Hidden Cameras, Hidden Moments

"Really?" "Are you serious?" "What?!" The incredulity and ire enunciated in these (and other choise) words at the end of the film Caché perfectly captures the sentiments of those who just finished the film.  As David Bordwell duly notes in his critical work on classical Hollywood cinema, we the viewers are conditioned to follow our narrative from beginning to climax to end.  And so when Caché seems to leave us with no clear resolution after nearly two hours of building up tension, we are "really," serious"ly shocked.  

This final shock, however, comes on the heels of a series of shocks that, in theory, should have prepared us for such a dénouement in two ways.  The first is that throughout the entire film, we the viewers have been deprived of information.  We lose the omnipresence to which Bordwell refers.  Certainly, we see more than we could as characters w

ithin the story.  But that is not enough: we want to see everything, most especially he or she who is filming the tapes.  When we are deprived of that one wish, we begin to lose the control we so often feel we have over stories. And "this loss of mastery," says Pascal Bonitzer in his work "Cahiers du Cinéma, "implicates the spectator, call into question his or her place as spectator....it is in this uncontrollable 'off-screen space' that the splitting of the cinematic scene is located."  We begin the film at the center of its operation and are, within moments until the very end, become subjects and agents of it.  

The ability to perpetrate power but not to create and direct it becomes our obessesion throughout the film.  As Michel Foucault postulates in his work The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, power, knowledge and discourse are key, related aspects that dictate society and social norms.  Without one of these elements, the rest of triumvirate becomes ineffective.  In Caché, we are deprived of all three: we have no knowledge of who is filming the tapes and who has the power to instill fear in Anne (Juliette Binoche) and Georges (Daniel Auteuil) with those tapes, thus we have no subject for discourse.  Without any power, we find ourselves at the mercy of the film, blindly following its whims and whirls.  

It comes as no surprise, then, that this clearly unorthodox film would follow an obviously unorthodox storyline to an even more orthodox ending which is not the least bit impacted by what we, the views, believe or would like to think. The lack of music in the film underlines this notion.  A full score would provide audiences with impressions that help them prepare for what is to come and what they should make of it; it provides insights into the movie that even the best actors are unable to offer.  In Caché, however, we have no music.  We have do not have a certain harmony for the anonymous filmer, another for Georges, and yet a separate one for his wife.  There is only directionless silence.  We do not know what to expect, and so we must prepare ourselves for anything: from a resolution via pedagogical peroration (classical Hollywood) to a resolution via sudden termination (Caché).

The second reason that we should have been prepared for the final scene of Caché is that from prior experience (just under two hours) with the film, we know that despite our ignorance, the information that we can glean from each scene is, albeit transient, vital to our understanding of the film.  Within the picture, each interaction, each glance, each movement has meaning.  Within the production, each position, each light, and each background serves to situate us with an understanding of the film. Ironically, this is even discussed in the film.  Early on, Anne and Georges, struggling to make sense of the tape of their home and, without much success, begin with the most obvious of questions: where is this person filming from?  

We the viewers are forced to ask the same questions to understand not only the filmer but also the film; and inadvertently, we conflate the two.  Take, for example, the elevator scene in which Georges is trying to evade François.  The elevator, filled with mirrors, provides Georges, François, and us an omnipresence by use of mirrors not otherwise found.  In his critical piece "The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema," Daniel Dayan discusses the use of a mirror in Velasquez's Las Meninas.  In the painting, he says, "by virtue of a mirror in the back of the room (depicted at the center of the painting), 

we see what they are looking at: the king and queen, whose portrait Velasquez is painting.  Foucault calls this the representation of classical representation, because the spectator--usually invisible--is here inscribed into the paiting itself.  Thus the painting reresents its own functioining, but in a  paradoxical, contradictory way.  The painter is staring at us, the spectators who pass in front of the canvas; but he mirror reflects only one, unchanging thing, the royal couple."  Almost perfectly analagous to the elevator scene in Caché, it is the mirrors in both the painting and the elevator that provide the viewer with censored, but important information.  The relationship between our elevator king and queen--François (Walid Afkir) and Georges--is the one, unchanging thing as the elevator rises to Georges' office.   We see their eyes, moving to take in that which surrounds them as well as to monitor the other person.  We see distress in their physical statures and the shifting of their weight.  

But more importantly, our unfailing attendance to the "couple" has cost us critical information from the scene.  As Katrinah pointed out in her blog last week, Sergei Einstein identified the shot as "the montage cell."  Nowhere could this be more true.  The object, in this case the mirror, "hides the paintings textuality by preventing the viewer from focusing on it.  However, the text of the painting it totally offered to view," says Dayan.  "It is, as it were, hidden outside the object."  By focusing on the object, the mirror, the mirrors, we lose focus of what is important.  In the case of Caché's elevator, this is the cinematography and art of the film.  We forget that we are in a fully mirrored elevator whose images and reflections offer us the closest chance we have at identifying who is behind the camera.  And while Georges may not be being "filmed" at that very instant, the significance of this lies not in the actual information but in our inability to correctly seek it out and be receptive to it.

And yet, is is obvious that the current misperceptions shape our future conceptions.  For during the final scene of the film, we are watching the fence, the cars, the exiting of students from the school and then the steps.  Soon, the premises are nearly vacated.  Then there are credits.  What happened, we ask? "Really?" someone muttered.  But really, in reality, it wasn't the film--it was us.  Our preoccupation with the "object"--here, the aforementioned inconsequential parts of the scene--precluded us from noticing the only important part: the brief interaction between François and Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky), which has implications that are limited yet tremendous.  And while we may not, despite other clues, have been prepared for this non-classical ending, we really have a resolution and the meaning of this resolution is of a most serious nature. 

