Please don't spend money on this.

Admirable film.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In the pantheon of cinema there are an endless number of films that can be labeled "masterpieces" in some context. But only a select few of these films are as engrossingly perplexing as Cache. The setup is quite simple, an upper class educated French family begins to receive video tapes in the mail. The tapes are wrapped in plastic bags and accompanied by disturbing childish drawings. The tapes themselves are even more perplexing, they're long stationary distant shots of the couples home. Most perplexing of all, there's no way the shots could have been obtained without the couples knowledge, as at several points they should have noticed the large bulky camera. To reveal much more would ruin the suspense that unfolds, but secrets are revealed, actions take on a new context, and things get complicated. This is a film which has been dissected endlessly by cinephiles and critics alike, pouring over the film scene by scene, frame by frame, attempting to decipher an enigma. Every new piece of information only broadens the films scope, and inspires more questions than it answers. Rarely have I ever felt as much of an urge to rewatch something. The credit is all Michael Hanekes, every shot has been perfectly conceived, timed, and choreographed to hold the audiences attention and to hit them with maximum impact. This film is designed to frustrate and perplex, but in my there are big themes woven into it. As for answers, I think that will be up to the viewer to make heads or tails of. This is definitely a film which begs to be seen multiple times. Overall I'd call this a definitive Masterpiece, truly one of the greatest thrillers ever made.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. This is France's established, officially disseminated political memory. The Storming of the Bastille on the afternoon of 14 July 1789: this is the event and date that French citizens have etched in their collective memory.However, the date in France's repressed political memory, which is cited in Michael Haneke's Caché, is October 17, 1961. On this date, French police brutally quashed peaceful demonstrations of hundreds of Algerian protesters who had congregated in Paris to protest against a French security crackdown during the Algerian War of Independence. The official death toll the following day was two dead but this figure was disputed with reports of dozens of bodies found floating in the River Seine. (The figure cited in the film is 200 dead).Haneke's film cites this clash, which is a sore spot in Frances history and something that was hidden from France's political memory for decades. A public inquiry was prevented and access to archived police records relating to the event was not allowed until 1998.However, Caché is not a film explicitly about these events, they function in the narrative as a framework for the complex relationship of memory, forgetting, and guilt. Within the film's narrative, the Algerian character Majid's parents were killed in this massacre.The opening shot is immobile… unwavering, unflinching, mechanical, objective. It is digital video footage: cheap, the medium of the masses. It is post-modern, it depicts the cold light of present day. One of the opening lines: "It doesn't look like it was filmed through a window". It is unvarnished and unedited (unlike the protagonist Georges' TV program and life). It is real. Nothing of note happens in the taped footage. The lead characters rewind the footage and watch again. A trick is revealed. We realize we are watching taped footage that the 'agents' of the scene are also watching. What are we ultimately watching? We are watching the watchers, the chattering classes of contemporary France; those who interpret and disseminate France's political memory. We are watching them manipulate history. Edit time. Rewind, fast-forward, cut, omit. (Editing an episode of his TV show later on, where he cuts back in: the woman on screen smiles and says "it's poetic license, no?").Georges hides from his wife, from his son, from his mother, from his friends. His wife Anne finally breaks down later in the film, pleading: "People talk to each other, don't they?"The mother, too, also keeps memories hidden. She claims to not be aware of whom Georges is referring to when he mentions Majid, despite the fact that this was a child she had planned to adopt. She has suppressed the memory: "It was a long time ago. And it's not a happy memory".The Euronews footage from Iraq (which appears at the golden section of the film) depicts events that may well be repressed in the political memory of certain European countries decades in the future. France (along with Haneke's homeland of Germany) famously refused to join the USA's 'coalition of the willing' in 2003 to invade Iraq. Caché can be seen as a riposte to French commentators who were suggesting at the time of filming that France had somehow taken the moral high ground. Wait, says Haneke, we have plenty of skeletons in our own closet.As the narrative scene plays out, neither actor is center of frame – it is the television screen, the news footage – now of conflict in Palestine - which is center. It is in the background and the foreground simultaneously. We try to ignore it to follow the narrative, but it is difficult. It refuses to be hidden. One recalls the intentional confusion between the director's camera and the video in the opening scene. The news footage references Italian and British forces. This is not simply a French film for French audiences. This is an international film for all nations. After Sajid completes his suicide, we see Georges has spent the following hours in the cinema. He has sought escape from the horrible reality in a dark room. Later he hides from his 'friends' in his darkened bedroom. Lastly, in his final scene, he closes all the curtains to block out the light."Do you expect me to apologize?" he asks Sajid's son towards the end of the film. (French president François Hollande would eventually apologize for the killings in 2012, seven years after this film was released).At the end of Caché, the protagonist lies down on his bed. A memory plays back in Georges' mind, one he has fought his entire life, since the age of six, to forget. It comes not as redemption but as a torturous thorn. Georges shows no remorse. There is no repentance or contrition. Thus, he will never know Liberty (he lives in a cage of lies of his own devise), Equality (apologies… are offerings that disrupt the established hierarchies and, as a result, level out differences) nor Fraternity (his would-be adopted brother is dead).

Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) hosts a TV literary show with wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) and son. They start receiving videotapes of surveillance shot by a mysterious stranger from the streets. They are wrapped with disturbing childlike drawings. Georges starts feeling the stress of the unusual stalking. The surveillance gets more personal pushing him to the edge. He suspects orphan Majid who stayed with Georges' family when he was a child.Daniel Auteuil is utterly brilliant. I love his paranoia and his guilt. It's a great performance. My only complaint is the videotape footage. The movie spends too much time watching nothing. It slows down the movie whenever that happens. It's an interesting film technique the first time around but nothing happens. I just get antsy for the film to get going.

Had it not been for the quality of the acting, I would have rated this one. What do you want from a film? Are you the type of person who likes a film that 'makes you think', but doesn't necessarily have a clear ending? Or have you, as I did with this with film, sometimes got to the end of a film and felt robbed, asking 'Is that it? What was the point? Did I miss something?' The majority of those who reviewed this film on this site must fall into the first group, given it's relatively high rating. The main character in the film is a talk show host who hosts book reviewers. In one scene, set on his show, a group offers their various interpretations of a book. It seems to me that the director is trying to generate something similar with this film.