Code Unknown (2000)

Code Unknown: Another example of why I love French cinema.

"A feature film is twenty-four lies per second." -- Michael Haneke.

Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher (Unrated Edition), Cache (Hidden)) is known for his "disturbing" style. "My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator," he says. "They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." That said, his 2000 French film, Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (Code Inconnu: Recit Incomplet De Divers Voyages), is set primarliy in Paris, although several scenes occur in Mali and Romania, where the fates of five very different characters intersect, connect, or disconnect, as the case may be. Juliette Binoche plays Anne, a semi-successful actress who, in a nine-minute unbroken opening shot, bumps into Jean (Alexandre Hamidi) on a busy Paris street. He is the disgruntled younger brother of her remote war photographer boyfriend Georges (Thierry Neuvic). After revealing that he has run away from his father's farm, Jean insults Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), a Romanian street beggar by callously tossing his trash into her lap. Amadou (Yenke), a principled black teacher of deaf children observes the incident, angrily confronts Jean, and demands an apology. The gendarmes arrive and tell Jean to leave, while arresting Amadou (presumably because he is black) and commencing the deportation of Maria. This brief incident has a ripple effect, linking the lives of these characters for the remainder of the intellectually fierce film, a film which confronts issues of communication, xenophobia, victimization and consumer society head on. The point of the film seems to be that modern society is heartless, and that it is infected with prejudice and bigotry which threaten to destroy it unless addressed on individual and political levels. Haneke uses long, unedited camera takes, jarring fades, and Godardian edits characteristic of French cinema, which some viewers might find frustrating. I say be patient with this very rewarding film.

G. Merritt September 29, 2007

Not hollywood, but a work of art

Without giving anything away, let me offer a comparison to the hollywood oscar winner "Crash" because they have similar themes. They both deal with the psychological and communicative dis-functions particular to our modern, multicultural world. Both films also deal with the suffering we create through our behavior toward one another by way of our assumptions, beliefs, and prejudices.

Stylistically, however, these two films have little in common. Whereas "Crash" plays like a pilot for a tv series, weaving its characters and their stories together in support of its themes (as it holds our hands throughout and takes us where it wants us to go), "Code Unknown" is a puzzle in fragments that we must assemble ourselves from the layered information we are given. Whereas "Crash" connects too many improbable conversations and events with possible ones in order to hit us over the heads and wrench our hearts with its message, "Code Unknown" entrusts us with cinematic clues and metaphors that we must use to construct our own understanding. In "Crash" everyone tells us everything they feel and think thereby limiting the possibilities of what we are allowed to imagine. To the contrary, "Code Unknown" invites us to rely our own abilities (as perceivers) to discover what truths there are."Crash" has a few brilliant scenes, but once we have seen it there is nothing left to experience, wonder about, or really discuss. The show is over, and now we know everything about it (just as with every hollywood film) . "Code Unknown" (like all works of art) is made up of one brilliant scene after another, but more importantly it entreats us to reflect, as well as interpret. It also invites us into conversation about it, even asks us to return and discover again.... cinewest June 26, 2007

What we have here is a failure to communicate...

Code Unknown was a revelation. The first Michael Haneke film I've seen, I was surprised at how vitriolic the reviews have been here and on the film's IMDB page - arty-fartsy and incomprehensible seems to be the general concensus, yet I found it remarkably vital and accessible for a film revolving around race relations and everyday failures to communicate. Starting with an incident on a French boulevard where misinterpreted actions have consequences for all the wrong people, it proceeds in a series of incomplete scenes by people linked by the incident or their relationships with those involved, taking in a multi-ethnic city where so many people have shut off from those around them that they either fail to understand each others' problems or to even make the effort.

What's particularly interesting is that it plays on the audiences own prejudices and presuppositions - at one point we naturally assume that a young black character is seated away from the window booth he requested in a restaurant because of his color, but no: it's because he turned up 45 minutes late and the place is busy. Similarly, it doesn't presume that people in what are supposed to be empathetic or compassionate professions are inherently good - when Juliette Binoche's actress asks her war photographer boyfriend advice about the sounds of child abuse from a neighboring flat, he doesn't want to know and her anger is more because he won't give her an out but forces the situation back on her. Her solution: ignore it. Even the innocent victim of the opening incident has to admit with shame that she herself had done the same thing to people she looked down on. It's beautifully worked out with several powerful sequences that are uncomfortably familiar to city dwellers (the metro sequence is particularly powerful) and somehow comes across as exhilarating as it is uncomfortable.

Great filmmaking - although if you have a multi-region player you may be better off getting the UK PAL DVD for a better transfer than Kino's Region 1 disc (and it has a nice extras package, too).

July 19, 2006

Code Unknown: Reality Unknown

This is a masterpiece of collage. The non-linear sequence of the story can make it hard to watch, but very intreging. It blows open the thoughts that we have in everyday life. That we are the most important, it shows that every life is insignificant to other people. The story deals with racism and mature themes, underlying troubles. It gives us glimpes into the fact that at times we can reach out and change other peoples' lives but in fact we choose to change only our own, as you see in the very end of code unknown. The interweaving of the storyline makes it a wonderful way to see the daily interaction between people that don't know eachother, and choose not to know eachother. There is only one linear scene in the entire movie and that would be the drum scene, but everything is brought together in the end. I would highly recommend this story to anyone that has the time and patience to sit down and watch a good/uncoventional movie. October 8, 2005

in space no one can hear you scream

My pick for the best film of the young century. The filmic equivalent of "The Scream." Soul-stretching; heart-breaking. Compare and contrast the construction and content of this film to that of "Pulp Fiction," understand that American film is still 30-40 years behind the films of the French. April 23, 2005

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