It’s true that most of Austrian director Michael Haneke’s
films are not
the most accessible in the world, but his 8th feature film,
Hidden, is his most accessible film so far. Like some of his other
great works such as ‘Funny Games’ and ‘Benny’s
Video’ , he focuses on families that are thrown into very difficult
and unusual situations in which they find themselves becoming desperate,
unable to cope and traumatised. Yet ‘Hidden’ is more than
just a muse on the effects of psychological trauma on a quiet upper middle
class suburban family. It is so much more.
The film commences with a static shot of a town house in suburban France.
This intriguing opening shot runs for about 2 minutes, until it is revealed
that we are actually watching a video that someone has filmed of a house – one
that has been sent to the owners. The homeowners; Georges (Auteil) and
his publisher wife, Anne (Binoche), are watching the tape with us, sent
to them by an anonymous interloper. Tension builds, as soon into the
film along with the now regular videos come crude childlike drawings
and anonymous phone calls.
Hidden’s premise seems to be to turn a very simple and archetypal
thriller’s plot into a complex story dealing with guilt and urban
racism. Haneke doesn’t stick to the conventions of a thriller in
any sense. There is no score to the film, no definite motive for the
crimes, no ‘real’ villain and no ending which provides all
of the answers. This results in the film working very well as a thriller,
a drama and overall a political analogy.
The performances from Daniel Auteil and Juliette Binoche creates Hidden’s ambience, totally involving us with what they feel. Auteils’s guilt ridden TV journalist and Binoche’s paranoid worried mother/wife figure both give the best performances of their career - and Lester Makedonsky as Georges’ son Pierrot shows as an up and coming child actor in the French film industry. However the best aspect of the film is Haneke’s script. From the very opening of the film, it becomes apparent that Hidden is more than just a conventional thriller, It is a study of the guilt and paranoia and how it affects everyone around him. Moreover, it’s a wonderful study in paranoia and the effects of secrets and lies on a family and how the past haunts everyone, such as the recurring nightmares that Georges experiences constantly through the film, and the fear that his wife, Anne suffers relentlessly.
Haneke makes this film seem as though nothing is what it seems, and every person that watches this will no doubt have different readings to the film’s ambiguous ending and overall meaning. It is this uncertainty, and the thought provoking script that makes Hidden such a vital film, whether read as a straight thriller or a social/ political analogy. This is no doubt one of the greatest films to come out of Europe in years.