motion-Yet if the Uncertainty Principle rules, Newtonian law breaks down-The conundrum of Quantum Decoherence causes the real and on screen collapse of the wave function-the quantum world is then breached,where subatomic/celluloid matter is understood only within degrees of probability:waves(Walid)/particles(Pierrot)-
The smoking gun(20:39) suddenly becomes Haneke's Schrodinger's cat-The 4th dimension cracks open-truth and lies are now interchangeable. He has become the cinematic Werner Heisenberg.

Think I may have it now. Michael Haneke is first fully quantized film director.

Ebert: Ha! Now I know why I like him.

Or maybe it's just that in a world where I review dreck, he keeps me interested. Those who intensely dislike him may resent that he isn't eagerly at their service.

I have always felt that the last scene are the two sons meeting for the first time. I interpreted it as Walid meeting Pierrot as an attempt to get back at Georges or threaten him as a continuation of all that has happened.

As for who sent the tapes, I haven't seen it for awhile so I can't remember exactly who my culprit is, but I've felt it is someone who works at Georges TV show. There is one brief line I think towards the end where it pans over this character in the control room(?) which made me think it was him.

My reading of the film made me think that Haneke is showing that Georges is so hung up on his past that he is missing who is actually terrorizing him.

I just watched Cache last week and it is fresh in my mind. A few thoughts:

The scene at 20:39 shows Majid as a child with a bloody mouth and holding something in his hand. It looks to me like he could be holding a tooth. Could Georges have really seen Majid with blood on his mouth from a lost tooth that had nothing to do with possible TB?

The tape showing the exterior of Georges' childhood home is taken from the interior of a car. Majid doesn't seem like he would be able to afford a car based on his living situation and wardrobe. Majid's son is never seen driving a car (though that doesn't mean he doesn't have one or couldn't have rented one). The car definitely rules out Pierrot as the videographer.

When I saw the last scene my first thought was that Majid's son was befriending Pierrot in order to seek revenge for his father's death. Having just lost his father I thought Majid's son's manner too nonchalant to be anything but an act meant to eventually lure Pierrot into danger. On the DVD, Haneke says that the story does not end when the movie ends.

Other suspects: Pierre, Pierre's wife, Georges' boss, Georges' mother, or the woman who brings Pierrot home when he's missing.

Finally, no matter who sent the tapes, it doesn't change one single thing about the movie. It's irrelevant to the story.

My theory was, and still is, that the person who videotapes events is unknown. A non-character. The camera in the apartment has been surreptitiously hidden there, just as the camera across the street from the apartment. Might as well have been placed there by God.

The meeting of the two kids at the end suggests something, but perhaps nothing more than they are being watched now.

Roger discounts my theory as the least plausible because it doesn't hold to his rules of film-making success.

I don't really care. I'd have to watch the film again, not as someone watching a film, but, rather, as some sort of clinician. I'm not interested in that. I trust my instincts.

The film is about guilt, trust, paranoia, and consequences. it says, to me, that even when I think I can rationalize my own actions, someone else has been watching me. Seen from another vantage point, are my own actions suspect?

I based my impression of CACHE on an admittedly weak knowledge of France's relationship with immigrants. It seemed to me to be an allegory. You are France. I am The Truth. I am calling you on your history. Deal with me, if you are able. Your children are The Future. I have my eye on them as well.

I'll revisit the subject when Scorsese adapts it for America.

I hungrily took the DVD out to view the 'smoking gun' shot after reading your article in the Great Movies section. Ended up watching the movie from the beginning. Well, no 'smoking gun' for me, I am afraid. The shot preceding the scene where one sees young Majid bleeding from the mouth is a long shot from George's bed room out on to the street. This shot is later repeated when George looks out from his bedroom window before he goes to bed. The shot of young Majid bleeding from the mouth is in a room in George's parents' home. You see the same room later when George visits his mother. So the moral of the story is that the preceding shot of George's bed room window just establishes the fact that George is sleeping and shot of young Majid bleeding is in fact his dream. He later tells his mother as much. I don't think the movie has a neatly tied solution and I for one like it as is.

Vijay

I have never, and doubt I will ever, "get" the work of Michael Haneke. I gave both Cache and Code Unknown my undivided attention, and they did nothing for me. With that said, your article has at least come close to convincing me that they weren't "pointless"

All right. I pretty much read the first two paragraphs, and then I pulled back. Ever since reading your review of The White Ribbon, I've wanted to watch Cache. But unfortunately, I can't find it on any video streaming sites(kind of lame, I know, but we don't have a good selection of video rentals here, only get two movies in the theater at a time, and pretty sure netflix doesn't deliver to American Samoa). Kudos to Scorcese for giving me a better opportunity to watch the movie, somewhere down the line!

I'll just come out and say it:

Scorsese will do nothing but embarrass himself trying to re-make/re-imagine/rip-off a Haneke film.

Don't mess with a masterpiece.

In season two of "Dexter" the cops discover where serial killer/Miami Police blood-spatter expert Dexter Morgan, has been dumping his body bags; seems the Bay wasn't as deep as he thought. At which point the FBI show-up with a task force to investigate the "Bay Harbor Butcher."

And because that's Dexter and his job makes him privy to their findings, he orchestrates a clever ruse to throw them off the track. Ie: a barrage of conflicting information in the guise of a manifesto - and inspired by examples he found on the internet which he then compiled; smile.

It works. The detectives spin-off in different directions for seeing all the parts of the elephant without realize that's what they're looking at.

Until suddenly a light goes on above Debra Morgan's head! Dexter's sister ironically seeing what her brother had devised to escape their detection.

It's a giant cluster-f*ck.

Or as Roger calls it "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."

I think Heneke wants the French to see what they don't or refuse to, about themselves. And because they love to mentally chew on a thing, he gives them a cluster F. Knowing that the quickest way to get their attention is to be "seemingly" obtuse.

Ie: he understands the French very well. :)

I'd never seen it before and intrigued, "acquired it" last night after reading Roger's entry. So it's totally fresh in my mind. It's also in a form which allows me to go back and check stuff afterward. I think that makes a difference and serves to undermine the mystery, as you end-up second-guessing yourself "less" now. Ie: did I see that? Rewind. Yes I did.

The French are more comfortable pointing a finger at others than at themselves. They know they've got a colonial past but they also know they embraced American Jazz artists back in the day, and thus view themselves in a better light. But that was before Algerians began to immigrate to France through the port of Marseilles.

"Beur". The term is pejorative and colloquial.

Albeit French-born, descendants of North Africa immigrants are not recognized by the mainstream French as being "French." The term was coined from the word arabe, which means Arabic. And to this day they still suffer discrimination re: access to employment/housing.

In America, it's been about white vs. black.
In France, it's French and North African.

And the French have resisted seeing that parallel. Heneke found a way to show it to them by making them dig for it. And in the scene with the knife inside Majid's apartment, he literally cuts to the heart of the matter:

"Thanks for coming. Come in." - Majid
"What's this all about?" - Georges
"Sit down."
"No, I won't. What do you want?!"
"I truly had no idea about the tapes."
"Is that all??"
"I called you, because I wanted you to be present..."

And that's why I think it's a brilliant film.

Majid is Algeria and Georges is France.

We have two guidelines. First, the original movie. No matter how much a screenwriter changes the script, the director can always watch the original and think, "That's how it should be done."

Second, Martin Scorsese won Best Director for "The Departed," which Richard Roeper named his Best Film of 2006.

"The Departed" was based on a trilogy of Hong Kong films with the awkward title (English translation) of "Infernal Affairs I, II and III" ...

WIKI: Andrew Lau, the co-director of Infernal Affairs, was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily. "Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture" and "The Departed was too long and it felt as if Hollywood had combined all three Infernal Affairs movies together..." and "combining the two female characters into one isn't as good as in the original."

Psychiatrist Madolyn Madden was played by actress Vera Farmiga (Currently George Clooney's love interest Alex Goran in "Up In The Air").

"The Departed" also won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Here's a sample of the dialogue given to Jack Nicholson's crime boss:

I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. Years ago we had the church. That was only a way of saying - we had each other. The Knights of Columbus were real head-breakers; true guineas. They took over their piece of the city. Twenty years after an Irishman couldn't get a fucking job, we had the presidency. May he rest in peace. That's what the niggers don't realize. If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.

Could have easily come from Raging Bull or Goodfellas or even Casino. Do we want this stock Scorsese character, the paternal crime boss, in this movie?

I'd rather turn it into "The Exorcist." Someone has been watching and making videos. The wife feels uneasy. Well, uneasy is a good start, but we want to be terrified by what we see when Father Damien opens that frackin' door to Regan's bedroom...

The husband (DiCaprio) is off on some guilt trip, looking for clues in the videos, while the wife feels our emotions for us. She's scared. Now, we just have to provide something that really scares all of us.

(I know this gets away from the Original, but as I said, the DVD is always going to be there.) One of the rules allows us to increase the suspense and danger to the breaking point... and, in fact, to get physical with DiCaprio and send him to the hospital...

In my version, DiCaprio follows the trail to the apartment and is surprised to find out it belongs to Majid. but Majid isn't happy to see him. This guy holds a grudge. He doesn't know anything about a video, but he's been falsely accused by this guy before and suffered greatly because of it. Would Majid sneak out that night and fire a few shots through a car window as a warning to stay away? And the Soul Mate perceives Majid as a danger to Anne, his true love, and... well, is he mobbed up? Three guys put a pillow case over Majid's head and stuff him in the trunk of a car?

I think the ending should be... the audience knows the Soul Mate was behind the video tape, but no one else does. And he gets away with it. At the end, he gets the girl and they live happily ever after. Because he was doing it for the right reasons. He wasn't spying as much as he was painting and building a set that looked like a man's apartment, and filmed a video using only the set and some outdoor locations, and he fooled everyone into thinking "There's no way any person could have filmed that!"

If the movie is about the end of a marriage, does the audience want to see the wife move forward into a new relationship? The trick would be, even though we know the new guy has crossed the line - like Matthew Broderick did in a movie with Meg Ryan? - we need to believe in our hearts that the wife has found a new guy who loves her more, a lot more... rather like Rick Blaine deciding to send Ilsa away on the plane with Victor Laslo. Yes, condemning her to a life as "Mrs. Laslo." Ugh.

This is called brainstorming. Looking at "what is" and asking "What should it be?" Lots of scripts never get enough of this.

Roger, you make this film sound as intriguing as that OTHER great mystery movie that seems to have no answers to its riddles, Mulholland Dr., currently (and deservedly) getting its props as one of the best of the decade. However, I am not sure that I would have the patience to sit through Cache. I'll have to think about it. Speaking of Mulholland Dr., it would be great if you could provide that film with as much analysis as Cache in a separate journal posting. It could certainly use more exposure. Thank you for your writing.

the flaw is the art. it would be easy to make such a film with a no-flaw solution. you write what you want and make sure it's all covered. what's difficult is to make something that cannot be solved, so that every approach has a crack in the road. it'll look like an m.c. escher picture of a lizard eating itself. or maybe it'll look like an unsolved assassination.

I think that it is entirely possible that Walid is the appropriate culprit. It is the option that makes the most sense. However, a friend of mine pointed out that in all probability the film is exactly like the joke told at the dinner table. It is a joke without a punch-line, something to deter the audience's concentration. I think the film is perhaps more about the distrust between Georges and Anne and how they're lives have been disrupted by these tapes.

Hi Mr. Ebert,

I am one of your Canadian fans, I always enjoy reading your reviews, they are very helpful when I am choosing what films to watch.

Coincidentally, Cache was shown on public television here in Canada this past weekend, and it has generated a lot of discussion amongst my friends and I about the meaning of the film. Your commentary provides a lot of fascinating insights.

I just wanted to mention that I was very interested in the part of the film showing the dinner party, where they are discussing a couple that had broken up, and Georges asks ?Pierre something about wasn't the male friend making a film? Hmmmm, it made me wonder about these unseen characters.

I found that Pierre also had motive to do the filming, and may have found out about Georges's past and used it to his advantage. It made the most sense to me that Pierre would want to embarrass and unsettle Georges, and inform and frighten Anne, all to his benefit given Pierre's romantic relationship with Anne.

Two other quick thoughts - perhaps the last image is also part of Georges' dream, which was my original interpretation, and he projects his concern that his son should ever meet Majid's son into his dreamworld? Also, it is notable that Anne's character seems to be left out of the analysis, other than we don't know what is happening in her "hidden" life. But does she represent the role of women in the past horrors of France and Algeria? She seems quite passive and emotional to me, anyone else have any thoughts on her character?

Please keep up the intriguing and delightful reviews Mr. Ebert!

...why do you need an establishing shot there? The next shot takes us away, and the shot after that is obviously the next day. All the "establishing shot" establishes is itself. Or maybe I'm missing something.

There are only two shots between the shot of the postcard with the boy spitting blood (that Pierrot gives Georges in the car) and the next morning, when Georges takes Pierrot back to school: 1) the nighttime shot of the street; and 2) what you call the "smoking gun" shot of the boy spitting blood. So, this shot of the street "establishes" several things: 1) that it's night, so that the next shot can flow out of it and have the desired disorienting effect; 2) that time has passed since he previous shot in the car, creating a bridge to the next morning. The shot gets us looking and listening for "clues"; then we're startled and thrown off by the shot of the boy (we don't know where it fits into the movie at that point); and then it's daylight and Georges and Pierrot are getting back into the car -- on that same street. It's the perfect shot to go right there, between the two images of the boy spitting blood, on the postcard and in Georges' dream/memory. A direct cut would have called too much attention to itself.

