Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys

In a perfect introduction to the film, children play a mime game where a girl acts out gestures but her classmates are not able to decipher it properly. There is an unknown code to communication, as there is an unknown code to identity, past, history, races and societies, the code to interdependence and code to fear and conflict. All these codes are not only unknown but also elusive, the more we try to figure them out, the more we know about their complexity. Haneke captures this idea in this brilliant and essential film.

Code Unknown is a series of fragments from the lives of its main characters. But unlike movies where these characters meet at the end, different stories join themselves in one crucial plot point; Code Unknown establishes that connection in the very first fragment. It might be because the film is not telling us about coincidences and the lives of different people crossing each other but other more important points. The first shot where we meet four different characters is quite brilliant in that way, it's very unsensational, it's very everyday and that's where Haneke makes the point that these interactions are so common to be ignored and the societies have become so complex in terms of identities and connections that any full communication will not only be insufficient but misleading to understand it and like any half truth, it will do more harm than good. That is why Haneke shows just fragment of interactions and communication, like the way we deal them in our lives, without knowing what happening to the person in between the interactions and what is the history behind any gesture and any act.

Anne (Juliette Binoche), who is an actress, lives in Paris with her war-photographer boyfriend Georges (Thierry Neuvic), who is in Kosovo. Georges teenage brother, Jean (Alexandre Hamidi) who lives with her father in countryside works in a barn but Jean wants to get out of it. In the first establishing shot, Jean, who has run away from his father's house meets Anne on a Paris street asks for the new entry code to her apartment, while walking he throws a crumpled bag in the lap of Maria(Luminita Gheorghiu), a Romanian illegal immigrant who is begging on the street. Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a teacher of deaf children, pulls an argument with Jean for his behavior and in a turn of unfair events police arrests Amadou and Maria. This first shot builds the connection of the incomplete fragments (as the name suggests, Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys) that we are about to see.

To talk about those disconnected yet surprisingly narrative sequences are beyond my scope, but we can talk about some of them and more importantly why such fragments are necessary to build a big canvass of interdependent realities and their simultaneous outcomes. All the fragment end with no sense of closure, its like actors still acting and camera still rolling, there is a few second black out between the sequences, which might be thought as the elapse of some time or a detachment technique, to show that its all staged (in fact one of the fragment gives us just a fourth wall view of a stage performance, a woman laughing hysterically), or a thematic tool to show that all these communications are incomplete, unless we look them all in one picture. It too puts onus on its viewer to weave the fragments as they like, and we know that when it comes to trusting the viewers, Haneke is very bighearted. His movies are direct opposite to Hollywood spoon-feeds and audience-pleasers. In some of the episodes/fragments, we see Anne on her acting assignments, which are Haneke's tool to show how thrill can be easily faked, and how popular culture defines our emotional conscience.

There are several sequences which are particularly intense and economic in the way they say things to the viewers, one is where Anne hears the cry of a child and worries about the child but not able to do anything and that particularly sad scene where Maria feels ashamed of herself. There is an extraordinary long shot in train where an Arab kid insults Anne, where Juliette Binoche gives a powerful performance.



Amidst of the chaos and gloom, Haneke puts the fragments of children from all races playing some African beat on drums, a surprisingly hopeful montage of cultures coming together, co-existence and compassion. In the penultimate sequence we see Amadou and his white girlfriend playing drums with the children and that sound spills over to the last dialogue-less sequence. The last scene of the film again shows a child making gestures (more difficult to guess than those shown in the beginning of the film) probably to say to the viewer, see, now that you have seen these fragments, incomplete as they are, can there be any easy answers, can identities be labeled that easily, can a society be graded, classified and categorized that plainly, how a single experience can not justify an act of the society, how much we are interconnected, and how much we deny that fact. In all its chilly long shots, meandering through several incomplete interconnected stories, Code Unknown, at times seems to touch that evasive slice of truth, a code to existence and co-existence.

Funny ... aint it ?

When exactly 90 minutes of movie have passed, one of the tormentor turns towards the viewers and asks with sadistic fun, "We haven't even reached feature film length, yet" and goes on with more fun and gives the viewer more "gratification" that movie has not finished yet, it will continue and so do the inescapable violence for the audience who has seen it all, enjoyed it in the plethora of hollywood slick flicks and to say the least have become immune to it as long as it is not directed towards him, and is shown using a number of euphemisms. One more time, quite early in the movie, the clever tormentor, blinks his eyes towards the audience to show that the game has started and its so much fun in tricking the one who is searching for someone dead as is done many of the million-bucks directors, in this case it was just a dog, so we console ourselves with the fact that we can take that much and probably this scene was put for someone weaker at heart, quite unaware of the game we are put in.

