"A feature film is twenty-four lies per second." -- Michael Haneke.
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke ([[ASIN:B00006LPER The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition)]], [[ASIN:B00000F7E6 Cache (Hidden)]]) is known for his "disturbing" style. "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator," he says. "They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." That said, his 2000 French film, Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (Code Inconnu: Recit Incomplet De Divers Voyages), is set primarliy in Paris, although several scenes occur in Mali and Romania, where the fates of five very different characters intersect, connect, or disconnect, as the case may be. Juliette Binoche plays Anne, a semi-successful actress who, in a nine-minute unbroken opening shot, bumps into Jean (Alexandre Hamidi) on a busy Paris street. He is the disgruntled younger brother of her remote war photographer boyfriend Georges (Thierry Neuvic). After revealing that he has run away from his father's farm, Jean insults Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), a Romanian street beggar by callously tossing his trash into her lap. Amadou (Yenke), a principled black teacher of deaf children observes the incident, angrily confronts Jean, and demands an apology. The gendarmes arrive and tell Jean to leave, while arresting Amadou (presumably because he is black) and commencing the deportation of Maria. This brief incident has a ripple effect, linking the lives of these characters for the remainder of the intellectually fierce film, a film which confronts issues of communication, xenophobia, victimization and consumer society head on. The point of the film seems to be that modern society is heartless, and that it is infected with prejudice and bigotry which threaten to destroy it unless addressed on individual and political levels. Haneke uses long, unedited camera takes, jarring fades, and Godardian edits characteristic of French cinema, which some viewers might find frustrating. I say be patient with this very rewarding film.
G. Merritt |
Code inconnu: RA cit incomplet de divers voyages [Region 2] dvd movie.![Code inconnu: RA cit incomplet de divers voyages [Region 2]](/pictures/Code-inconnu-cit-incomplet.jpg)