Mr. Ebert, you replied to Rolan Schott:

Ebert: A most perceptive reading. And, yes, that tape seems to materialize.
What bothers me about the Haneke-as-deus theory is that it introduces a wild card. It essentially means that no analysis of the film is relevant, because nothing need make sense and no character actions need be significant.
Therefore, the film would have the appearance of a whodunit but with no who and no dunnit.

I personally consider Cache one of the best films of the decade and have come to the same conclusion than Rolan Schott, to the point that the more I talk about it the more convinced I am of it. Nevertheless, you remain sceptic to the theory.

I think the main problem with your analysis is not in the analysis but in your perspective, since, caché is not by any means a whodunit. It is a film about gilt, about one man's past actions and his being forced to confront them. It is a political metaphor. One indeed, disguised as a whodunit. One could even say the tapes and drawings are mere macguffins to get the action started; to get this man to confront that which his privileged life has led him to forget without consequences... until now.

You say the Haneke-as-deus theory "means that no analysis of the film is relevant, because nothing need make sense" on the contrary I think it is the only theory that makes perfect sense of it all.

And by the way, why on earth is Scorsese remaking this film??!! Ridiculous and sad, sad news.

@ Joe Webb wrote:

"But in the end, I really don't care because nothing in the film helped me to care anything for any of the characters. Majid is the one you feel the most empathy for, but he commits suicide before you know much about him. Ugh. Well, at least I know which Scorsese film I'm *not* seeing next year..."

Really? You weren't moved by the clear disparity between George and Majid's circumstances? You couldn't put yourself in Walid's shoes and imagine life in Paris as the son of man from North Africa and all that that implies..?

You don't remember how George treated the guy on the bike outside the Police station?

Majid's parents lived and worked as laborers on a country estate owned and run by George's family. They were subsequently killed in the "Paris massacre" of 1961:

During the Algerian War (1954–62) on October 17, 1961 and under orders from Maurice Papon (the head of the Parisian police) the police attacked a peaceful but illegal demonstration of around 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians. Estimates vary, but it's assumed as many as 200 were killed.

What happened?

In a bid to end the demonstrations, Papon directed a group of officers at one station to do whatever was necessary to get results and told them not to worry about the possibility of prosecution afterward; their backs were covered.

Many demonstrators died as a result when they were violently herded by police into the River Seine. Some were actually thrown from bridges after being beaten unconscious, while others were killed outside Paris police headquarters in the courtyard, upon their arrest and arrival. Officers who participated in the courtyard killings sought to avoid detection by removing any I.D. from their uniforms. Policemen shocked by the brutally they saw appealed to Senior officers but they ignored their pleas and allowed it to continue. Silence regarding these events was enforced by threats of reprisals from participating officers.

That's how Majid lost his mom and dad.

Feeling terrible for poor Majid, Georges Laurent's parents decide to adopt him.

And then here comes Georges and he doesn't want to share.

Majid gets kicked when he's down. Thanks to Georges, he's sent away and for something he didn't do. He's sent to a Orphanage where cruelty visits him daily and kindness never comes. He's betrayed by the promise of a better life - the one his parents reached for and which turned out to be a bitter lie.

So much for "Liberty, equality, fraternity" (brotherhood) - the national motto of France.

Where does he live now, 40 yrs later? What sort of education do you think he got? Or job? What does his apartment look like? How poor do you think he is? Where's Waled's mom..? And what do you think it was like, growing up with a Dad like Majid, eh? A guy with a crushed soul?

"Majid is the one you feel the most empathy for, but he commits suicide before you know much about him."

That's what you wrote. But dude; since when did you have to know things before you could sense and feel them?

As for Scorsese, I guess a remake appealed to him because you've got the State of Liberty and all that implies and yet... Arab immigrants, eh?

I remember in the interview on the DVD Haneke saying, "Truth is contradictory."

This could have been on its movie poster (and a rare case where the poster ACTUALLY LIVES UP TO ITS TAG LINE!)

Aside from that tag line, it is also about Sin and here's a sermon about this by Paul Tillich titled:

"Escape from God"

http://www.godweb.org/shaking.htm

Here's an excerpt from the sermon, that is appropriate for this discussion:

"Let us therefore forget these concepts, as concepts, and try to find their genuine meaning within our own experience. We all know that we cannot separate ourselves at any time from the world to which we belong. There is no ultimate privacy or final isolation. We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us, and that demands response from us. The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to mankind, to the universe, and to the Ground of all being, the aim of our life. Nothing can be hidden ultimately. It is always reflected in the mirror in which nothing can be concealed. Does anybody really believe that his most secret thoughts and desires are not manifest in the whole of being, or that the events within the darkness of his subconscious or in the isolation of his consciousness do not produce eternal repercussions? Does anybody really believe that he can escape from the responsibility for what he has done and thought in secret?"

I've seen the film at least three times and love it, enigma and all. I finally came to the conclusion that the recordings were being made by someone else. a characters NOT seen in the film, in effect that the delivery of the recordings and the discovery of the family secrets was just an interesting coincidence. And a danger of life in the public eye... Plus, my solution makes the film that much more haunting if not creepy, and totally enjoyable!

Truth Is Contradictory

sounds like the perfect tagline for this movie (words Haneke used in DVD interview)

Other taglines:

Fast and Furious:

New Model. Original Parts.

or

New Model. Still Mostly The Same Parts.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon:

The Next Chapter Begins

or

The Next Chapter Begins...Where It's Only About HIS Goals

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen:

Revenge Is Coming.

or

Revenge Is Coming...On Your Leg...Down Fido

Thanks Roger. You've really taken the top of my head off with this piece. I mean, I thought I got it when I saw it. I saw the two kids talking and went, ah ha. But I was too dim to ask myself any of these questions you bring up. Now I definitely have to see it again.

And I'd love to see a Scorsese version. Going by what he did to Infernal Affairs, it's safe to postulate, I think, that he wouldn't make his version any simpler than the original.

I dont know if this has already been covered in the comments but I went through this same struggle for days about the person who actually delivers the tapes. It could be that the film evolves its script in the viewer's mind after having seen it. Which is why you put up your own evolution of the script here so eloquently. It could also be possible that Haneke is the one who delivers the tapes, the tape is a metaphor about the film itself. Haneke is exploring the divide between Algerian and French communities back in 1960. George and Majid represent the French and Algerian communities respectively. If you observe George's mother is warm and has good feelings about Majid ( A metaphor of the earlier generation sharing cordial relation with Algeria)All of this could be a political/cultural guilt conscience melting pot and Haneke seeks to resolve by sending the tape. By the way did you ever feel that Pierrot's swimming instructor was actually Walid?

Coincidentally, this film was shown by my public broadcasting network (Television Ontario) just this past Saturday. They usually show two or three films based on a similar theme or concept. Cache was paired with Lumet's The Anderson Tapes for a showcase on movies about surveillance. What struck me most about this film was actually due to an error from the broadcaster's end. For no apparent reason, at the one hour mark, the film switched from a full screen mode to a letterboxed widescreen mode. I found this particularly convenient for a film where point of view and angles mean so much.

At the end of the day, however, I found the film's commentary on colonialism more intriguing than the mystery of the tape creator's identity.

According to Aroon, then, there could be a strong subjective component in this film, or at least one interpretation of it could work that way. Any time Georges is not present, it could be his fantasy about what's going on, even? Does that fit for all the situations?

Since Georges feels like a cipher sometimes, as the focus of the film through which all other characters are seen, it would be fascinating to look at it this way and see if it worked.

I can't better the analysis of the central mysteries of the movie provided by Roger, but simply have two observations. The first - no matter how many times I see or ponder CACHE, I'm continually struck by the compositional brilliance of the final shot, with my attention distracted by the figure in the foreground in exactly the manner described by Rog. It's a remarkable cinematic card trick, with the audience the unknowing dupe.

Second - Scorsese is probably the only director who could do an interesting remake of CACHE, as much of his own creativity stems from his own awareness of his own cinephilic tendencies. Even a for-the-studio work like CAPE FEAR was reinvented by him as an oblique study on genre imagery, with De Niro dressing up like Norman Bates' mother, Saul Bass titles linking back to earlier thrillers and Bernstein's reprised score providing a literal haunting of the film by its own past. CACHE offers a multitude of opportunities for Scorsese to stroke his mojo regarding voyeurism, cinephilia, obsession and men under pressure. (All that noted I imagine De Palma back in his prime could have done something with a CACHE remake, but I think those days are long gone). Scorsese's talent is broad enough that his films speak to audiences, to other directors through a tacit level of stylistic communication from director to director, and to himself. A dull 'remake' of CACHE would go the Gus Van Sant route and deal the same hand of tricks we've already witnessed. My guess is that Scorsese will clearly see the window of opportunity the basic premise allows, and will run with it for all he's worth.

All that noted I'd still prefer it if he did SILENCE before CACHE. Isn't SHUTTER ISLAND meant to be one of his semi-frequent offerings to the studio to grease the wheels for more personal projects? Do SILENCE, Marty, and maybe another history of cinema documentary, and then jump into CACHE. Also, if anyone reading this hasn't yet seen Haneke's original CACHE, what the **** are you waiting for??!

What's in the box? Who knows? Doesn't matter, you say. Same thing here. Who knows? Doesn't matter. Its not what the movie is about. The movie isn't about what's in the box, and its not actually about who sent the videos.

Yous ay: "The composition is a subtle achievement: Most of us notice them, but Haneke does nothing obvious to draw attention to them." Mamet might argue differently, as the camera, in his mind, should focus on the primary movement. The fact that a lot of people missed it is an indication that the shot doesn't achieve what Haneke wanted. But there's been some long analysis and discussion on that shot, including in Sight & Sound, so I'll leave that one undecided.

The key to all of what you said is 'so what?' The 'so what?' is, was this an effective movie or not? Did it achieve what Haneke wanted to achieve (which he describes on the DVD exactly what he wanted to achieve). I think that the confusion of the tapes is a purposeful effect, and while its a thought process as we saw it wondering, the movie wants us to be confused as our memories are confusing, and sometimes our memories are confusing because real life is confusing. How can we trust what we remember? Especially when our life makes us feel guilt? Sure the guilt stays with us, but reflecting back, after bundling it all up, our memories are tricky things and can play out as we want to remember it, rather than as it actually was, even if that means wanting to suffer. I've read a study that showed that you can manipulate people into believing a person was a murder and having that replace their actual memory but be just as clear and true for the person. Its what lawyers and detectives do.

p.s. The White Ribbon isn't released for most us, yet.

Stanley Rumm: The movie is not about the treatment of Algerians, so much as the French people who lived at that time removing it from their collective concious-state, and conscience.

Thank you for this article Roger. Caché is probably my favourite movies of all time (apart from Mulholland Drive). But I think you're missing an important point Haneke is trying to make with this movie, which is about the nature of film itself, and how its language has become so firmly embedded in our collective mind that we've become sort of oblivious of the rules involved.

I actually realised this when reading your great movie review of Rear Window. In that review, you comment how Rear Window is like a feature length demonstration of how to use editing to suggest emotions, motives, and plot. What LB Jeffries witnesses from his apartment are "scenes" suggesting murder. At the end, this turns out to have been a correct interpretation. Caché takes this one step further. The scenes still seem to suggest something, but what?

Haneke's strategy is to present his movies like criminal cases. It's like he says "ok, here's exhibit A: scene 1". The problem is that the evidence is always circumstantial and we can never be sure what "crime" (if any) he is pointing to. It's a maddeningly effective approach to filmmaking.

Here, I believe he is ultimately commenting how "editing" is not a process exclusive to film. We all edit in the way we juxtapose fragments in a way that makes sense of the world. However, not only is this a false representation of reality, this strategy becomes problematic when the information can no longer be pasted together in a meaningful way, which is the discomfort that the characters in Caché are increasingly confronted with. Caché repeats this theme on multiple layers:

* Georges and Anne receive tapes pointing to "something" but they don't know what it is
* we, the viewer, watch a movie pointing to a plot but we're not sure what it is, on top of our shared confusion with the characters regarding the tapes
* The behaviour of each of the characters suggests something about their motives and their state of mind. Not only do they fail to read each other properly, we can't make that much more sense out of Georges' or Pierrot's behaviour either.
* In the background, we frequently see fragments of the news on tv, edited reports on world events.
* At one point, we see Georges himself distorting reality when he is editing his television show.

In other words: not only are we constantly fed an edited version of reality, we actively edit reality ourselves.

Also, on the subject of Pierrot's involvement:
* there is one tape that could not possibly have been delivered by anyone other than Pierrot
* why would a child not be able to operate a camera? Look for the scene of Pierrot's swimming competition. Georges and Anne are literally surrounded by children operating camera's.

