In search of the Code Inconnu.

Wood, Robert Paul

Prefatory

Last January I headed (rather than conducted) a graduate course on "World Cinema Around the Millennium" in which we watched and discussed, over the twelve weeks, a dozen films by as many directors from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. I count it a great success but can claim little credit for this. During the months prior to and overlapping with the course I was deluged with argent work, complete with deadlines (writing a new monograph, preparing an expanded edition of a previous book, with all the resultant chores of proofreading, indexing, stills selection, etc.), and was unable to complete the intensive and extensive preparation I had anticipated. In our discussions of films (some of which I'd seen only a couple of times) my students frequently corrected my mistakes and pointed out details I'd missed, but without ever humiliating me (though I thought at times I deserved it). Code Inconnu was one of the twelve films. I cannot now identify the students who helped me develop new insights, so this is a general 'Thank you' note to the entire class (several of whom have become my personal friends), and an acknowledgement of the collaborative nature of a course that I enjoyed enormously and from which I learnt a great deal.

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During the past several years I have developed a very strong commitment to, and partial identification with, the films of Michael Haneke, decisively confirmed by Code Inconnu. I share with his films a sense of despair with our civilization, its future, and ultimately with the human race itself, its seemingly impossible and fundamental contradictions: a full knowledge that I belong to (and have been formed by) that civilization and that race, am implicated in its corruption, can never be anything else, must acknowledge my place and inevitable partial complicity in its tangle of drives and tensions and unresolvable conflicts as we rush headlong towards our potential self-destruction. I feel that the very worst of the various end-of-civilization, end-of-life-on-the-planet scenarios are probably correct, yet love human life (and a limited number of actual humans), not to mention the 'innocent' animal and vegetable life that we shall drag to destruction with us, so much that I cling on passionately to any vestige of hope I can find. This (it seems to me) is what Code Inconnu (perhaps the most important film of the past ten years) is about. I have come to identify with Haneke up to the inevitable point where I must recognize that I lack his integrity, his concentration, his dedication, above all his sheer intelligence--because Code Inconnu is one of the most intelligent films ever made. It is the most necessary of his films to date, yet it has received less attention than the works that surround it. The reason for this is clear enough: it lacks their 'sensational' aspects, hence leaves no opening for the attacks with which those too deeply disturbed by his work defend themselves from its implications: the family who commit communal suicide in The Seventh Continent, the teenage murderer of Benny's Video, the young sadists of Funny Games, the extreme masochist of La Pianiste. We cannot say of Code Inconnu 'I am not like that, 1 wouldn't do those things, it doesn't apply'. The previous Haneke film to which it most closely relates (thematically, and in its multiple intersecting narratives), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, is also among his most neglected, and for the same reason.

1. STYLE

The very striking stylistic strategies of Code Inconnu are crucial to its significance. Leaving aside the framing device (the deaf-mute children trying to communicate), the film consists of 42 sequences, of which all but four are sequence-shots without cuts. Of those four, two are the photo-montages of Georges' work in foreign countries, and one is the sequence of the shooting of Anne's film (a version of The Collector), shot from the viewpoint of the master camera on the set, the one cut being a cut within the diegesis. The fourth (No. 35) clearly occupies a privileged position, being definitive (by negation) of Haneke's stylistic choice and intention throughout the remaining 38 sequence-shots: the sequence (presented without any signalling of a change in level) that is revealed as a sequence in a subsequent film in which Anne stars, the swimming pool scene. If we are truly alert (I wasn't, the first time I saw the film) we should recognize at once, on purely stylistic grounds, that the scene is an anomaly, an abrupt stylistic break: it uses all the standard devices of 'mainstream' filmmaking, derived from Hollywood--shot/reverse-shot, point-of-view shots, the zoom, some very dubious spacial relationships, deliberate deception of the spectator (the POV zoom from the child's viewpoint clearly implies that he has fallen or is falling): all those devices that typically involve us in the action as more than spectators, playing on strong basic emotions, depriving us of critical distance: devices and effects rigorously rejected throughout the remainder of the film.

