Caché and L'Absent

When reading Daniel Dayan’s “The Tudor Code of Classical Cinema” I was struck most by the terms and ideas with which he closes his essay. Dayan, chanelling many of the ideas of Jean-Pierre Oudart. states:

“When the viewer discovers the frame... the triumph of his former possession of the image fades out. The viewer discovers that the camera is hiding things, and therefore distrusts it and the frame itself.”

This immediately reminded me of the opening scene of Michael Haneke’s “Caché”. The camera shows a home, and, despite a few passer-bys on foot and in car, the image could pass for a still one. The spectator feels that triumph of entering a new film and visually taking everything in. But the feeling quickly turns ominous. Is the house going to explode? Is someone going to come screaming out of the house, with a dead baby in his hands? Because of this eerie stillness and all the attention Heneke immediately places on this house, the spectator expects the worst.

Then, when non-diegetic sound in the form of calm dialogue between two people is heard, the audience is thrown for a loop. Are they watching this first hand or is the spectator watching this through someone else? Turns out the film’s two protagonists are watching a videotape of their own home being filmed. Phew, no bombs, no bloody babies. But, however, the audience learns it has been tricked. As Dayan says: “the spectator discovers that his possession of space was only partial, illusory.” The spectator was not “where” he thought he was originally. Heneke immediately derails the viewer, and takes what Dayan says to an extreme.

Haneke continues to keep the audience uncomfortable and confused throughout the film by employing a calculated filming technique. The reasoning behind this technique matches up with the narrative of the film itself. The film’s two protagonists Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), receive videotape after videotape of mundane shots of their home and of insights to Georges’ past. The couple goes to the police, as they feel their lives are in danger and they are being terrorized. Haneke gives the spectator clues about who is filming this family as the plot unfolds, but never reveals who the culprit actually is. Thus, for the entirety of the film, the couple (and, thus, the spectator) feels haunted by this imaginary “person” that the film is truly about. Dayan introduces and explains one of Oudart’s terms, which I believe connects to Haneke’s visual style. Dayan states:

“He [the spectator] discovers that he is only authorized to see what happens to be in the axis of the glance of another spectator, who is ghostly or absent. This ghost, who rules over the frame and robs the spectator of his pleasure, Oudart proposes to call ‘the absent one’ (l’absent).”

This idea of “the absent one” directly connects, as Dayan explains, with the shot / reverse shot technique. In film, characters are often speaking to the right or left side of the camera, thus speaking to this “absent one” who is occupying that space. The spectator learns (because of the ingrained language and vocabulary of film) that this character is speaking to another character (one who probably was in the previous, establishing shot). It is interesting to note that Heneke does not employ the shot / reverse shot often in “Caché”, which makes the spectator incredibly uncomfortable. At the dinner table discussion, for example, the camera does not shoot who is speaking at the table, but rather shoots the characters head on without much regard to whom each character speaks. Haneke does not relieve the audience with familiar shot patterns. He does not let the camera occupy the point-of-view of a specific, known character, and keeps the spectator on edge (and also keeps him paying attention). By doing this, Haneke reinforces the idea that the absent one is in control of the film. He gives power to the unknown videotape-sending silent stalker by going against the grain of the typical filmic enunciation. This makes his film all the more effective, eerie, and powerful.