And concerning Majid:
* in their first conversation, Majid offers Georges a chair in the middle of the room. Later, we find out that the camera was pointed directly at this chair. Coincidence?
* I also find it amusing how reviewers seem to agree that they believe Majid when he denies his involvement, when this notion completely passes over the fact that this man is being played by an actor! If Maurice Benichou can lie with that much conviction, why couldn't Majid...?

Lies at 24 frames per second indeed.

Regards, Ben

I imagine that reading this write-up evokes what it must be like to attend those all-day screenings of movies where you and other film lovers would pick a movie and spend all day watching it, freezing it from time to time and discussing the shots in detail.

Or did I imagine that such a thing exists? If it doesn't exist, it should.

4th wall theorist rollan schott asks: How did the video tape arrive at a position that it could not have arrived at until after Georges opened the door? Who did we miss? Who snuck past the camera?

Georges did it.

A post on IMDB claims this:
Interviewer: “Having seen Caché several times, and having carefully studied the camera placement in the footage that’s sent to the couple, I’ve come to the conclusion that you, Haneke, are the one who sent the tapes, because it is physically impossible for them to have been sent by any of the actual characters!”
Haneke: “No, they were sent by a character.”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/board/nest/155441150?d=155441813&p=1#155441813

I don’t have access to the interviews, but they are here:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/people/295

I always interpreted the last shot (yes, I did see the two boys speaking with each other) as meaning --- whoever was doing the videotaping and sending the tapes, is STILL watching the family. I suppose one could argue that Walid setup the shot by first setting up the camera, then going to speak to Pierrot... but that was not my feeling. I got the feeling that "someone else" had been watching all along, manipulating the sequence of events.

Perhaps the camera and the videotapes are just a representation of Georges' conscience... a physical manifestation of his repressed guilt. Repressed guilt (ie, the "cache") seems to be the theme of the movie.

It's a very absorbing thriller and a visually elegant film. The suspense and fear build up, but not to the heart pounding degree of Hitchcock. I was expecting just one more tape to arrive, but that would have been excessive.

I'm rather humbled by the microscopic depth of plot analysis in your three writings about the movie, as well as in the string above, which is worthy of a Shakespearean play.

This is the first film from Haneke I have seen. Normally, I would have left the question mark hanging, as an integral part of the film, or turned to some one who had figured it out.

In any case, after my single view, let me attempt a diagnosis, evidentially, rather than frame-based, which would require a multiple view. Assuming a framework of Newtonian laws, I find it wisest and convenient to assume the correctness of your considered conclusion ( Newton: "I see far because I stand on the shoulders of giants" ) that non of the three "suspects" could have planted the contraband. By the quoted law of cinema, outsiders are non-admissible. As you again state, Haneke is a serious and thorough person, so the ambiguities, if any, are intentional. So perhaps the movie makes sense about the behaviour of human beings under a given set of circumstances ( eg ghost in Hamlet ) rather than how these circumstances come about.

Hopefully, I have spared myself the mental exercise which the movie probably deserves.

Tolstoi: " Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two plus two is four"

What is clear is that it's a beautiful film, soft and surgical, coiled ( your word ) and quiet.

With this rich field of debate, I start another view.

Great entry Roger! I'm thinking though that the film is already aware that there is no explanation for the person(s) guilty of planting the camera and drawings. The video recordings it seems is a contrived device, that may be interpreted as metaphorical in nature. I believe it is most likely a pure device, cinematic invention that has no basis, i.e. contrivance. That is why it is different from the JFK assasination, it is fictional, though I love your analogy and it's true that enigma attracts very well. But I feel the film because of its contrivance is a mess. In my interpretation, the film suggests that perhaps that the videotape/drawing terrorization is not neccessarily related to George's past with Majid, but that the videos themselves inspire Georges to confront his past, which is the real point and meaning of the set up. But of course the film intends on letting us not so much doubt to two are connected. The real culprit of the videptaper is THE FILM ITSELF, not any characters in the world of the film or actual "people" witholded to us in the film. I disapprove of the last shot of the film because I failed to see the 2 boys. Because of that it is inaccessable, yet there's no reason for the inaccessability of the shot. The only meaning I get from that shot is it reminds me of the last shot in "Time of the Wolf", from the train window, which to me evoked a mysterious and estranged sense of hopefulness, which felt poetic and lovely in a weird way---perhaps the sons being friends is the film's way of showing a hopefulness by the fact that these 2 boys could be friends, and how they could be friends in the world we live in now, despite the past. Why do I dislike this movie? Because through the videotape scenario it became surprisingly distasteful to direct us to the story of Georges and Majid, but the emotional meaning of their past seems strangely empty because of the way the plot blatantly takes us there, contriving us there. This device didn't work for me at all, because the Majid backstory seems like the excuse for the videptaping, whereas I think the film would do well to intend on having the videptaping be the excuse to evoke the backstory. What's worst is that the videptaping suspect distracts us from the backstory, yet there's obviously no explanation for the videptaping. Therefore I felt there was no sense in caring for the story. That's just what I truly got from the movie! Silly isn't it? Actually that's exactly what Cache is, a really silly film.

I can't help but wonder: if the sons are the "culprits," who, in the much-discussed final shot of the school steps, is filming them? It, too, is a lengthy, static, unmoving shot, just like we have seen in all the tapes Georges has received...

Reply to: Ebert: What if there's not an answer? What if that makes it a better film? Martin Scorsese has optioned it for an American version. We can ask (the questions) now.

I think "story" is the most fascinating aspect of film.

Reply to: Marie Haws: If you strip away the technology, there's not much left worth praising as the story elements for "Avatar" are nothing new and the dialogue often cringe-worthy.

Reply to: Matt K: The combination of pathetic, corny dialogue along with a cliche, unoriginal (The Last Samurai meets outer space) and predictable plot.... If graphics are evolving to become more important than smart, complex, and meaningful acting/writing,

Roger asked a question. Should Scorsese's remake keep the conceit of not giving the audience an answer, of cheating by eliminating each character as a source of the video tapes? My first answer was, a Scorsese movie will re-think the plot. But maybe "Cache" should keep that conceit?

Today, there's a conflict between Islam and Christianity. I'm not sure if "Algerian" meant Muslim in this movie. But this would be a bold, ground-breaking subject for a Hollywood remake. The mobsters who run Boston/Chicago/Vegas aren't politically correct. If a rival group causes trouble, there's retaliation, whether it's Jamaican gangs or Russian gangs or Islamic fanatics. Protect your turf.

So, yeah, there's a great story here. And we shouldn't be afraid to search for it. James Cameron said, "My ideas are good enough" and he's selling tons of tickets and winning awards. Did the story sink? Or did the story actually succeed and we don't appreciate why it did.

In "Cache," the Leonardo DiCarpio character is led to an apartment, where a man swears he had nothing to do with the video tapes and then, I believe, cuts his own throat? That's an amateur mistake. Let's throw in something exciting where it doesn't belong. Why? Because we're French.

Some Hollywood directors would have those two boys sitting on the steps in the last shot pull out Mac-9's and go after each other. And then, the real villain would step from behind a door and kill the survivor. (Oops. SPOILERS for "The Departed.)

Scorsese creates powerful, iconic characters. Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull." (OK, they're all played by DeNiro, but still.) This movie cries out for "The two best characters Scorsese ever created." Heroes who go through a trial of fire and barely make it out alive. In a French movie, the wife can pout and quote philosophy and get away with it. In a Scorsese film, she's got to have depth. She's got to be challenged. If the plot says "video tapes suggest they're being watched," then make that scary and creepy enough to push them into some action....

The FBI could have Majid under surveillance. One of the FBI agents could pretend he's a "stalker" and get Georges to go over to Majid's and start a conversation that might give the FBI enough to arrest him. Roger limited his investigation to characters we met in the movie, but Scorsese wouldn't. He's going to bring in a crime boss and underlings who want a bigger cut and FBI agents trying to take them down.

If you're going to give an opinion, give it now, before they start filming. It's just too easy to watch a movie like "The Departed" or "Avatar" and say, "You did it wrong." Try saying that BEFORE you write the script...

They call it "entertainment industry." If the system doesn't produce great movies, the industry slows down. Everybody loses. Where are the next great movies coming from? Hopefully, from people who have a vision of what could be, not what they watched on Blu-ray last night....

Dark Horizons has "the films of 2010" posted and predicts "Iron Man 2" will be the top grosser. A sequel? Based on a comic book that's been around for 30 years?

Before you complain about "Avatar," remember that it's Part One of Three. Cameron is doing the "Star Wars Trilogy" think, where you can't see the whole story until the third one ends. Cameron said there were shots left in "Avatar," pushing the run time, as foundation for the sequels. How does the religion of the Na'vi change after the Sky People destroy the Tree of Life? Where is the pivotal event in "Cache" that triggers those kinds of major changes in the lives of the characters? Making Majid more like Maj. Hasan could do it.

The more it gets explained, the more confusing it gets...but its still a great movie

"Consider the role of the two young men in Funny People who invade the summer home of the family."

Is that the scene where Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill come to Adam Sandler's ex-wife's house to wreak havoc on her new life with Eric Bana?

One of these days, Mr. Ebert will comment on one of my posts.

Then, I'll feel my internet experience has meant something.

Loving this post and thread.

I don't think there's an answer. As in, THE Answer. Haneke has removed everything from his films that would permit an explanation. As he has said in interviews, the answers were there in the stories, in the early versions of the films. He removes those elements that provide answers. And what I appreciate most is that he doesn't replace the explicit material with questions that offer clues. His films invite but refuse to insist. I appreciate this.

It's a claim he's making about the tyranny of the director's vision. And with Cache or White Ribbon, we can apply this to historiography. Or, we can say it makes us--the audience--complicit in the narrative, the events, the development of themes, the creation of meaning, the significance of commonly used images and symbols.

It can be explicit as in The Seventh Continent and Funny Games or elusive as in Cache and The White Ribbon.

Movie audiences are rigidly habituated to see film, believe what the director presents us, possibly read criticism and believe what the critics write. And that's how we talk about film and the film-going experience. Haneke's decision to trouble this, to throw a wrench into the works, requires us to question the director, the photographer, the editor, the actors, the critics, and the audience, et al.

It's serious business. Other directors attempt to accomplish this. They meet varying degrees success. I think Lars Von Trier, for example, fails and ends up not being able to do much more than play tricks and tease and torment his audiences. Antichrist, for me, is an example of a smart director admitting that he's messing with us. I end up liking some of what I see but not being able to take anything seriously without being more than a little offended. Because it's not ever been serious.

Haneke's films ultimately invite investigation into what is given. Offers a wonderful critique of the auteur as well, doesn't it? I like the audacity in the gesture. I have to admit that.

What bothers me about the Haneke-as-deus theory is that it introduces a wild card. It essentially means that no analysis of the film is relevant, because nothing need make sense and no character actions need be significant.

I don't think that introducing Haneke as the hidden agent means that any analysis is irrelevant, merely that this question is specifically irrelevant. Haneke-as-god places the focus of the story back on the incomprehensibility of this all to Georges, and to a lesser extent on his unsettling relationship w/ Binoche and his mother.

I'm reminded of Vivian Darkbloom in Lolita. An anagram of Nabokov, her presence to me indicates the irrelevance of our first questions. Why is this story about a pedophile? How do all these fantastic events keep happening to Humbert? Darkbloom is Clare Quilty's co-pilot, and as Quilty emerges as a deux-ex-machina, her presence answers all the simplistic questions the same way: because Nabokov is driving this thing. But that leaves the book's real questions -- of art, of fate, of luck -- as the only ones to look at.

I think Haneke's playfulness w/ these questions basically points in a similar way to their irrelevance -- because it's about the questions and not the answers.

There is one scene that, to me, indicates that Pierrot is very likely to be involved - if not in making the videos, then in placing them, at the very least.

When the dinner party is interrupted by a loud knock on the door, Georges goes down to investigate. The door is closed, and Georges opens it, opens the outer gate, and looks around on the street, yelling for the knocker to reveal himself, before retreating inside. When he returns inside the door **can't be fully closed** because there is now a tape in the way, which wasn't there when the door opened.

If the tape had been propped up against the door by the knocker, we would have heard it fall into place when Georges opens the door, but there is *no* sound when Georges opens the door at all, even at a very high volume.

If someone outside had placed the tape there when Georges was out on the street, surely he would have seen or heard them putting the tape down, or sneaking away.

I believe Pierrot knocked from inside, and when Georges was outside looking around and yelling, snuck in to put the tape into place before retreating to his room (or wherever). It's the only logical explanation I can devise. Thoughts?