There are no villains in Code Inconnu (at least, not on screen, and not personalized), and no heroes or heroines. Every established character is presented both sympathetically and critically. We are never to identify, in the Hitchcockian manner, but we are never encouraged to look down on anyone, let alone condemn them: if we did we would be condemning ourselves because they are our reflections, whatever their social status, nationality, race. Nor does Haneke ever 'look down on' them: his camera remains throughout at the level of the characters. We are invited to study them, not coldly, like insects under a microscope, but sympathetically, so that in becoming aware of their errors, their shortcomings, their failures, we shall see and understand our own. The film, in short, encourages, almost demands, spectator involvement: we are invited into the film, but into the spaces between the characters (as opposed to identifying with specific characters). Hence we become involved in a continuous dialogue: 'Is that right? Would I have done that? Could I have done better?'

A 'close reading' of the entire film is impossible within the available space: it would require a book of at least the length of the BFI Classics series. I offer here a partial study of the sequences centred on Anne (Juliette Binoche), the film's privileged figure. She appears in 15 of the 42 sequences, and is central to most of those; of the other characters whose narratives we follow, Amadou, Maria and Georges figure in 9 sequences each (Georges as a voiceover in the two photomontages, and sharing 2 sequences with Anne, his lover), and Jean (Georges' younger brother) and/or their father appearing in only 7. Haneke's decision seems to me sensible and realistic, not only because Binoche is the film's only internationally famous star: her narrative is the closest to the experiences of the majority of the film's potential spectators (white, western, middle-to-upper class, the 'arthouse' audience), hence the character whose experiences, actions, decisions we can most readily relate to our own, the film's aim being educational without the least sense of bullying, indoctrination or didacticism. I shall begin, however, with a detailed examination of the first (and crucial) sequence-shot, which introduces all the major narrative threads (and is, incidentally, among the most astonishing instances of virtuosity in the entire history of mise-en-scene, without ever becoming obtrusive or self-congratulatory). I shall comment briefly on the relevance of the other narratives, and finally on the framing device, at the end of this essay. Essay: French, essayer, to try, to attempt ; '... And every attempt is a new beginning,/And a different kind of failure' (T.S.Eliot).

II: The first sequence-shot: analysis of a double disaster

One of the common definitions of mise-en-scene is 'the organization of time and space'. Never have time and space been organized more scrupulously and complexly than in the film's first sequence-shot, which lasts 8' 09", traverses several hundred yards of sidewalk (crossing two sidestreets and an alleyway and back again), introduces four of the leading characters and refers to two others, sets in motion all the interweaving narratives, creates a totally convincing street scene in which passersby hurry to work, stop to greet each other, move from foreground to background or vice versa, interweave with the main characters, all without a single cut or any discernible 'faking'.

Anne emerges from her apartment building, obviously in a hurry, and begins to walk away screen right; Jean calls out to her, she stops, walks back to him. She tells him that Georges is in Kosovo, left three

weeks ago, her voice impatient, as if surely Jean ought to have known. She asks 'What's your problem?' (as two businessmen, background, pause to exchange a quick greeting and arrange a meeting before hurrying on). Everyone is in a hurry. Jean is angry because he's been waiting outside an hour ('Your fucking door code's changed', as if Anne had no right to do such a thing); he called, got her message machine. She tells him she was in the bath, couldn't hear. She was up till four o'clock (for the early reviews of the play she's appearing in), and is now dashing off to an audition ('Go easy on my poor little soul'). They pass a flower stall, a background of magnificent colours. He's left his father's farm, couldn't stand him any more, needs a place. She goes into a bakery for pastries ('You must be hungry too'--she evidently hasn't had time to eat), hands him the paper bag which, within minutes, will be indirectly responsible for the arrest of a young black man and the deportation of an illegal immigrant. They pass the walkway between the bakery (against which Maria will shortly be sitting to beg) and other shops, where a street musician, in the far background, has appeared and is drinking from a bottle, a few people gathering in front of him, then cross a side street. They pause on the street corner. Jean explains, almost angrily, that his father was renovating a barn for himself to live in when Jean was old enough to take over the farm. Anne tells him she thought this was his dream, but he insists the 'dream' was his father's, never his. (During this, a couple push between them, forcing them apart). Anne lends him her key and tells him the new entry code, but tells him there isn't room for three in the apartment (i.e., when Georges returns from Kosovo, expected within a few days). Perfunctory exchange of kisses-on-the-cheek; Anne walks briskly on, Jean turns back towards the apartment building.

