Text Commentary
Abandoning classical composition
by Casey Riffel `
The object of the camera's gaze remains, as the film's title suggests, hidden. In these paired chaotic compositions, which respectively open and close Haneke's Caché (2005), the viewer's gaze is left adrift. The feeling of being unmoored, of being abandoned by the camera, pervades the film on both formal and thematic levels. The suggestion of a buried clue does little to suggest the location of the truth: the identity of the kidnapper, the legacy of racism in France, the object of the voyeuristic gaze implied by the videotape.
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