On the off chance that his apparent sincerity hadn't convinced people of his innocence, Majid would not have been agile or stealthy enough to pull off any of the video business certainly not without an accomplice. If he did have an accomplice it would naturally be his son. Walid is involved for sure any way you look at it. Also the fact that Walid knows the history of George and his father and is present in the last shot kind of proves it at least to the extent to which it can be proven. Walid ultimately blames Georges for his father's suicide. His father's suicide must have hurt but he didn't want to blame himself so he naturally blamed Georges who he hated anyway and blamed his father's misfortunes for. If Walid did send the tapes then he is also responsible for his father's death. If Majid was sending the tapes to lure Georges back into his life to then kill himself in front of him and make him feel sorry for him and rack him with guilt then I doubt Walid would agree to this plan. I'm guessing a son wouldn't agree to a plan that would end in the death of his father. Or was this a sudden impulsive move on Majid's part -- a deviation from the plan? I'm guessing no. My guess about the ending is that Walid befriended Pierrot casually. They're both young and Walid might have befriended him at an arcade or skate park or some other place knowing he was Georges' child. He might have used Pierrot to get closer to the family in some way-- he is older than Pierrot and might have easily manipulated him. Maybe Walid is getting closer to Pierrot to harm him in the near future somehow and getting at George that way for Majid's suicide. Walid might have even been behind Pierrot's disappearance and showed him supposedly incriminating picture or video of his mother with another man. Pierrot simply doesn't seem like the type of kid to do something like this in general... and he's a kid. Also I don't see Pierrot agreeing to hurt his father this way especially over something even I would consider somewhat minor to be honest and certainly I would be less harsh with my father as opposed to some stranger if he were to have done something wrong. And if Pieirrot wants to hurt anybody it would be his mother. Roger you said Majid convinced you of his innocence well he did that for me too but his son Walid had the exact opposite effect on me he only made me suspect him. So my guess is Walid did it and he worked alone.

Thank you all for the wonderful analysis of this dissembling film. I haven't seen it yet but from the consternation it gives people, I would look out for the style of the shots as a potential clue and acknowledge the possibility of you (the audience) being the murderer.

I draw the line of incomprehensibility at reality itself. In reality, murders go unsolved for lack of motive or explanation. Stories remain unfinished well after their protagonists have died.

Traditional mystery films tend to give the motive and explanation. However, the reality of films that start out as mysteries or thrillers can suddenly break down.

In Psycho, reality suddenly derails the plot with a shower curtain being pulled open and a figure holding a big knife. What we had been watching before Marion Crane gets murdered turns out to be only subtext and character development.

Other films, e.g. Jacob's Ladder, Open Your Eyes, and Lost Highway, try to restore the reality after it is broken, only to have it fall apart again.

These films have more to do with horror than mystery. They don't break the fourth wall, but they are about the horrific and inexplicable nature of reality, in particular our inability to deal with our own death and savage acts.

There is a subgenre that attempts to draw the viewer into a mystery with all of its expected set ups and pay offs and then delivers a dose of reality that the protagonist or audience cannot deal with.

Strangely, such movies don't appear to be realistic, even though they appeal to it in order to generate unease.

Other movies break the fourth wall. Although most fourth-wall breakers are facile, some make the viewer a participant in the action. Reality has infected the POV by limiting it to human motions and that makes the audience unable to see all they need to see.

Have you ever noticed how reality-infected movies often fail to resolve the mystery they set out to solve?

I have to think of my own reality and what I will never know about it. I will never know who my real parents are, or why that one special woman decided to walk out on me, or why my cousin committed suicide in the same spot and the same manner that his father committed suicide.

And, teasingly, Roger, I will never know who killed Kennedy, despite my having worked for more than a decade next to the man who Oswald stated was his personal nemesis. I do have a theory that you have never heard of before but it relies on the inexplicable nature of reality.

Hi Mr. Ebert. I've never written here before, but I've been a longtime admirer. I watched "Cache" for the first time last night and, like presumably every other person who has seen it, have been lost in thought ever since, attempting to somehow "solve" a mystery which may very well prove unsolvable. I must confess that I indeed completely missed the meeting between Pierrot and Majid's son at the end until reading this piece, and having just returned to the film moments ago to check it out, I have to admit that I'm not entirely convinced that they indeed know one another. It looks like Majid's son has indeed been waiting for Pierrot (which makes one wonder, why does Majid's son have all this free time, during what are ordinary working or school hours, to confront both father and son... One might conclude that he could have the time to travel around & film strange, troubling videos as well, but I digress), but I'm not convinced at all that this is not the first conversation between the two. When Pierrot turns and notices Majid's son, it doesn't seem like there is any recognition or cordiality there. The fact that this conversation doesn't appear even remotely aggressive just muddles things even further.

I still believe that Majid was the perpetrator here. The most convincing evidence of this for me is the tape filmed at his home during the confrontation between he and Georges. While Majid certainly appears to have no knowledge of the tapes or drawings, I suspect his denials - effective though they seem - are nothing more than a ruse in order to allow his awful game to continue a little further. So why, if the endgame was to be suicide in front of his alleged tormentor, doesn't he commit the act during this first (maybe only) oppurtunity? After all, Majid couldn't possibly know if Georges would ever return. Well, my belief is that Majid wasn't intending on killing himself at that point. I think he was looking for an acknowledgment of guilt from Georges, or an apology. Failing to receive either was what tipped him towards his final hideous action.

So why would Majid, after the passage of so many years, decide that now was the time to toy with Georges? I'm not sure that he consciously made a decision. I think this is where the theme of memory repression, and it's unpredictable effects, come in to play. When Georges first shows up at Majid's door, Majid recognizes him immediately, his explanation being that he, like many others, has seen him on television. I believe that it was probably during that first watched television broadcast that Majid's long-repressed memories began to surface, much like his sent videos and drawings triggered Georges own long-repressed memories of those events. I think Majid's questionable actions thereafter were the strange consequences of unearthing long-buried traumas.

I'm not a particularly subtle or nuanced person, so on my one and only viewing of the film, I assumed the plot of the film (George's treatment of Majid, echoed by the French's treatment of the Algerians) served to illustrate the movie's theme (the past's indelible effect on the present).

A bazillion attempts are made to parse an answer to the question of who sent the tapes and illustrations and only one or two sentences are devoted to the real context of the film, which is how these events, (the tapes and drawings) intrude upon the lives of Georges, Anne, Majid, and their children. What is important is not the actual objects, it is the effect they have on the people who receive them.

The two boys meet at the end, not because it explains anything by way of plot, but instead to again illustrate how our past will always intersect with our future. If this meeting between the two boys were really so important plot-wise, perhaps it would not have been shot in so deliberately casual a manner...?

Just sayin'...

Maybe I just lack the propensity for critical thinking, but I'm also the only person I know who left the movie satisfied, so take that as you will.

This comment won't be about your analysis of the movie; frankly, I haven't read it yet because my mind has been overtaken by frustation, thanks to that little line in the opening paragraph, "now that Martin Scorsese has optioned it for an American version."

Why is an American version neccessary? This infuriates me to no end, and I don't care if Martin Scorsese is involved. I don't even care if they're going to significantly change the story-line. What bothers me is the fact that they need to remake it. I know why they need to remake it. The money they could make. If art had anything to do with it, Martin Scorsese would've respected the fact that somebody else already made this movie and gone and done something else. Likely not an original film, anyhows. One of those he hasn't done since New York Stories.

That statement may bother you. You may take offense, even. After all, you've published a book about the man. You may say, because a great film is based on another film, doesn't make it any less of a great film. Lots and lots of people will back you up, point out examples, like Scorsese's The Departed, for instance. I'll look to be in the wrong.

To that I say this: stand two "great" films next to each other. One was adapted from another film, the other wholly original, it's story created solely by those filmmakers. No matter how great the adaptation, the original is better. Why? Because the adaptors could not think up something on their own, while the originals did. The adaptor had to go somewhere else, rather than use their own Mother Nature-given creativity. There should be a certain level of shame in that. Why there isn't in our society amazes me.

I don't think Martin Scorsese is the one remaking Cache for the money; I believe his intentions are noble. He deserves that assumption considering what he's done for American movies. But if Jesus Christ himself came down off the cross and got behind the camera, I'd still ask the question: why? I don't think it's something superficial, like that Cache is in French, and American audiences would rather put on headache-inducing glasses to watch Captain Planet with blue cats (I liked that movie better when it was called Dances with Wolves) than, Mother Nature forbid, read a subtitle.

So is it that he thinks the original can't be grasped by American audiences? Really? A old man bitter that his life has been a failure because of a child's lie? A son angered by what was done to his father? A man terrified that his past is coming back to haunt him? A wife resenting her husband for lying to her? A young boy spiteful towards his parents for no clear reason? These are not themes Americans can't understand?! I know a buck was never lost underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but still.

I am partly angry because I assume, considering how much you think of the man, that you aren't in the least bit bothered by this. Consider this: I know you're equally fond of Cormac McCarthy. So am I. In your review for The Road, there was undoubtably a note of being underwhelmed, that the filmmakers were unable to make something as good as the novel. In your estimation, it didn't measure up. You might as well have asked, Why did they bother?

And that is what I'm asking here. Why? To try and make something better? Impossible, even with Scorsese. Haneke already did it. He has nothing to prove. For Scorsese, it'll be an uphill battle to become king of the mountain. But Haneke will be at the top, grasping the flag, watching him grab dirt, chuckling, "All that effort and still no dice." And he deserves that pride. He didn't have to option anything. He used his own damned brain and used his own damned fingers to put it on paper. There should be some damnen pride in that. A little bit more respect ponied up for originality.

If it does get made, I'll probably see it, just to see what he did with it. And don't get me wrong; if it has to get cannibalized for American mass consumption, I'm glad it's Scorsese doing the chewing and not someone else. But I can tell even now that I'll probably walk out saying to myself, "I liked this movie better when it was called Cache."

Roger, found this interesting tidbit from an old Answer Man in 2006. You were were discussing Cache with William Friedkin. He mentioned that Haneke had actually been talked into, by his producers, making less obscure the much talked about shot of Walid and Pierrot. He did reedit it, even adding a bit of dialogue. Yet soon after, of all people, Haneke's psychiatrist convinced the director to restore the original.

When you asked Friedkin what the kids said during the revised shot, he replied that he didn't know. Now how neat to find THAT out. But, I would guess, we most probably never will?

@H.W.

Happy 27th birthday! Here's something from 1930s. Not sure it will meet your discriminating yardstick. It is before my generation too, though I have seen the vendors referred.

Just rewatched "Cache" last night and I think the answer to this whole discussion of who did what is answered in the first ten minutes of the film. Georges and his wife are watching the first tape ... they start asking questions about where the video camera could have been placed. Georges says something to the point of he doesn't know and "I guess it'll remain a mystery."

Point. Set. Match. Haneke tells us right from the start that there is to be no answers here. Now go ahead and keep watching ...

I’m uneasy over so many remakes being made. Sometimes, the best feature of the remake is to draw attention to the original, which is a good service when the original is a foreign film. "Who’s that Knocking at My Door?”, “Mean Streets”, and “Taxi Driver” are all films the likes of which I had never seen before. I love it when that happens.

Donald Miller

I fully respect those who interpret Caché as a whodunit, but I prefer not to try to guess anything and go for the ride.

The way I understand what Michael Haneke says in his wonderfully German-accented French in the interviews, all he wanted to do was leave his audience baffled and make it focus on two concepts:
(1) There are a lot of things in life with no definitive answer.
(2) We all hold back some information from others (some having to do with our childhood).

I will add another one that Haneke doesn't mention.

Even if we were children when we made mistakes, the guilt stays. There was that kid across the street whose comic books I "kept" when I was about 10. The last time I heard about him through a relative (about 15 years ago), he had schizophrenia and was stuck on welfare and meds. How do I deal with this guilty piece of knowledge when my brain brings it back to the forefront every other year or so? Pretty much like Daniel Auteuil's character does in the movie.

There are many movies with inconclusive endings out there, but I think Caché is the best.

Camera`s and realism teach audiences to think that what they see, or are shown, is literal. Hollywood usually teaches that the plot is simply the pretext to the Great Summation - er, climax. It is fundamental to human nature that one sees what he wants to see, believe what he wants to believe. The result is souls scurrying around looking for clues.

If we look at 'Funny Games' then the explanation of the tapes being sent by the director himself is certainly possible. We're used to this fourth wall meddling in comedy- from "Duck Amuck" by Chuck Jones, to Woody Allen, perhaps Bunuel; but in a gripping drama we react to it differently. We refuse to accept it, even when it's the most obvious solution, if the POV of the tape makes it impossible to be anything else.

Roger, I just got "Cache" from Netflix this morning, so I won't read beyond the first paragraph of this entry until I've seen it. I wanted to write today to thank you for sparking my interest in "Cache" and also for a sentence you wrote in your review of "35 Shots of Rum": "What matters is not the scope of the story, but the depth." That is the best, most true, and most thought-provoking sentence I've read in quite some time. So many films, books and plays strive for expansive meaning when all they really need to do is tell a good story about interesting people. So simple, and yet so easy to forget. Thank you!

1. At 48.38 Majid makes a reference to George’s nose, implying some injury to the nose, possibly inflicted by Majid. Could the coughing boy around the “smoking gun” have been George? Soon after he says “you are a lot bigger, should not be hard to kick my “donkey”.” George further says as a child Majid was bigger and stronger, so he had no choice.

2. Even if Wajid is not the source of the tapes, after seeing the drawing, he would know whether Walid is the culprit. In any case, once he knows what has been going on, he is in the best position to reason things out.