And it all apparently starts over a few eggs, which probably a viewer is not used to digest because violence is supposed to have bigger motives and for that we soon realize that there are people like sadistic bastards and psychopaths (this reason-finding attitude of the film-consumers is also mocked at when reason why one of the tormentors turned so is fabricated by the other) and we are happy to find a reason but what about the plot. For this our (we can say this for sure) tormentor, again turns to us and quips "Don't you expect a plot" and again finds excuse to be more violent, the more the better, he is killing us with our own mantra of entertainment value and what people call "Paisa Vasool". I may go on and on to say how queasy I felt, how sick was the violence, how bad were the psychos and I will miss the whole point. This movie is not supposed to make you so (although it does so) but to test you in a way, its like asking how much you can take, and how much you can enjoy and in doing so it doesn't make fun of violence which movies like 'Pulp Fiction' do and hence it doesn't reduce the magnificent tension that it builds.

One more interesting thing about the movie is the background score or rather dearth of it, its a fun of those movies that use accentuated sound effects to heighten the tension, there are occasional burps of music and that too diegetic most of the times and all this excellent-excellent use/non-use of music is shown in the opening sequence where the couple play a music game and their soft music is overshadowed by some metallic rock. Also those who consider that all this is done by any cheap trick and by pulling on unexpected turns to keep us engaged, should understand that you can't find a better director who respects his viewers, there is nothing unexpected except if you base your expectations on the history of violence in movies. And here Haneke comes with a brilliant scene where what a sick-of-violence-and-full-of-revenge viewer will expect comes first, and then our tormentor rewinds the time and shows us what exactly happened, and it slaps the respite-hungry (by now) audience in a very positive way, what else for, a director will do that, if not for the respect of his crazy viewers. When we are talking about cheap tricks and sensationalism, you should see how coldly (?) Haneke deals with the killing of a child, the after-shot, that runs for more than 10 min reaffirms our faith in the sincerity of the director.

Just a kind, non-violent appeal to who-so-ever got to read it, "If you consider violence to be of any fun value, please see the movie"... ohhh I missed the name, its called Funny Games.

Cocktail

This weekend I saw two movies, almost diagonally apart. One is Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher and the second is the Giuseppe Tornatore's classic Cinema Paradiso. The Piano teacher is about female psyche and the unearthed sides of it and Cinema Paradiso is about a romantic affair of a boy with movies. One is dark and disturbing, other light and heart-ringing, but made a good cocktail and I still have a pleasant hangover. I feel I should write about The Piano Teacher first.

The Piano Teacher is a compelling and psycho dramatic portrayal of a woman in her late 30s, and her darker chambers. The Piano teacher is a movie where you see the mind of 'Erika' peeled off layer by layer. The otherwise plain and almost pious looking Erika has her dark sexual fantasies that are more sado-masochistic than sexual. Erika wants to take the reins of desires in her hand and took pleasure out of it. There are several points in the movie where Erika do the things we could hardly expect from her if we believe her saintly appearance. The episode of putting broken glass pieces in her pupil's coat is nerve-chilling to see, closely followed by it is another shocking display of sadism in a brilliant scene in lavatory with one of her good-looking and talented student, Walter. Here she behaves more like a typical male and try to take control of the situation in whatever way she likes.

Erika doesn't have a sweet relationship with her mother and her father is in asylum. The relations with her students is almost coldly sadistic, we never hear her praising any of them. She was sexually starved but not in a straight way but distorted to a level that we discover in a multi-page letter that she writes to Walter. Walter who longed for her soon starts loathing her after reading the letter and announces her to be 'sick' and try to give her what he calls 'a deserved punishment' in the penultimate scene of the movie for apparently messing up with a 'man'!

Isabelle Huppert as Erika gives a solid performance where she enters into unlit alleys of Erika's mind with laser-like intensity. Her portrayal of a woman with unnaturally hindered emotions is honestly moving and truly believable. We don't feel any true sympathy for her except in last few sequences. Benot Magimel as Walter is impeccable as a man in love to a man in hate, loathing and disgust. Both of them shift gears easily when they exchange the roles of the tormentor and the tormented.

There is one more important component of the movie and that is Piano, it serves as the pain-generating machine through out the movie, standing on the thin lines between chilling music, agony and madness. The music lessons seldom generate any warmth or peace but they generate an unsettling disturbance that Erika lynches her students with.

The last scene is difficult to assimilate or rather difficult to watch. Here Erika's pain and self-loathing are so evident that it hurts. The Piano Teacher is not about any moral fool-talk. Its infact a terrific character sketch of a woman with confused desires, bizarre fantasies, one who tries to make her rules of love, one who finds brutal rape more pleasurable than tender love making, a slap more satisfying than a kiss.