Código Desconhecido

This is not a conventional film in the sense that the narrative is not complete. The myriad, unconnected short scenes from the lives of various characters that are presented to us have no beginning and no resolution. We come away having gained an insight into the lives of the various people we have seen, but wanting to know more about all of them. This makes for an incomplete experience, and if that is what you want or need then this is not a film for you. If on the other hand, a glimpse into the lives of people so every day and matter of factly portrayed, in a film so realistically set that suspension of disbelief is never an issue then this is a film for you. I came away, emotionally drained, without having had my emotions manipulated. On reflection (I think)this is a film about how cities dehumanise us, and on how we move together without connecting or communicating.

Many different characters are presented in uncompleted stories without any connection. Some years ago, Michael Haneke surprised the lovers of cinema with his masterpiece of violence, the impressive `Funny Games'. Now he surprised me again, in a negative way: although having a good cast leaded by the wonderful Juliette Binoche, and very long scenes without any cut, the screenplay of `Code Unknown' is a great deception. Each story spins without reaching any point. There is free aggression in the subway, lack of communication, poverty and other uninteresting subjects and after almost two hours of film, I asked myself: `What is the point?' In Brazil, we have a saying, which in English could be translated by `of people with good-intention, the hell is crowded'. The intentions of Michael Haneke probably were the best possible, however his movie is terrible. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): `Código Desconhecido' (`Unknown Code')

Well, I suppose not - but he IS the most exciting and interesting new filmmaker around. I would say "young filmmaker" - only he's not young; judging from his bio he's around 60. And he's not really "new", either - he's already made five films. But his films FEEL shockingly "new" - the MATERIAL is new; and it's some measure of how glacial the pace of real aesthetic change is in this supposedly-globalized world that he is only now becoming known in the U.S.

Those of you who have seen his best-known work, "Funny Games", would probably agree with me that it is the most horrifying movie ever made. "Games" coolly subverts the conventions of the horror movie to unremittingly punish the audience for its desire for violence. The effect is unbelievably harrowing.

Now we have "Code Unknown", which is not nearly as cruel an experience as "Funny Games", but which has the same strict intellectual armature. With as radical a technique as Godard's, Haneke takes a short scuffle in the streets of Paris as the point of departure for a meditation on true knowledge in a world of chance and mischance.

Haneke breaks the film up into short, disconnected fragments, with black spaces between them. In several no words are spoken, while others turn out to be "inside" films that the "lead" character, an actress played by Juliette Binoche, is making. Many are long, single shots - sometimes gliding along to follow the characters, but sometimes rooted in one spot as the characters drift to and fro. And the "stories", such as they are, wander too, from Paris to what looks like the Balkans, as Haneke follows Binoche, her war photographer boyfriend, his brother and father, a street beggar who is deported from Paris, a young black teacher of the deaf, and a host of other ancillary characters. What they don't understand - but we do - is that the course of their lives has been largely determined by encounters with people they'll never even know.

These people may think they're drowning in "too much information" - but actually, they don't have ENOUGH information; Haneke's recurring theme is our attempt to interpret a largely-unknown reality - and the problem of our responsibility to act on that interpretation. And despite a handful of longeurs, the effect is mostly completely absorbing. Those who were fascinated by the backwards-moving "Memento" will have a field day with "Code Unknown", where we have to tease out relationships, back story, and whether or not the narrative we're watching is "really" happening at all, with a lot fewer clues than Guy Pierce ever got.

And THEN - and this is what's interesting - somehow Haneke demands that we "make up our minds" about what we've seen; we feel compelled to judge, and yet we cannot - is the kid we see mistreating a beggar really a bad kid? Is the actress really being sealed up to die in a windowless room? Was the note from "a defenseless child" really written by an abused little girl (she turns up dead, so with a shock we appreciate what's at stake in our pause to consider the issue)? "Code Unknown" offers no answers - but then neither does life. The film ends with a scarily-happy drum-pounding by a chorus of deaf children.

I suppose what's startling about Haneke is that he has such an assured technique and yet eschews almost all directoral razzle-dazzle. He's not a Darren Aronofsky, ringing a dozen eye-popping changes on an essentially-empty story. And his intense horrors are justified by the depth and purity of his concerns - unlike those of, say, Tarentino or (God help us!) Guy Ritchie. Haneke's smarts are story and conceptual smarts, not adolescent film smarts; he's wildly daring, but he's icily mature. I'd almost say he's the heir to Kubrick's mantle, but these days that might be tarring him with an unwanted brush (as I watched "Code Unknown" I suddenly realized I was glad Pauline Kael was dead - she'd feel driven to sabotage this much intellectual challenge!).

I had to see "Code Unknown" at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston - however, there was a substantial crowd there; word is slowly getting out about Haneke. "Funny Games" is available on video (but be warned!); as far as I know, his latest, "The Pianist" (with Isabelle Huppert - Haneke's career is obviously being helped by interest from European-mainstream actresses) has yet to achieve a U.S. release. Here's hoping we'll see it in the States sometime soon.

I tracked this one down after being impressed with Haneke's "Funny Games," and while the two films could not be farther apart in intent, both reveal a competent filmmaker of enigmatic yet fascinating films. It seems in the three years between the two films, Haneke has replaced his antagonistic/didactic antics in favor of a more personal, contemplative study of how simple actions in today's diverse culture can have far-reaching effects. "Code Unknown" is as involving visually as it is cerebrally. Apart from a few montages (comprised of photos taken by one of the film's many peripheral characters), almost every scene is composed in one long, carefully orchestrated shot. Without the distractive tendencies of editing, the viewer is promptly absorbed into each vignette, each of which is loosely related to the others by the film's first scenario. Throughout the film, complex social issues such as xenophobia, vagrancy, and familial strife are explored; however the film's effectiveness lies in its ability to portray the sense of homelessness often described as an inevitability of today's consumerist, globalist culture. Which is not to say that the film succeeds indefinitely in its grand scope. At times, the scenes seem either pointless, or pointlessly drawn out. It occasionally seems Haneke is overreaching in breadth: framing the film with deaf children signing seems somewhat pretentious, but can be forgiven when the rest of the film's minimalist formality is taken into consideration. However, an interesting analysis of the semiotics of "Code Unknown" could probably be thought out (the two meta-films, the deaf kids, the title), but that would require more than one viewing, and more tenacity than I'm sure most viewers are willing to give. Still, quite a visually stunning and at times intense film, slightly marred only by the same quality that makes it worthwhile: its refusal to adhere to accepted filmic logic.

"Code Unknown" is truly an excellent portrayal of the never- ending multi- cultural dilemmas within a "modern" society. It is a topic that we all have to face everyday. It has become part of our lives and for most of us, we have gotten used to it, to accept it as is. I strongly recommend everyone to spend 2 hours to see what we really are going through in our society, and an issue that we think we are solving yet deep down we are ignoring it for all sorts of selfish reasons. The message in this movie has also aroused us that our younger generations are also making the same racial mistakes that we, the so- called "older generation", have all seen and some might have had already experienced not once, but several times. The unique way of editing in this film works perfectly with the story because I was very disturbed by the elongated black outs between scenes; however, the more I felt disturbed, the more I felt as if I was one of the characters, sharing their emotions and their confusions. The timing of the black outs was also a superb and fresh way to reflect a continuation of the situations in the most cleverly subtle alternative. What we see on the silver screen is actually a mirage of our reality. Instead of telling us to our face that we are having problems, it simply shows us what we are doing everyday. It is that simple.