3. Pierrot, even if he already knows Walid and the childhood incidents, could not have done it solo.

4. We rule out Majid, because he looks and acts innocent, and it would be directorial folly to implicate him. Pierrot does hate his parents enough to disappear and cause them great anguish, so he may readily agree to be an accomplice to Walid. Walid of course has a powerful motivation to seek vengeance for his father’s fate. (When Walid finally confronts George, he just wants to see him, as if to enjoy the fruits of his psychological torture.) If Majid is to be ruled out the possibilities are (a) Walid alone (b) Walid plus Pierrot. They would need to be very perceptive, almost superhuman, to understand the traumatic memories buried inside a thick skinned guy like Georges or to scheme out such a devious procedure or anticipate it’s likely effects. Anne’s verdict about Majid’s innocence must be taken as final (“he couldn’t have staged it”). Walid’s denial of connection with the tapes in his final encounter with Georges is convincing.

5. The only conclusion I can draw from the final meeting of the two boys is that the whole story has entered the psyche of Pierrot and that is the real revenge.

6. The tapes? Must be Haneke. One thing which I believe is that our deeds are indelibly printed on our minds, at whatever depth of consciousness. You can escape from the legal system, but the real punishment is the psychological degeneration. This is an absolute law. It is said that when we die our entire life plays out like a video cassette. This is what karma actually means. In terms of psychological damage one can never escape the effects of one’s deeds. One easily recognizes grown-up Georges in the prevaricating boy that he was. I don’t think this is what Haneke is conveying.

7. I have never watched a movie so carefully and it was a real learning experience. Thank you.

The key is not Majid, nor Majid's son, nor Pierrot, but the historical reference to bodies of Algerian immigrants. The film's last shot is merely toying with our cinematical sense of the world, whereby characters within the film's fiction hold the answers.

The tapes are a record of present (real) events; the drawings of past (imagined) ones. Both are thrust into George's life and his reaction -- like ours -- is to investigate their source. Why? Because he does not want to remember what happened, because he is ashamed in a way he can't quite admit.

Majid was a victim of the Algerian tragedy and then a victim of George's childhood jealousy, but he holds no grudges. It's George who has not dealt with his feelings; mostly guilt, which turns into anger every now and again.

The best way to look at the tapes and drawings is to view them "ontologically". I believe I read as much in an entry of yours from Cannes. They are products of a world where Algerian immigrants were murdered by "George´s people", a child was orphaned, then adopted, then sent to an orphanage again because of George. They materialise because George is too proud for genuine remorse.

"Cache" is about the effect the tapes/drawings have on George's life, not who made them.

You've piqued my interest. I've seen "Cache," but it was a couple years ago. I don't recall many of the specifics; what I do remember is the naturalness of the performances, and the vaguely unsettling sense that something terrible could happen at any moment. I'm going to have to re-watch it.

I'm a little surprised to hear Scorsese has optioned for an American remake. "Cache" was so open-ended, and as great as many of Scorsese's films are, they don't usually leave a whole lot to the imagination. Haneke's films seem to be very clinical, almost detached, but Scorsese's films tend to be very visceral. So in other words, it's hard for me to picture a version of "Cache" made from the gut instead of the head. Should be interesting, though.

To continue my recent comment.
8.In that sense the video tapes are the Recording Angel or the imprints of karma, or the workings of conscience, which are inescapable, absolute, and strict.

9.If I should ever visit the US, the first thing I will do is to lay a wreath at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.

I imagine this joke has already been made but I can't help myself.

So what you're saying is that this film is the Turducken of cinema? (ZINGER!)

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

NEWSFLASH:SUNDANCE UPDATE

Great to see you're back in Park City. Sure you were excited to see Harold and Maude being one of the seminal works selected for the Festival's "From the Collection" screenings. Understand your ability to reply will be limited, but if you get any news on the rumored John Water's remake with Bud Cort as Maude and Ellen Page as Harold, a response would be appreciated. Must admit I do have my doubts. Also curious if that actually was Cat Stevens(Yusul Islam) standing in front of Maude at the funeral. Other than that, look forward to all your comments. Have fun.

Since the movie is about Sin, I can see why Scorsese is remaking it.

I hope it is a little more nerve-wracking because of it.

I was a little nervous watching the scenes in the Aviator of Howard Hughes, in isolation, losing his marbles.

To Marie Haws on January 19, 2010 7:26 PM
How about “Along Came a Spider”? It has the same guy in two places at one time. First you write the script, then you make the movie, but I guess they figured they were so smart and their audience so dumb that they could make it anyway they wanted. From what I read in Roger’s review of the sequel, it was even more ill-conceived.

But back to TV. I’ve never seen “Dexter” but I have seen the “Simpsons” and “24.” The Simpsons take six months to write their scripts and it shows. 24 writes theirs as they go along, and it shows. Season Five was awesome: they managed to pull that one off pretty well. But Season Six has two of its characters pulling off a clever scheme that they, according to the show’s own story line, couldn’t have possibly invented beforehand.

I don’t get it. The writing should always come first. It’s a shame too, because 24 has some of the best performances I’ve ever seen on a TV show.

[I think there might be a connection between taking six months to write an episode and being on the air for twenty-plus years.]

Haneke’s interviews remind me a lot of David Chase, who created The Sopranos. Chase felt that he was trying to create art to ask questions and not answer them. Chase said in an interview with Jim Lehrer that ”The only thing that I guess I believe is that a lot of what I see on the air and in other places is giving answers, and I don't think art should give answers. I think art should only pose questions. And art should not fill in blanks for people, or I think that's what's called propaganda. I think art should only raise questions, a lot of which may be even dissonant and you don't even know you're being asked a question, but that it creates some kind of tension inside you.” He wanted to create a sense of mystery, but also let you know that the thing you’re focusing on probably doesn’t really matter. In The White Ribbon, it’s not who is committing these crimes, it’s what does it say about the people committing the crimes and the larger community? If, as it is insinuated (though, not exactly stated factually), the children are committing crimes, then what are they being taught and what will become of them when they grow up? Sure, Haneke invokes the rise of fascism and World War II at the end, but isn’t it really about human nature in general? The fact that we are influenced by our parents and their teachings and what comprises their beliefs? In both The White Ribbon and Cache, it’s not about who is committing these crimes but why? What is the reason behind it? He doesn’t make films to make one feel better, but to ask questions about what it means to be these people. You asked “What was Haneke's purpose with "Cache?" It was to be in these people’s shoes and see how they would react if they are being videotaped. Then, we learn what might be the reason. But of course, we can’t be sure. Like Chase, Haneke wants you to feel uneasy. Surely, there must be some reason they were being videotaped. But why? The scared part might not be that they’re being videotaped, but why. I think people watching films like Cache and The White Ribbon and shows like “The Sopranos” might get upset because they’re assuming something – that they’ll get answers. But the fact is, if Haneke and Chase, like all great artists, seek to make art, they won’t create something that gives you answers, but merely asks questions.
Also, I usually hate remakes but Scorsese is one of my favorite directors of all time so I’ll withhold judgment until I see the remake of “Cache”. I would imagine, or at least hope, that Scorsese would also realize that the mystery in Cache is also part of its beauty. That’s it’s not who is videotaping Georges, but why and how he reacts to being videotaped.

Why do you like this movie so much and not Donnie Darko? Is Donnie Darko not also a puzzle? I know that I was trying to figure it out. However, I have not experienced this one. So overall quality of the film may have something to do with your favoring of it over DD.

Pursuing the line of thinking that the tapes are being sent by the metaphorical recording angel, or that all actions become indelibly imprinted on the video film or hard disc of our minds ( or soul if you prefer, may I add some quotes from the writings of Dr. Daisaku Ikeda:

"In this connection, I would like to think about life and death in terms of the last moment and what happens after death. Many scholars have studied this subject, among them, Mrs. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. She was formerly professor on the psychiatric faculty of the University of Chicago. Although a Protestant, she did not really believe in life after death. But after eleven years of working with some one thousand dying patients, she confides that she was forced to change her mind and came to realize that life goes on continuously, even after death. In her study of death, she interviewed patients who had been declared dead but later revived, and asked them if they were able to share any of their impressions or experiences. She reports the results of those interviews as follows, giving us an idea of a sort of out-of-the-body experience.

With many of these patients we found out that their experience is that, at the moment of physical death, they float out of their physical body and they float a few feet above the hospital bed or the accident scene. They can see themselves lying in the bed and they can distinguish many things. They can describe in minute, very fine detail who came into the which family member, which priest was in the room. They describe the color of their dress, at the time they have no vital signs.

At the first instant of death," Mrs. Ross's report continues, "the moment of physical separation is a good experience. Like getting out of a prison." But the question is what happens the next moment. "What Christians call 'hell,' heaven or hell, the difference between good people and bad people, people who have led very enlightened lives and those who have not, comes afterwards, after separation. What Christians call 'hell' is not as Christians describe it. (Some of these patients were Christians.)

"After they leave, they go through the walls --- they don't need an open door or window --- and then they go toward a light, through a tunnel, over a bridge or river. After they have passed over, then comes what a Christian would call 'hell.' There is no god who condemns you, but you are forced to review your own life.(emphasis mine)

"It's like watching a television screen and your whole life is passed in front of you, not only deeds but also thoughts. This is going through hell, because you see everything you have ever done and thought." We may safely say, then, that some of the dead go through heaven and some others through hell. "So it is not a god who condemns you, but you condemn yourself."

Based on many years' experience with dying patients, Mrs. Ross emphatically agrees with the Buddhist concept of karma, that all of our acts are ingrained in our lives and will never disappear. She says, "It's a beautiful thing. I really believe that what you plant as seeds is what you will reap.... It's an absolute law. I know that." She believes in karmic debts only because she has verified that it is true. "It's not really a question of just believing," she says. "All these things can be scientifically verified."

Mrs. Ross is very pleased to know that her thought accords with Buddhism. "People will live a very different quality of life," she says, "if they knew this [concept of karma], if they could understand that they alone are responsible for all the good things and bad things that happen to them."......

It is possible to commit some evil act and get away with it, as far as the morals of society or the laws of the land are concerned. But never with the Buddhist law. The heavenly messengers....... are always with their charge and constantly watch him. He can never elude them. This is what Buddhism teaches us, that the law of causality is always at work in the depths of our lives. No lies can go undetected in the world of Buddhism.

It is generally believed that hell is just a fable, contrived to make people rectify their conduct while they are alive. This may be the case with some of the more primitive representations we have from past ages of hell. But whatever the general belief, it is true that hell-like conditions exist in actual life. It is said undeniably that the world is filled with all kinds of suffering --- people anguished by the hardships and losses they must endure, people condemned to frustration because of their surroundings, people suffering terrible afflictions. Life continues through past, present and future, so the situation will not change a bit, even after one dies. Whether dead or alive, one will always have to experience both hardship and joy in the depths of his being.

I mentioned the male and female demons who divest the dead of their possessions. They symbolize the fact that, according to the strict and constant law of causality, vanity is worth nothing after one dies. The only thing of value is the essential reality in the innermost core of one's life. The ten kings and the heavenly messengers are but a figurative way of teaching us that our physical and mental acts at each and every moment invariably become engraved in the karma of our lives. Though they are all fables, they are very enlightening ones indeed.

...... in contrast to outward appearances, the misery in the depths of life is terrible beyond description.

Nothing is sadder and more miserable than to find one's very life a prison of agony, without the slightest energy or hope for the future. Such a person will fail in everything he does. ...... When a building is wrecked by a natural calamity of some sort, we can see the damaged parts and repair them. But we see nothing at all when it is rotting from within. If the rot spreads to the point that the house starts to crumble, it is almost impossible to repair.....Buddhism places strong emphasis on the last moment of life, for in the Buddhist view it contains the sum total of one's lifetime, and it is also the first step toward the future....."

Since a movie is a work of fiction there can be no real culprit. Are we trying to discover what the maker, who is after all another human being had in mind? Could it have been his intention to hide a "jewel" or a clue so cleverly that one would have to see it again and again through a microscpe to discover the author of a fictional felony?

It's such fun to take the story literally and try to figure out who sent the tapes, but I'm with the folks who believe it doesn't matter; there is no intended culprit, and the ambiguity is the point. Haneke says in the interview that many possibilities are purposely suggested.

The tapes. I look at Pierrot, only 12 and from a functional family who cares about him, and see nothing to suggest he would participate in such an extreme and potentially hurtful scheme, whatever his suspicions about his mother's fidelity or other issues he may have.

Was it Walid? Who knows? The tapes are not really the issue, possibly not even for Georges -- notice that when Georges returns to Majid's apartment for the occasion of his suicide, he doesn't even look for the camera, though he knows one was present earlier.

Interesting are two other scenes -- where Georges starts screaming at a kid who nearly plows into him on the street, and Anne smooths over the increasingly heated argument by saying that each party -- the kid and the two of them -- had a share in the blame by not watching for the other.

The other is the scene where Anne's colleague tells the dog story -- a ridiculous joke "sold" to the listeners by the seriousness with which it was told, and even after the laughter, someone asked whether it was true. What is reality?

I agree with those who think Hanecke would not have made this unsolvable. First, the title would have been different. It's hidden, not non-existent. Also, there are clues throughout. Again, I believe Hanecke would have had fun with building clues up toward some solution, not a non-solution.

