A quote from filmmaker Michael Haneke: “I am not a forger of opinions. The interesting thing about a table is its quality, its shape, its functional nature, the way the material was shaped, not the cabinetmaker’s opinion.” The Austrian directors particular brand of messing with the audience’s perception earns him as many fans as it does alienate viewers. Well, actually it probably drives more away than it attracts judging by the fact that Funny Games US was significantly less popular than, for instance, The Strangers. To wit: the ‘remote’ fourth wall shatter is the deal breaker for a lot of folks. A few years after his original 1997 version of Funny Games, Haneke made a ‘intersecting story’ film called Code Unknown (Code Inconnu) told entirely in long takes (the opening shot is insanely complicated). The confusing thing is that the time elapsed between each long take is never made clear, and each shot ends a few seconds than the audience is conditioned. This is quite disorienting. However in the middle of the film, for some reason that is not immediately clear, Juliette Binoche’s character has a new husband (and a young child) and the now the scene takes on a more conventional editing/cutting structure with medium shots, reaction shots, etc. The scene is still disorienting in how it offers its information.
1. Juliette Binoche in a swimming pool flirting with her lover.
2. We then realize that the swimming pool is on the upper floors of a high-rise building
3. She has a son, who is about to fall over the edge of the balcony outside the pool.
4. The son is implied to have fallen, although he has not.
And this is the kicker:
5. After the scene ends with the child safe and parents freaked out, the camera pulls back and it is Juliette Binoche’s character not in the far future, but working on additional dialogue recording (ADR) for the movie her character (who is also an actress) is working on. Now she is joking around with her co-star, totally opposite to the mood and rules that were established in the previous scene.
This is sort of a fourth wall break by putting a film (which could be another separate Haneke film) within the film. There are several suggestions earlier in the film which indicate that this scene is not ‘real’ including one of the individual shots here featuring the audio of the plane flying overhead which is cut as things cut to a different angle. Of course, earlier in the film Juliette Binoche has an audition and we know that her character is an actress (although in that earlier scene we are never sure whether it is an audition or whether or not Juliette Binoche’s character has just been kidnapped a snuff film). Code Unknown constantly toys with the audience, both structurally and with its fractured incomplete narrative, leading to some considerations as to how well things can be communicated or manipulated on screen and what we take for granted versus what we do not initially see or know.
Code Unknown is also less ’sadistic’ as several of the directors other films in terms of what is up on screen, yet on a cerebral and technical level, it is still going after the grey-matter with a the steady scalpel of a brain surgeon. This scene underscores that he can easily twist the audience into tension and then slap them in the face for falling so easily into the puppet-master’s trap; yet at the same time allow for reflection on the limits and the power of the medium. Not bad for 2 minutes and 40 seconds of footage.
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Comment by rot — November 4, 2008