“Hidden” 2005
I borrowed Hidden from the library when it was mentioned by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips on At the Movies. They agreed it was a superior film to The White Ribbon, director Michael Haneke’s most recent film, an Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Film. Roger Ebert recently added Hidden to his list of Great Movies, so it moved to the top of my Must See list.
Daniel Auteuil is Georges, the host of a literary talk show. He’s married to Anne (Juliet Binoche) and has a twelve year old son, Pierrot. He receives anonymous videotapes showing surveillance of his home, and soon a series of violent childlike drawings. Who is sending them, why, and do they mean harm to Georges and his family? As the tension builds, it creates a widening gulf between the couple. Several times the director seems to be giving the viewers some part of answers, only to retract or call them into question later. In the end, the film is less about who sent the tapes than about how Georges falls apart while trying to hold things together. It’s also about the expectations viewers have from a film like this, and what our expectations say about what we want.
This is a film that deliberately frustrates and confuses the audience, hailed by many critics as great, but by others as a nasty mind game perpetrated on the audience by the director. There is a scene of brief, graphic violence that happens so quickly it’s probably not possible to cover your eyes from. The scene is meant to shock, and it does. Haneke is proud of his ambiguous film. He has said that he wanted a film that viewers would walk about and remember, not dismiss once their questions were answered.
With me, at least, he succeeded. I spent a good deal of time reading material on the movie after I saw it to better understand it. I do, or at least I think I do. Roger Ebert’s Great Movies entry and the BFI’s Sight and Sound article on it were the most comprehensive and helpful to me. And while I can’t say I enjoyed the film, I do admire it and appreciate its complexity. It’s not many films that prompt me to further study and investigation as this one did.