It must be Walid. I've seen the film several times, and the memories come from either Majid or Georges. It is clear from several scenes that Pierrot is unaware of these memories, but, as is evidenced by Majid's perspective on how Georges changed his life, it would be understandable that Majid had told his son about the experiences, perhaps repeatedly. He commits suicide over it, for god's sake. True, the memories we see seem to be from Georges' perspective (we'd wouldn't "see" Majid in the memories, we'd see George "seeing" Majid if they were Majid's). But the events are fairly traumatic in both boys' lives, so they'd probably be pretty fresh and accurate memories for both men.

I go with Walid. The fact that the two sons know each other at the end--Walid approaches Pierrot with confidence, sure of where to find him, unhesitant in his approach--this alone suggests Pierrot at the least knows about the plot. It's a stunner the first time you notice them together.

Great blog!

The two sons don't necessarily know each other before that last shot. Mr Ebert, why are you so sure that Haneke's intention with that shot is to show that they knew one another?
They might just be meeting.

Perhaps Walid seeks out Pierrot to harm him, after his father's suicide. During their conversation he could very well just be introducing himself in some way to get Pierrot's attention / trust.

I believe it's too much of a subjective assumption.

Pierrot is unnecessary, except as a vulnerable spot to hurt Georges by someone who feels has been done wrong by this man more than once.

I believe Walid made the tapes after learning the story from his father; then, as this caused even worse consequences, he might go after the boy.

Thanks for this analysis. I find this movie fascinating and am excited for Scorsese's take on it.

I was wondering if I am seeing things, but every time I watch the 3rd shot - what you call a POV - at night looking at the house, I see something in the shadow cast on tall bush SR when the car drives by. The shadow looks like someone holding a large film camera. Do you see that?

I have nothing to say about the plot of this film, except that it had strong effect on me. I was intensely absorbed with the characters and the mystery all the way through, and extremely dissatisfied with the ending. The lack of any explanation was infuriating. So much so, that I found I had fitful sleep that night, continually thinking or perhaps dreaming about the story, trying to resolve it and mulling over its possible meanings and themes. I never solved the mystery to my satisfaction, but I decided that any film that can create so much unease and deep curiosity must be something of a masterpiece.

Could be to remind us about the Parisien Tien Mien, the massacre of Algerians, about which I for one have heard for the first time. The aslant approach penetrates deeper into the mind. Examples: Munyurangabo, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Nuit et Bruillard.The historical tragedy is a repressed memory like the "interlude" in Georges' childhood.

Thanks for this analysis. I find this movie fascinating and am excited for Scorsese's take on it.

I was wondering if I am seeing things, but every time I watch the 3rd shot - what you call a POV - at night looking at the house, I see something in the shadow cast on tall bush SR when the car drives by. The shadow looks like someone holding a large film camera. Do you see that?

First time I encountered with this endlessly fascinating movie in early 2006, I immediately sensed that Haneke did not care about clear solution. After released in South Korea, there had been many discussions among movie lovers about who sent video tapes but we were only left with speculations. There were several interesting articles about the movie written by critic, and they surely provided interesting interpretations of the story. I even translated one of them because I considered sending it to you at that time(It argues that "Cache" is far better movie than "Crash" about racism).

Your detailed analysis of the movie makes me think about several aspects of the film again. Above all, I re-examined the ending. I accepted it as last sequence of the story even after the second viewing on DVD, but who can be sure? I interpreted it as the beginning of new cycle, but, wait, it looks like....

Many of my internet acquaintances agreed that one man cannot do all. Probably Majid's son and Pierrot did this together, but we are never sure about it. In Haneke's latest film "The White Ribbon", I was chilled by certain possibility near the end, but I am not sure about it after watching it. Maybe (fill in blank) did several things, so one character desperately(really?) suggests it to the other. But other incidents? I don't know.

Haneke does not mean to give or suggest answers, and he won't forever. Maybe "Cache" is unsolvable puzzle from the beginning, but the mysteries are too fascinating to ignore. Plus, this movie is elegant thriller filled with subtle sense of fear and dread. Something happened in the past, but we don't know clearly what it was. Inexplicable things are happening in the present, and we don't know why or how these things happen. Is it, like you said, the reflection of our life? Or is it the portrait of pathetic man who desperately denies his guilt and past, and possibly deludes himself? What if Georges or Georges' guilt consciousness sends those video tapes? No, that is too outrageous for this coldly realistic film.

Even if we are baffled by the vortex of these endless questions, there are enough emotions to hold on in the movie. We watch Georges' family quietly shaken by unseen watcher. Husband rather wants to hide his secret, his wife is angered by his dishonesty, and his son shows some alarming behavior. There are many icy moments in "The White Ribbon" besides mysterious incidents and some of them are quite cruel or monstrous.

In the end, we are even not sure whether Georges really does not remember the past or not. He won't reveal it to us even if he knows. He just does not want to touch it and to be through with it. But past is not through with him. So is his guilt. Ideal material for Scorsese.

And I will check "Smoking gun" on this Saturday.

"I don't like when somebody comes up to me the next day and says, "Hey, man, I saw your play. It touched me; I cried." I like it when a guy comes up to me a week later and says, "Hey, man, I saw your play... what happened?""

-one of memorable lines from "Tootsie"(1982)

"Cache" is all about POV, forcing the audience to perceive the events and experience cinema from perspectives they are not used to, in part because they can never be totally sure of what perspective is being used.

Consider the final scene -- it's a POV scene. Isn't it? It's set up like other POV scenes. The scene at George's show is a POV shot as well. Someone is watching... besides us. The camera watches George on his set, as if we are "watching" the program, but then the camera follows him, watching.

Consider that George's paranoia and his anger grow more and more aggressive and violent -- but the "threat" is rather benign, isn't it? Someone watches, that's all. The disturbing aspect comes from finding out you are being observed, and we see how the simple knowledge of being observed has dramatically altered the George's entire life. And the viewer grows uncomfortable as well, partly because the film constantly confuses our sense of POV (the first sequence where we see the video is at first presented as just the scene itself -- we only gradually discover we are watching a video that someone in the FILM is watching.

When are we watching events on a video? When are we observing through a secret watcher's eyes? When is it just the camera showing us a scene? Whose memories are we experiencing at some times? These are relevant questions, and there are no clear answer much of the time -- the most important clues in fact are the scenes where we do NOT know who the viewer is, whose perspective we are experiencing.

The entire "thriller" aspect arises not at all from the videos or drawings, which ultimately have no real power in themselves. Nor does the truth of George's past hold direct power or threat. It is only his reaction, based on uncertainty of whose perspective he is being subjected to -- the same uncertainty we as viewers feel -- that creates any action in the story. Had George ignored the fact of being observed, what would have happened? It is the fact that being observed when you don't expect it, and when you become unsure of when you are under observation.

Because the very act of being observed changes the thing observed.

This is especially true when the observed becomes aware of the observation. George and his family are comfortably upper-middle-class, and are unused to such scrutiny -- George in fact is used to being the one doing scrutiny. His wife seems to have something to hide (an affair? notice the man observing them in the restaurant, and later the son believes she is having an affair) and this adds to her concern at being observed -- because she fears she is the reason for the observation, or because it might accidentally reveal her own secret, or simply because someone with a secret becomes guilty and fearful of the simple fact of observation making them self-conscious of their own actions? Maybe all of the above.

The drawings are childlike, and may reflect the fact that the George's secret is from childhood. It reflects in fact George's own POV from earlier scenes, doesn't it? Yes, so what does that tell us about the possible origins of the drawing? This, the fact that the final shot of the two sons seems like another POV that might reflect the mysterious viewer in the film, and the slow reveal to George himself of his memories -- and that his memories might be faulty and self-serving -- do point to potential guilty on George's part in the whole mystery. Which is, obviously, a reflection of France's own attitude toward their history and guilty in Algiers.

I love this film and its complexity, and I find something new every time I watch it or hear others discussing it.

A theme in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour might be relevant here: one must forget the past to move forward.
Are the surveillance tapes allowing Georges to forget the past by establishing a present?
If so, Georges is delivering the tapes.

The last scene as mentioned By D Stroh January 20, 2010 11:45 PM: “...again illustrate how our past will always intersect with our future.”

The last shot is interesting.

Not only do we see a meeting between the two son's--whether they are collaborating or not--but the shot is like the other videos sent to Georges. The boys are being watched now, either by us, the viewer, so we see their crime, or they are watched by the same mechanism that produced the other videos.

I disagree with those who suggest Haneke is playing with us and that the fact that there is no answer is the answer. I think he would have made the film even more impenetrable had this scenario been in his mind. These characters exist in a realistic world, and we see only a realistic presentation of their world. The authorial intrusion suggested by some seems unlikely because Haneke would, I think, have included more clues to his intrusion than simply a difficulty in assigning blame to any of the fictional characters. A good ending must follow inevitably from what comes before it. I do not see Haneke suggested in any of the prior material, so why should we assume he's some deus ex machina, coming in to provide what I see as a pat ending.

We can't know things about the world? Maybe not for sure, but the fact that there is an answer to who sent the tapes and drawings that we cannot be sure of is more interesting and more in line with what the rest of the movie suggests (Anne can't know Georges, Georges can't know the effect of his childhood actions, Pierrot can't know what his mother has with Pierre, and Walid--the new generation--can't know the pain his father went through as an Algerian orphan in that time period). It's a movie about "can't know," but all these "can't knows" are real, human, experienced ones, not ones tied up in the ethereal realm of directors placing themselves in the fictional world. Again, I would think Haneke would have had some parallel submerging of real and imaginary had he wanted us to get this idea from the film.

I say it's Walid!

Reply to: So is it that Scorsese thinks the original can't be grasped by American audiences? Really?

(1) A old man bitter that his life has been a failure because of a child's lie?

(2) A son angered by what was done to his father?

(3) A man terrified that his past is coming back to haunt him?

(4) A wife resenting her husband for lying to her?

(5) A young boy spiteful towards his parents for no clear reason?

5 powerful themes, none of which really shows up in the original, though.

Reply to: You weren't moved by the clear disparity between George and Majid's circumstances? During the Algerian War (1954–62) on October 17, 1961 and under orders from Maurice Papon (the head of the Parisian police) the police attacked a peaceful but illegal demonstration of around 30,000 pro-FLN Algerians.

Yeah, but come on, 30,000 people in an ILLEGAL demonstration?

If 30,000 people are ordered by the police to leave, and they don't.... even police officers get scared of what might happen.

Reply to: Papon told them not to worry about the possibility of prosecution afterward; their backs were covered.

Yeah, and a SWAT team goes up on rooftops with sniper rifles and the authorization to "take the shot." What's the difference?

If you don't want an Algerian to be adopted as your brother, don't you have the right to say so? I wouldn't feel a second of guilt over saying "I don't want a kid with questionable values adopted into my family as my brother."

Majid's life was worse because his mother took part in an illegal demonstration and died as a result. How is that Georges' fault? In any way?

The only way Georges would have nightmares would be if he was one of the police officers, and he actually killed the boy's mother.

If this is a Scorsese film, DiCaprio grew up in a rough neighborhood. He signed on as a driver for a mob boss, and did the Jason Bourne thing. He volunteered to kill some people, and later, he regretted it. Decided he wasn't a killer.

That's the kind of regret that would given an adult American nightmares. The fact that he killed Majid's mother in an alley, not that she died while the police were stopping 30,000 Algerians. If Georges is going to have guilty nightmares, he was sitting at a table in a nightclub owned by Frank Costello, and three goons beat a man to death while he sat and did nothing.

there just isn't enough clear guilt for either American audiences or a Scorsese movie.

Here's another way to look at the last shot. Whoever made the video tapes is still making one, and neither boy is involved. (ie, they're IN the shot.) So, either Georges or FBI agents keeping surveillance on the son of a known terrorist who might be plotting an act of revenge?

Why remake "Cache"? Because it solves a lot of legal problems. You're buying the rights to a story, rather than writing a new script and having ten screenwriters say "I sent you a similar story five years ago." Look at the talent Scorsese got for "The Departed." Nicholson, Damon and Di Caprio.

DiCaprio wants a role that will win him a Best Actor nomination. I think you could write the script from that perspective. What are DiCaprio's strengths? He doesn't come across as very strong. In "Revolutionary Road," he spent a lot of time brooding and wishing his life was different. So, a man consumed by past guilt might be a good choice for him. A past guilt that involves a man he knew as a child, who grew up to be a terrorist?

I'm thinking you make Majid a suicide bomber. Go into that mentality. After he was orphaned, he was taken to an orphanage where he was indoctrinated with political extremist beliefs. Or, maybe there's pressure on Walid, and Majid decides to strap on the bomb himself, so that his son won't do it?

(1) A old man bitter that his life has been a failure

I don't Majid was old enough. He had a son. He was living in Paris, not the slums of Calcutta. But it's a powerful theme for Scorsese's version. You just need to make the guy twenty years older.

There are too many Americans unemployed, or losing their businesses, to feel too much guilt about a mother killed by evil police officers. I think the story works better if Homeland Security, the FBI, someone who has suffered at the hands of terrorists, decides to manipulate Georges and his family into confronting a terrorist cell they have under surveillance. And, in the process, he meets Anne and they start an affair. That would be a better role for DiCaprio, as the surveillance expert who falls for one of his subjects and decides to break up her marriage. Start from the same place, have the wife get spooked when a video tape shows up, because she's terrified that her husband will learn about her affair. That her husband will learn she gave a total stranger the kind of animal passion that never showed up in their marriage.

