The synopsis for Cache had me very interested upon first glance. However the film had me confused most of the time. However after reflection, I realized this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The creative direction of Haneke purposefully makes us put our sleuth cap on and investigate the details of the life of Georges and his hidden past.
Caché tells the story of talk show host Georges whose family is being harassed with surveillance of his home and dark pictures that serve as clues as to what happened in Georges past. The movie uses the 1960 Paris setting in order to apply themes from Georges’ life to that of a larger society. The story isn’t told chronologically, we get many seemingly random flashbacks that lead us towards the truth of his past and how it interacts with France’s past. Like Georges, France has a sort of amnesiac attitude towards a particular massacre that killed many algerians in the 1960’s. However, Georges sin is depriving the Algerian boy his mother adopted after the massacre of a good education by spreading false rumors about him.
Haneke uses these two histories to comment on how France hasn’t taken responsibility nor acknowledged the 200 people who brutally lost their lives. Haneke sends a clear message this way: The only way to truly move on and be free from your mistakes and transgressions is to face them head on and accept them as a part of yourself. Georges spends the entire movie trying to run away from his past transgressions and he only suffers further because of it.
Jojo's Findings in Film 