No Happily Ever Afters from Haneke

So this is my third foray into the cinematic world of Michael Haneke (the first two being the frustrating-but-still-good Cache and the brilliant La Pianiste). Code Unknown is definitely thought-provoking, on many levels. I appreciate the way he gives the film a secondary title, Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys; this warns us going in that what we will experience is not yer basic 3-act presentation with a beginning, middle and a spoon-fed end.

Code Unknown is, instead, just what he tells us to expect - little 'snippets' of several different characters' lives, after these lives intersect near the start of the movie. Each scene goes to black just when we're either getting emotionally into it or trying to figure out why it's being shown in the first place. The first time this happened, in fact, I thought there was something wrong with the VHS copy I was watching (the movie is available in this format very cheaply, by the way, through half dot com). Once I realized this was part of the movie and started expecting it - Haneke has to train his viewers to experience his films! - this technique was bearable and of course a huge part of the film's structure, a clever and effective way to portray these incomplete journeys.

I also appreciate how Haneke continually subverts the standard feature film process by finding creative ways to NOT tell his stories. He has a great quote here at IMDb where he states, "A feature film is twenty-four lies per second." I like that. And I mostly agree with him; the majority of commercial movies (the big mainstream blockbusters in particular, the formula-type movies) are worthless garbage because they show and tell us nothing new, it's the same crap recycled yet once again for mass consumption; they are films made without heart or soul, produced purely for the purpose of making money.

This is not to say that there aren't some worthwhile mainstream movies created. I'm not a film snob, not one of those people who thinks that a film is worthwhile only if it has sub-titles and is filmed in blurry black and white with a rain-stained hand-held camera. I enjoy sitting in a dark theatre with popcorn sometimes, too, seeing a film that is not delving into the Big Unanswerable Questions of life on the planet. I can thoroughly get off on a light comedy, say, that leaves me smiling at the end, so long as it's well-written and has some sort of original slant in the way it's presented.

On the other end of the spectrum, I'm almost always up for an intellectually stimulating film, the art film, the non-popcorn movie. He has another statement here at IMDb which I agree with 100%, about how when a book is read, that book is experienced differently by every reader because the reader brings his or her own perspective and perceptions along into the pages. He said he feels the same is true with a film, that no two people will see the same movie, and this is completely valid, no question. With Code Unknown, this is definitely the case.

The thing I found most revealing, for me, while watching it, is how much I rely on finding someone in a movie that I can relate to, or sympathize with, or at the very least, like (or even strongly dislike). There was no character that fit any of those categories in Code Unknown for me, not really. But I still enjoyed the film because I realized it was challenging my own perception of what a film 'should' do for the viewer. I was watching a movie that was saying to me, "I didn't make this film so YOU could like it, this is THEIR story." And as the viewer, I could choose whether to keep watching or say "the hell with this." I chose to watch. At the end, I felt a little disoriented, sure, and not entirely certain of what I had seen. But we all feel like that, don't we, to some extent, every day.