(2) A son angered by what was done to his father?

One day the woman's son shows up, with a video of his mother making love to a strange man. How do you deal with that?

My experience of watching this movie was truly unlike my viewing of any other movie. I did not catch the characters at the end, but I sat there, watching the credits, trying to make sense of it. And yet I left the theater more satisfied than many other "enigmatic" movies like Memento or The Usual Suspects. The only North American movie I can compare it with is 12 Monkeys, which is rather odd as they could not be more different, other than leaving a mystery that cannot be solved within the context of the movie itself.

Hey, Don; Yeah, Don

I completely agree with me over the movie remake issue. Eventually original scripts will become completely unnecessary.

All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and more recently The Office were among the American TV shows based on European ones. The American version of The Office is fine, but the original was really brilliant. And one of the really nice aspects of it was the interaction between the sexes in it. What might be seen as sexual harrassment in the US is, apparently, viewed as one of the necessities of making a day complete in the UK.

Which reminds me,
Roberta,
A buddy of mine says, “Hi.” He looks so much like George Clooney that people are always coming up to him and asking him for an autograph. He always obliges and the recipient is always surprised when he signs his real name: Chainsaw Johnson.

Original movie humor idea provided by Carol Pearsall:
Let Your Fingers Do the Ripping
No movie character in need of a telephone number ever carries a notepad or pen and must, therefore, always rip a page out of the phone book. Inexplicable Corollary: No movie character in search of a telephone number ever encounters a phone book from which the necessary page has been ripped out. Carol Pearsall, Seattle

Yes, indeed. Have someone rip a page out of a phone book near the beginning of a comedy and near the end of it when they are in need of a number, perhaps the same number from the same phone book, the page is missing.

By the film's end, I was thinking less about who had sent the tapes and more about the fact that that was a consequence of Georges' actions in the past. Those actions led to the tapes, and ultimately Majid's suicide.

My reading of the film's final shot is that Majid is meeting Pierot for the first time - and is now repeating what had happened to their fathers many years before - beginning a new 'issue' between them - as revenge for what happened to his father.

The point not being "someone is to blame" but that these problems never go away - there are always consequences, and these consequences are often beyond our control.

In "Cache" I feel as though Michael Haneke is making strong statements about the way media can penetrate our lives. The arrival of a static, unobtrusive video tape of the family's daily life is the starting point for the deterioration of the relationships. This film has devastating effects on the way they communicate with each other. The TV is almost always on in the background, spilling the news into the room, mostly unnoticed. Georges works on TV and holds some minor amount of celebrity. From the very moment we are introduced to the family, television completely defines the way they are living.

The presence of the tapes begins to fully permeate their thoughts and conversations, in so much as they cannot even have a dinner party without it overshadowing all conversation. But haven't we all been to a dinner party during which everyone talked about the latest episode of whatever was on the night before?

Objectively speaking, the first tape or so is harmless. Sure, it tells the family they are under surveillance, their privacy has been robbed and god knows what might come next. However, it is still just static footage, saying nothing, revealing nothing. How much of this is an intrusion and how much of it is allowed to happen? Likewise, how much is TV aggressively impinging on our lives versus how much we allow it to? This is, of course, an impossible, chicken-and-egg question but one Haneke seems very aware of. The parallels between the presence of these early tapes and the presence of media in our society are great and I don't believe unintentional.

Haneke makes sure that the arrival of the tapes causes much havoc in the lives of these people, it seems he is warning against the ill effects of the influence of media in our lives. "Cache" is truly scary yet the actual medium of television is inanimate and unmoving. It provides us with an image and we unravel ourselves.

There is no clear solution, no clear way out, no escape. This truly is gothic story telling from the heart. What more effective method of warning against a threat than by removing any exit strategy?

Why no mention of Binoche's character having her own secrets? Pierrot definitely had strong feelings regarding that; perhaps the film as a whole is the younger generation holding the elder to task for their sins. Just a wild thought.

*

The camera always has the ability to step in as an omniscient/omnipresent observer, although the final shot demonstrates that it doesn't always. I admit I didn't notice Pierrot and Walid amongst everyone else.

So why should the creation of videotapes within the world of the film meet the requirements of that world? Perhaps Haneke was wielding his power as director to bend the rules of the film's world in order to accomplish a "miracle" not unlike the sun staying motionless in the sky or oil burning for eight days?

Haneke-as-deus would work if we accept that a solution to the question of the videos is not expected or required. If we take the dredging up of memories and the impact of said to be the brunt of the movie, then the means used to recall the memories is trivial.

In other words, if Georges' forgotten sin (sending Majid away and ruining his childhood) is an allegory for France's forgotten sin of Algiers, then Haneke rousing the nation's collective memory could be the point of the film, and the story of Georges is simply the means to do so, and filling in all the gaps (ie. who made the videos) is inconsequential.

And if that's the purpose of the film, then will Scorsese have to make adjustments for the theme to work in America? Will his film focus on our sins of slavery, or Japanese internment?

Hi Monsieur Rojer, imagine yourself as the perpetrator of those video tapes. How would you have felt after knowing that the pranks you played, designed to bring out guilt in somebody else, have instead cost another man's life (Majid's)? This is the point I would like to make here. With the unexpected death of Majid, the film's true psychological tensions surfaced, and I thought it played out intelligently well. In retrospect, it makes sense that at this point, the hidden King on the chessboard would make his move to confront his opponent. For me, I saw and felt the undercurrent of a newfound guilt running inside Walid when he went to see Georges at his work, seemingly to confront him with questions and taunts such as "Why so testy?," or "Maybe you'd like to clobber me since you're bigger." His denial of his involvement in the matter sounds hollow by now because certain markers have already given him away. Roger, in the context of Majid's recent death, you and I know what would have happened had Georges fallen for the taunts of the young man and resorted to violence (in the loo where there is no surveillance). In the case of Walid, I have no doubt that it was Misery seeking a companion, with another trap (which failed) set from behind. Luckily for Georges, he was wise enough not to start an altercation (this was also established earlier during the confrontation with a biker who was going the wrong way).

As for Pierrot, I believe he was just a victim of external influence which engendered his alienation towards his parents. The shot at the end established the link between Pierrot and Walid. And to be honest, I think that was foolish of Walid not to cover his head with a cap, and carry on a conversation with Pierrot in broad daylight. Unless, of course, that shot was meant to be out of the chronological order, which means that it may have taken place earlier than the beginning of the film.

The video shot leading up to Majid's apartment, not to mention the hidden one inside the apartment, also gave Walid away. He is of the correct height to have taken that shot. His father is a short man, and seems weak-willed to pull stunts of any sort.

That said, I find the film brilliant in making a case study of Georges Laurent. Consider the ff.:

1.) After he had been shown the video of his childhood home, Georges immediately sets out for his mother. There, he apologises to her for not seeing her often, and makes excuses that whenever they meet, they have nothing to talk about.

2.) After the confrontation with Majid, he goes down into this convenient store and helps himself with (another) coffee.

3.) After Majid's suicide, the next shot takes us to the facade of a cinema building, where we see Georges come out.

4.) Back at home, he tells his wife everything, in a room with lights closed.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Oh, Roger, I just can't resist sharing this video with you. Stay until the kiss in the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaNxxXUox7s

Hello again Roger,

After you placed the film in your great movies, and then wrote a blog about it, and I then found it listed as Jim Emerson's 3rd best film of the decade, I had almost unbearable anticipation to see and discuss the film. After seeing it twice, I now can begin somewhat cohesively to wrap my mind around everything.

In this blog, I feel you leave out the second thing that muddies up the film (besides the last shot), which is that the drawings in the beginning have a resemblance to Majid's suicide. The ones with the slit throat don't seem to be suggesting TB, but seem to be (later) parralleling the suicide. But I don't believe that the tapes are the mystery in the film. The enigma is what happened between Majid and Georges, which is resolved toward the end of the film.

I believe, as other readers have suggested, that the tapes are a MacGuffin, because they are not intended to be the point of the movie. Revealing who sent the tapes would be equivelant to learning the contents of the suitcase in "Pulp Fiction," or to provide a background story about Anton Chigurh (I hope that's how you spell it) in "No Country for Old Men." The point of the suitcase in Tarantino's film is that it has contents that are incomprehensively valuable to all who see them. If we learned it was diamonds, or some hooblah like that, it would defeat the purpose, and make the story about diamonds instead of a mythical treasure. Similarly in "NCFOM," the Coens and McCarthy are telling a story about evil and darkness, and how we, as mankind, are unable to cope with it. I don't want to learn about Chigurh's past or what happens next in the story, and some viewers felt unsatisfied with the ending. The point of the story is the Sheriff facing uncertainty, which is perfectly resolved between the opening and closing monolouges.

Some say the point of "Cache" is about the French colonial guilt mentioned in the film, just as some say that "The White Ribbon" is about German denial of the Holocaust. I believe that Haneke simply compares the personal events in these films to similar national events. "Cache" is simply about hurt and anger transfered generationally. The tapes just exist to bring it up. I don't care about the mystery. I believe the final shot is not one of creepy suggestion, but of beauty of and hope. It shows simply that these two children have had their parents damages passed along to them, and that maybe they may be able to smooth out the dents.

The story is profound, and one we can all relate to. You have often written about your Catholic upbringing, and about how you've dealt with that in your life. We all have flaws that our parents have passed down to us, and we try to work them out in different ways. I assume we both have similar affection for our fathers, Roger, but I don't think you want to carry the same Catholic damage, or to be addicted to tobacco, as you mentioned your parents were, just as I don't want to inhabit the same anger, denial, and materialism as my father, or the same emotional instability of my mother. I suspect that maybe some of this will trickle down to my kids, because it's so deeply rooted in my upbringing that it's hard to smooth out.

Scorsese realizes this too, because his focus as a filmmaker has been guilt. Even Jesus in his film seemed more like Travis Bickle than the son of God. I hope Scorsese realizes that the material requires no revelation about the tapes. I wish that the DeNiro character in "Cape Fear" had slit his throat, and the Nolte character had spent the rest of the movie dealing with his guilt instead of becoming an action hero. If that had happened, "Cape Fear" might as well have been the remake of "Cache".

Thank you for another lively discussion,
Sincerely,
Your 15 year-old biggest fan,
Jackson.

P.S.
I hope you will consider "Cache" and "Synecdoche, NY" for Ebertfest, if only to inspire such interesting debate as this.

Pat,

Agree completely about the subtext regarding television. Haneke often makes it intrude, and at other times demonstrates how the most important of its messages can be ignored and lost, such as when the parents are panicked about their son's whereabouts as news reports on television of actual tragedy go ignored.

Communication and memory -- particularly collective and selective memory -- are definitely at the heart of the way he tells this tale, and the messages he is sending viewers.

The fact that television increasingly moves to "reality programming", observing the real world and people going about their daily lives, the fact of an increasing awareness that we are under constant surveillance -- be it government and law enforcement, our choice to film ourselves and post it online, or the prevalence of camera phones and other devices that could at any given moment record us when we least expect it -- and how we are at times the voyeur, at other times the subject of voyeurism, and how often we might be unsure of which role we are in (or that we may be in both, knowingly or otherwise) is a rich element through the film.

The intrusions themselves may not even be a revelation of events, it becomes the fact of intrusion that is the revelation as it forces us to examine ourselves and fear revelation of things that in fact are not under surveillance at all. No amount of videotaping will reveal George's past.

Hi Mr. Ebert,

Thanks for all your amazing reviews and your analysis of Cache.

My theory is that the videotapes were made by Majid. Despite his proclamation of being innocent, there is one crucial scene where I believe we can finger him based on logic. When Georges first approaches Majid and knocks on his aparment, Majid tells him to hold on one minute. Since we assume Majid doesn't have his own apartment under surveilance 24 hours a day, he must go and turn on his recording device.

The encounter between Georges and Majid is then sent to Georges' house for him to watch. Majid is seen crying at his own kitchen table until the tape runs out. The only other potential film character who could be the recorder here is Majid's son. But again, the son was not in the apartment, and logically, it seems Majid is resonsible for this tape.

This theory is damaged after Majid's suicide tape finds its way to Georges. Since dead men can't send videos, he could not have sent this tape. I do believe he recorded it though. I think Majid left his son a note regarding the suicide video he recorded asking his son to send it to the media and ruin Georges career/life.

Instead the son sends the footage only to Georges and confronts Georges in person instead. The son chose to not destroy Georges life even though he had a good reason to. Even during this scene of confrontation, Georges refuses to accept the past and denies any of the resposiblity for what happened. When Georges leaves that bathroom, he leaves his last chance at redemption.

In the end, the last shot with Geoges' son and Majid's son talking indicates the new generation seeking to end the tragic history of their fathers. They are reconciling the terrible history of their ancestors.

After watching this film I knew only one thing for sure: that the Binoche character is having an affair, and that Pierrot knows it.

Reply to: I don't want to inhabit the same anger, denial, and materialism as my father, or the same emotional instability of my mother. (Scorsese) focus as a filmmaker has been guilt. I wish that the DeNiro character in "Cape Fear" had slit his throat, and the Nolte character had spent the rest of the movie dealing with his guilt instead of becoming an action hero.

