Andy Warhol would've loved this

I saw Cache last night on cable, and after sitting through it, I was more than a tad confused, which led me online to read what others were saying about the ending and the film in general. I came away with not very much and I decided to sleep on it. I did have some extremely odd (odder than usual) dreams, which didn't surprise me because I knew while I was watching the film it was the kind that seeps into your subconscious - the imagery and the subject matter (both what is stated in the movie and what is implied).

When I woke up I was thinking mostly about the way we see Georges, at one point, editing his TV show and how the tapes he received throughout the film were the opposite of that process. They depicted life simply happening, in real time - the kind of footage Andy Warhol got off on shooting: training the camera in one place and showing, say, a person sleeping for eight hours straight, stuff like that - without any of the footage being tampered with, edited to show a particular point of view. I saw this as a clever parallel to Georges' life - how he tried so hard to edit out in his mind what had happened so long ago, the injustice he'd perpetrated against the very young and desperate Majid, when Georges was also very young (6 years old). I thought this parallel was subtle and totally valid.

I'm a huge fan of movies that don't tell you everything, where something is left for the viewer to figure out, so there's a revelatory feeling at the end. Cache doesn't do this. The ending, rather, confuses even further and poses more questions: why were the two of them talking, what were they saying, and does it mean that Majid's son had approached Pierrot previously, regarding the tapes? Or what? I hear that Haneke says he doesn't really know HIMSELF who was sending the tapes, and that, along with a few other plot points, it doesn't matter, it's not the point of the film, blah blah blah, but I disagree. I feel it is a writer's job to know thoroughly the mechanics of the story that is attempting to be told - the complete back story has to be there, in the writer's mind, at the very least. The writer, of course, can choose what gets laid out for the viewer in the movie, but these answers have to be there, in the writer's imagination, in order to concoct a believable, cohesive cinematic experience. In this regard, I feel the movie fails.

On other levels, though, it does work - it literally forces you to think about it afterwards, to go over stuff about it in your head. This is an amazingly insidious film, no question, which I appreciate. I would also, on the basis of this, want to see more of Haneke's work, I am intrigued. I appreciate that as well.