Hid­den

Michael Haneke, you are a bad, bad, man. In your lat­est film, Hid­den, you take us on a pleas­ing­ly vis­cer­al back­seat trip through a prim and pol­ished movie-land of your own mak­ing. Here, in a dark­ly som­bre con­tem­po­rary Parisian thriller, the highs and lows are vague­ly famil­iar, yet sensual.

The per­for­mances apt­ly com­pelling. The sense of dread, suit­ably spine-tin­gling. And then, just when you hit your top speed, just when everything’s about to make sense in a grand cat­a­clysmic nar­ra­tive whirl, what do you do? You open the door and kick us out of the fuck­ing car!

Michael Haneke, you are a devi­ous, devi­ous drama­tist. You give us an affa­ble yet slight­ly self-impor­tant TV show host, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), his brit­tle and neglect­ed wife Anne (Juli­ette Binoche), and their docile teenage son Pier­rot (Lester Make­don­sky). And then you plague them with an unseen stalk­er who sends them anony­mous video sur­veil­lance tapes – of their house, their street, and even their conversations.

The tapes dri­ve the fam­i­ly apart. The mar­riage breaks down. Pier­rot goes miss­ing. There’s a secret here, you hint. Some for­ma­tive Freudi­an guilt from Georges’ child­hood, final­ly com­ing back to haunt him. An abuse of a local Arab boy, per­haps? Yes, get­ting warmer. And the boy’s old­er now? Yes! And he wants revenge? Yes! But then, Michael Haneke, what do you do? You turn your back com­plete­ly on dra­mat­ic con­ven­tion, nar­ra­tive arcs, and sto­ry through-lines. Just because you can.

Michael Haneke, you are a dark, dark film­mak­er. You say that your mis­sion is to make ​‘polem­i­cal state­ments against Amer­i­can cin­e­ma and its dis­em­pow­er­ment of the spec­ta­tor.’ Which is why Hid­den is so bold. It feels like a pol­ished Amer­i­can stu­dio movie. It cor­us­cates with lush sil­very dol­lies, tracks and pans.

It lulls us into Kubrick land, and it toys with our Amer­i­can­ised view­ing sen­si­bil­i­ties – our pro­grammed need for the com­fort­ing rhythm of spo­radic thrills, con­sis­tent ten­sion and tiny cathar­tic bites. And just when it has us in the palm, on the edge, and at the brink, it says, ​‘You know what? Fuck you!’

Michael Haneke, you are a stark, stark moral­ist. You were born in Munich, raised in Aus­tria, and you stud­ied phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na. You’re 63-years-old, and you care. You say that ​‘art is oblig­ed to con­front real­i­ty,’ and so you turn Hid­den into a Tro­jan horse thriller that’s con­cerned with con­fronting the fetid, post-colo­nial real­i­ty of West­ern-Arab relationships.

Georges’ guilt about past Arab abus­es is France’s guilt about Alger­ian atroc­i­ties, is the West’s cur­rent guilt about Mid­dle-East­ern occu­pa­tion. It’s no coin­ci­dence that Georges’ TV is con­stant­ly ham­mer­ing out news of the lat­est Iraqi atroc­i­ties, even as his mar­riage implodes and his fam­i­ly life disintegrates.

Michael Haneke, you are angry. You hate Georges and his bour­geois life. You ridicule his din­ner par­ties, his vile anaes­thet­ic fur­ni­ture and his inane con­ver­sa­tions. You want him pun­ished, you want his entire crass con­sumer-obsessed West­ern soci­ety pun­ished. You want to bring down the tem­ple about your ears, but…

Michael Haneke, you are a genius. Your film is suf­fused with sad­ness. Your images have uncom­mon beau­ty. Your long, long takes find mag­ic in the most unas­sum­ing things. An emp­ty street scene becomes a cap­ti­vat­ing tableau. A car park­ing in the night becomes a thing of unfath­omable mystery.

And a decap­i­tat­ed chick­en danc­ing errat­i­cal­ly around your frame is a soft­ly destruc­tive bal­let. And Georges too. You have for­give­ness even for him. You leave him at the end, bat­tered but not bro­ken. Which is just as you leave us.