First, slitting your own throat is not easy. In the real world, Majid never would have done enough damage to cause his own death.

Second, in a Hollywood movie, boys turn into their fathers. No way to escape that fate. They fight it, but they always lose.

Yes, at times Scorsese is too wrapped up in the Catholic concept of guilt. A lot of people in the audience just don't get what he's doing. (My hand is up.)

I don't see DiCaprio as Georges. I don't see him suffering that kind of guilt. There's no problem in bringing in another actor to play Anne's husband. Oh, yeah, Alec Baldwin has retired from acting, but Paul Bettany isn't doing anything that month.

Let's say the primary focus is giving DiCaprio's character an arc. He starts with a weakness, suffers greatly, and comes out a better man. What IF... he goes on the Internet, hires an escort, and Anne shows up at his door. She's a bit older than the website advertised, but she makes up for it with passion. She makes DiCaprio (and the audience) feels the heat of sexual arousal. And then, she goes back to her husband, and we learn she wanted to earn some money that hubby knew nothing about. Just for her own independence.

DiCaprio sends a tape to the husband. Nothing incriminating, just what we've already seen. Why? Because DiCaprio is a blackmailer. He's taken photos, graduated to video, and he's always one step away from being arrested and sent to prison for twenty years.

DiCaprio enjoys watching the guilt on Georges' face. Georges killed protesters when he was a police officer in France, came to United States to start over... so, maybe there's some footage on the tapes of the protests, the bodies of Algerians caught by news photographers... make it clear that Georges killed some of those people and he feels guilty about it.

And it reaches a climax where DiCaprio understands WHY some people feel this incredible guilt, and he changes his mind and decides to put Anne's marriage back together... by showing that Majid is a terrorist and Georges was absolutely right not wanting him in the family, that Georges did the right and necessary thing by killing potential terrorists...

If you're going with the theme of "guilt" or even "Catholic guilt," it can't just sit there for people to admire. It's got to do something. Something that belongs in a Hollywood movie. Reveal some insight into why human beings are more than animals.

I don't want Majid to kill himself. i want him to be committed to an act of terrorism, and DiCaprio comes out of the shadows and puts a bullet through his forehead seconds before he detonates the bomb. I want DiCaprio to be close enough to the bomb that we all think he's going to be blown up... and cheer when he fires the gun.

Am I right about Scorsese? Movies about dangerous people who follow their own sense of right and wrong, which is interesting because it's totally different than the audience's sense of right and wrong. (ie, when Sonny is gunned down, the Godfather accepts it, and we wait until Sonny's brother becomes Godfather for payback?)

I guess what I'm saying is, for a big-budget Scorsese movie, I expect to see a few guys get taken out. But the Catholic guilt thing needs to be in there, too.

The Nick Nolte character in "Cape Fear" had no reason to feel guilty. He didn't send an innocent man to prison. He sent a guilty man to prison. When a lawyer manages to make the legal system work the right way, he's not going to feel guilty about it.

I apologize if this has been brought up, but did anyone notice the doctor peeking over Anne's shoulder in the scene in the cafe? It's the scene where Pierre is comforting Anne and then kisses her wrist. There's a guy in scrubs watching them, along with a blond woman (we only see her back) who could be Yves' mother. She mentioned she works at the hospital.

Might this be why Pierrot suspects his mother of some tomfoolery?

Pierrot didn't take the video because whoever did must be able to drive (the shot of Georges' childhood home was shot through the window of a car, and so was the shot leading to Majid's apartment).

Mr. Ebert,

When you mentioned 20:39 in your Great Movies article, I thought for certain you were referring to the scene where father and son walk to their car and Georges stops to pick a flyer off of his windshield. As they're approaching the car, if you keep your eye on Pierrot the entire time, you will see him quickly snatch something from a bush to his right. I never would have noticed it had you not had me watching the surrounding scenes several times over.

As the critic Michael Mirasol writes in his discussion of the film, a preceding shot "refers to the spot where Georges' house is being recorded (the film's opening shot). It has to be a POV, but from whose?

There's something about this shot that I haven't seen mentioned: It's taken from Geoges' bedroom. The shot appears a second time when George returns home after Majid's suicide. (The second one is the start of Chapter 20, at 1:34:20 on my DVD) He asks Anne to get rid of their friends, and he looks out the window to watch them leave. It's (almost) the same shot--in the later shot, you can see the curtains move (moved by Georges), where they are still in the first shot. It appears that the first shot is actually taken a bit lower, because you don't see the sky lights like you do in the second shot. And, the first streetlight is on the second time, so it doesn't seem so ominous.

What I would suggest is that the first time this shot appears, the shot Mirasol called #3, is not a videotape at all. It's actually Georges looking out his window, perhaps wondering where the camera could have been, and then perhaps thinking about Majid, where we then get a shot from his memory of the bleeding boy.

Different subject: I wouldn't make too much of it, but I find it interesting that the movie poster above Georges' head when he leaves the theater is for Deux Freres (Two Brothers), about two tiger brothers separated when cubs. One bold tiger goes to the circus, where he's beaten into submission. The shy tiger goes to live with a rich family. The two tigers meet again later, but as enemies. I haven't actually seen the movie, but the setup seems eerily similar.

I don't believe there is a definitive answer to the question of who made the tapes. Haneke deliberately leaves this ambiguous because a) he likes to play with his audience and b) the tapes are just a plot device. There's nothing incriminating on the tapes, at least not initially. It's Georges' guilt-fueled handling of the situation that causes the real damage.

I'm not convinced that any of the characters in the film are responsible for the tapes. But if I had to choose I would go with the two sons working in cahoots. Here's my theory.

- Who

The two sons, "Walid" and Pierrot.

- Why

Walid's motives are obvious, Pierrot's less so. He shows clear animosity towards his mother (who he believes to be having an affair) and there is evidence of a distance between him and his father (his father not realising that he has outgrown an author that he used to like). Basically Pierrot is entering the 'I hate my parents' phase of childhood. Walid's tale of his bourgeouise father's selfish actions might have been all the ammunition he needed to turn the screws.

- Where & When

I imagine Walid and Pierrot met regularly in secret to go over their plans - we see one such meeting (probably their last) on the school steps at the end of the film. Pierrot's parents often don't know where he is - it would be easy enough for him to slip out.

- How & What

We can't be sure of the exact division of labour but it seems reasonable to assume that Walid would have handled the driving and rigging up the camera at his house. Pierrot's tasks would have included giving his father one of the drawings on the way home from school (his story about the teacher doesn't quite ring true) and placing one of the tapes in the entrance to he house when his father goes out to answer the door during the dinner party (the package magically appears behind Georges when he steps outside - either he missed it on the way out or it came from inside).

- Problems

1. Walid's flat-out refusal of involvement when he speaks to Georges at his office.

2. Walid and Pierrot's casual manner at the end of the film given the tragic (and presumably unexpected) turn of events. Then again, how much time has passed between Majid's death and this scene?

This is a great film. I can't imagine how Scorsese could top (or even match) it although I'd be glad to be proved wrong.

I don't understand how there's debate over this. There's only one possible sender of the tapes. Majid couldn't have sent them in some twisted scheme climaxing with his filmed suicide. That would be Haneke's way of saying, Algerians are insane and sick. Haneke does not want to take sides in this issue, he wants the viewer to come to their own conclusions. If Majid's son had sent the tapes, wouldn't he seem very remorseful for having indirectly caused his father's suicide? And again, they didn't conspire together because they're not twisted. Pierrot could not have sent the tapes because there's no way he could have known about his father's repressed guilt.

The only possible sender of the tapes is Haneke, who coyly uses the same camera to film the tapes and film the entire movie. The opening shot and credits, of the house is a big clue that Haneke is responsible. He presents us with what could clearly be an establishing shot for the film, instead to then rewind the footage, creating a film within a film, which comes across as a shock (albeit a minor one) to the viewer.

Why doesn't he show us a shot of the TV playing the footage? Why have the credits playing over top of the first shot only to then rewind the footage? He makes it clear that we're not watching a house but we're watching a film of a house. Zing. The final shot is not one of unfolding a mystery or conspiracy if you rather, but one of hope. Look at the way both son's interact and you can tell they have clearly just met for the first time, we can only assume they've been brought together by Haneke directly. Haneke is providing us with just a glimmer of hope that future generations (both French and Algerian) might learn from the errors of their parents.

Please stop arguing over the mystery of the film, because there is none. Reflect on the guilt of the characters and on your own. Also, it wouldn't hurt to read up on Brecht.

Hi Sandwiches, you wrote:

If Majid's son had sent the tapes, wouldn't he seem very remorseful for having indirectly caused his father's suicide?

Exactly my thoughts, too. However, his confrontational attitude / reaction inside the Men's Room is inert, whichever way you see it, compared to what he should have done. (If I were Walid, I'd have done more to prove my innocence, and bring about justice from the persecution. That is, provided that Walid is indeed innocent). I don't think it's a gaffe of the screenwriters. This is where we diverge in our opinions.

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* Roger, this has been a lively discussion. It gave my brain cells opportunity to exercise. It's winter and they usually go dormant with the weather. Ugh! Any more movies to analyse? (That is, if I can get my hands on one in the local Blockbuster store.)

Reply to: Please stop arguing over the mystery of the film, because there is none.

Then, let's create some, because the audience needs a mystery to puzzle over.

I said, for a Hollywood movie, the writer has to start with a clear idea of who did what. He doesn't have to reveal it to the audience.

Reply to: Majid couldn't have sent them in some twisted scheme climaxing with his filmed suicide. That would be Haneke's way of saying, Algerians are insane and sick. Haneke does not want to take sides in this issue, he wants the viewer to come to their own conclusions.

If an adult man commits suicide by cutting his own throat, I'd say he was insane and sick.

Reply to: Ebert: Scorsese has his work cut out for him in making his film. It will be a Scorsese film. Assuming he retains the broad outline, he can

(a) solve the mystery, or

(b) leave the mystery hanging,

as I believe Haneke does. Can you get away with that in a Hollywood film? Will the mass American movie going public let him get way with it?

Our discussion has shown there's no compelling reason for any of the characters to make the videos. But there could be another character, a stalker, who wasn't seen on-screen.

Reply to: The film recalls an incident during the Algerian War when the bodies of hundreds of Algerian immigrants were found floating in the Seine. Among them may have been Majid's parents, who went to Paris to join a demonstration and were never seen again.

For a French movie, you can learn about this in a newsreel.

Can you imagine "Saving Private Ryan" where we learned about the conflict experiences by Tom Hanks' character that way? No, the character has to be in the middle of the battle. We have to duck when we hear the bullets.

If you want the audience to make up their own minds, show enough facts about the incident that they can see both sides of the issue. 30,000 Algerians in a mob? The Detroit riots? Timid men might be afraid and overreact out of, well, testosterone. "you're not going to come to MY city and behave that way." It might be a racist reaction. surely there was racism involved in the original incident, lots of it. We need to see the faces of the protesters. We need to see "30,000" in a meaningful way. then we can make up our own minds.

We need a character who is believable as a police officer. He's the officer who got his hands dirty, got the most blood on his clothes, out of all the police officers. We need to see how those bodies got in the river. Seeing the guy responsible makes it a Scorsese movie.

What is the parallel incident in American history? If Scorsese wants to film it in Vegas, then how did the police get to Vegas? He retired? He took his pension and left?

What if you discovered your own father was this man? OK, you're a boy and you come home, and your father is drunk on the floor. when you try to put him to bed, he insists on telling you every detail of the murders he committed.

There has to be misdirection. There has to be a moment like "The Sixth Sense," when we think Bruce Willis has taken Haley Joel Osment to a funeral and saved the life of the surviving child, by exposing the mother... and then, when we get the Reveal, we have to go back and play the entire scene again. The character with the emotional involvement is Anne, the man's wife. Are the tapes her way of making her husband confess his actions?

A boy comes home and finds his father, Leonardo DiCaprio, drunk and rambling. He goes to the library or the internet and looks up the facts about the incident. then, we go back and see the real story, and learn how the "history" got it all wrong. the police were Scorsese tough guys. They murdered people out of stupidity and... well, protecting our turf. An easy motive to understand, such murders happen among drug dealers every day in large cities. Slowly, we unwrap the layers, until we understand why so many protesters died. Was there an earlier incident that made him hate such people?

Bodies floating in the river after a protest, many of them murdered by police officers and covered up by their superiors. Can we create such an incident in the United States? I think it would have to be French Canadians trying to claim Detroit... no, the dynamic seems unique to North Africans trying to move into Europe.

Can we show a police officer who worked in Paris during the demonstration, and retired to Las Vegas? Is that too big a stretch? After his retirement, he wanted to get as far away from his memories as he could. He chose to live in a desert and work in casinos as a security guard?

Maybe the role for DiCaprio is the younger version of this man. Maybe the film spends so much recreating the protest, we need a great actor in the action, as our viewpoint character, so we can understand his emotions? And then, another actor plays the much older version in Vegas? Because we need to see the conflict between the French police and the Algerian protesters to understand what really happened? That way, the man could watch himself in the historical footage, and for the first time, see what he did from an observer's perspective, and that triggers the guilt?