Cinema Paradiso: Classical Hollywood or Classic?

In his critical work "Classical Hollywood Cinema," David Bordwell succinctly describes the basic fabula of a Hollywood film.  In this film, he says, there are "psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals.  In the course of their struggle, the characters enter into conflict with others or with external circumstances.  The story ends with a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem and a clear achievement or nonachievement of goals."  

Bordwell is, no doubt, on target with his recognition of the archetypes that codify Hollywood movies.  And Cinema Paradiso, on first thought, appears to be not much different.  The film itself is predictable from the first thunder-storm illuminating flashback brought on by Salvatore's learning that Alfredo has died.  Back we travel to Salvatore's childhood, back we travel to the Cinema Paradiso where Salvatore, called "Toto," longs to work.  His childish and simplistic love for every part of the theatre--the building, the movies, the patrons, the logistics, the employees--is as sweet as it is typical of youth.   His desire to work there, and subsequent obstinacy to do anything but, are also characteristic of a child's affection.  

Similarly, Alfredo having pity on Toto, and eventually placing him under his tutelage, is all part of the typical Hollywood syuzhet.  That their relationship, although appearing at first to be unrequited, is really quite symbiotic is not unexpected: Alfredo teaches Toto everything he wants to know about projecting and film, and Toto saves Alfredo's life.  The story goes on, as stories always do, and with that progression there is the development of what Bordwell calls the "double causal structure, two plot lines:" first, the "heterosexual romance" with Elena; second, the "work....mission or quest."  Each structure has "a goal, obstacles, and a climax."  For Toto, the failure of his first line contributes to the success of his second.  And, in typical rags-to-riches fashion, the little boy who loved the Cinema Paradiso becomes a big name in film.  

Yet the movie is far from a Cinderella story.  Nor is it about the unlikely victory of an underdog.  While the film, in many ways, adheres to the classical structure of Hollywood cinema, its allegorical aspects transcend the archetypes, situating Cinema Paradiso not as a classical Hollywood film but rather as a classic of film.  

Cinema Paradiso is able to eclipse the boundaries of classical Hollywood cinema through three key aspects of the film.  The first is that, for a film that outwardly appears to be standard, the movie has its own charming idiosyncrasies that help to set the film apart from other similar stories.  The town of Sicily in which Toto lives is, despite employing electricity and other features of the Industrial Revolution, remarkably provincial, creating a juxtaposition that is both interesting and original.  Children, men, and women pass by horses and donkeys as they are running to the theatre.  Curtains serve as doors and windows in the home where Toto lives.  Toto's mother doesn't pretend that her husband is alive for children, who know he isn't; she does so for herself.  The expectations that one would have for a typical Hollywood movie are continually unmet in way that is subversively thrilling. 

The second aspect of the film that deviates from classical Hollywood cinema is the life of Salvatore.  In theory, if Toto's life were that of a character in an archetypical Hollywood film, then his "two plot lines" would both "climax" with unlimited success.  That is, Toto should get both the girl and the job.  The Salvatore the audience first meets, however, has achieved success in only one of those two areas.   This deviation, perhaps unfortunate for Salvatore, gives his character and thus the film a credibility that would otherwise not exist.  Salvatore, like all of mankind, has sacrificed a lot and lost even more to become a household name.  And yet, as Wynn Hunter points out, Salvatore has not been entirely without love.  While his life is devoid of the standard love between a man and woman, Salvatore did have love for someone with the same, if not considerably more passion.  Indeed, the love between Alfredo and young Toto did climax in the final scene of Cinema Paradiso as Salvatore is watching the love montage that his mentor has bequeathed to him.  The two plot lines of Salvatore's life do climax, but the results are both unorthodox and unexpected, a subversion of the classical Hollywood cinema plot. 

The third and final feature of Cinema Paradiso that makes the movie an eternal triumph is the theatre itself.  The Cinema Paradiso serves two purposes in the film.  The first is that it is the Mecca of Sicily.  In being the the most sought out place of Toto's town, it small a microcosm of the macrocosm.  Inside the Cinema Paradiso, there are men and women all ages doing all imagineable things while watching the movie.  Yet, whether they are having sex, drinking, or nursing their children, the experience each has inside the theatre is a common one they share with everyone in Sicily.  This speaks to a universality about not only the Cinema Paradiso but also the film--it is of all ages for all ages.  

The second purpose that the Cinema Paradiso serves in the film is that it is Toto's beloved artifact.  It is an intricate part of childhood that touches him and affects his life profoundly.  This, too, is a universal the idea, for everyone had some object as a child that was the very center of their world.  The people, things, and ideas associated with that object--in Toto's case, Alfredo and movies--received our purest and most fervent love, a love that never really leaves us.  And so, when we are in some way reminded of that object, it is an experience that is accompanied not by melancholy but nostalgia.  It is not saccharine, it is not synthetic; it is simply a remembrance of our innocent, unadulterated love.  For an object to be able to elicit this kind of power is a tribute to its affect on our lives.  For a movie to do the same, it is a testament to the entire film and all that it encapsulates.  Films this powerful are never seen in classical Hollywood cinema, but they are seen amongst the Classics.  Cinema Paradiso is a classic.