More videos are delivered, and childish drawings of babylike figures spewing blood start arriving at home and work. Who is doing this, and why? The only certain thing is that you will never be sure of the answer. Haneke, director of The Piano Teacher and Code Unknown, doesn’t do answers; he does questions.
Georges is a French intellectual who hosts a book show on television. He has the kind of life, wife and decor we are meant to admire. Prompted by the videos and a lack of police help, he turns detective and tracks down a poor Algerian called Majid, who he believes to be the culprit. Their subsequent confrontation leads to unforeseen consequences.
Georges is a man racked with guilt. He is unable to face up to his past, so he ducks out of the present. He hides information from his wife and son. He has the physical bravery of a moral coward. But what’s curious about him is that here is a French literary intellectual who never intellectualises his situation; he never mentions France’s dark colonial involvement in Algeria, or even Orwell. Instead, he responds to what he sees as a campaign of victimisation like one of those angry blue-collar characters that Michael Douglas used to play.
Hidden is Haneke’s most accessible film to date. It may not have the power of his brilliant The Piano Teacher, but it’s a first-rate Hitchcock-style thriller. He gets us in his grip without scary music or creeping cameras. The tone is quiet and composed as the characters fret and fray. The clarity of Christian Berger’s crisp cinematography contrasts perfectly with the ambiguity of the story. At times, we don’t know what exactly we are watching: Haneke’s film, or the mysterious video-maker’s work? And Auteuil and Binoche are outstanding. Auteuil manages to make Georges effortlessly repellent.
But does Hidden really have something important to say about the times we live in, as so many of its admirers claim? For the art-house crowd, Hidden has a perfect menu of meaningful themes: the politics of race, the sins of white Europe, the contingency of truth and so on. This all adds up to a rehash of everything Haneke has said in his previous films. And his fear of the Big Brother-style intrusion and manipulation of the media is so dated. I also resent his ridiculous idea that we become voyeurs by watching his films.
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More important, it isn’t clear how the personal is the political here. One strand of the story involves Georges as a cruel six-year-old, but how does that relate to France’s actions in Algeria? Answer: neither will admit their guilt. We never understand why Georges doesn’t come clean about what was merely the action of a jealous child.
That said, you shouldn’t miss Hidden — the art-house thriller has never been so thrilling.
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Hidden, 15, 119 mins, Four stars