He crosses the side street. As he approaches the walkway by the bakery, he passes a man standing, arms folded, at the edge of the sidewalk, back to camera, watching the street musician's performance, which has now begun; we can't see his face, but we may notice (it took me several viewings) that this silent spectator is black, and is wearing a blue shirt--our totally unobtrusive introduction to Amadou, who (besides playing an active part in what follows here) we shall later discover is one of the teachers of the deaf-mute children of the framing sequences (something my students had to point out to me), with a deaf-mute younger sister, and arguably the film's most admirable character. Jean pauses for a moment to listen to the performer, now singing, walks a little way towards him, pauses, moves hack, casually tosses his crumpled paper bag into the lap of the woman we later learn is called Maria, who is now seated (hoping rather than begging for money, she remains totally passive, as if ashamed and humiliated) by the window of the bakery, and strides on.

Amadou, galvanized into action, rushes after him, grabs him by the shoulder, and asks him if he thinks that was a good thing to do. Jean stares at him indignantly, pushes away and strides on, without a word. Amadou catches up with him. Jean sees nothing wrong in his behaviour, responding to Amadou's demands that he apologize to the woman with merely a repeated 'Fuck you'; the argument escalates into a fight. The manager of the store opposite the bakery (who also has an interest--street persons are bad for business--appears, denouncing both men equally as 'hooligans', no questions asked. Jean and Amadou continue the fight, screen centre, Maria tries to leave unobtrusively (sensing, perhaps, that, whatever the outcome, she will end up the victim), and Anne reappears, automatically defending her lover's brother (but, significantly perhaps, against a black man): 'Let go of him, are you mad? Why are you picking on him?' To which Amadou's response is 'Who asked your opinion? Do you know what he did, at least?' ... To which Jean's response is 'He hit me' (implicitly denying the least guilt).

Trying to justify himself, Amadou goes off to get Maria back as witness (not considering the repercussions this might have--he has no way of knowing that she's an illegal immigrant, or even that she's foreign, as she has remained silent throughout, but he should perhaps have been aware that she was trying to slip away). Jean, seizing his chance, rushes off screen left, the scene ending in front of the flower stall, its final disasters acted out before a bank of magnificent colours. Amadou pursues him, the struggle is resumed, the police arrive--and immediately seize Amadou. It is clear enough that Amadou appears to be--and, strictly speaking, is, the aggressor. Cop (to Amadou, being scrupulously fair): 'What's he done?' Amadou (instantly defensive): 'Wait, I can explain'. Cop, slightly sarcastic: 'That's a smart idea'. The hitherto suppressed racism emerges in the tone of that last remark. Amadou hears the tone, but makes an effort to remain calm and rational: 'OK, if you'll give me the chance'. (He has, perhaps, encountered something like this before). He continues: 'This young man humiliated a woman begging outside the bakery'. An admirably precise, concrete statement of the facts, perfect within a perfect culture, extremely dangerous in our own (a black talking about a street person, to cops!). The second cop runs screen right to bring back Maria, who is attempting a swift escape from a situation which she knows, from her viewpoint, can come to no good. The shop manager ('business', the deciding factor) is rambling on ('... sitting there, putting off customers. We're not inhumane, but ...').

The cops take away Amadou's (not Jean's) ID card (because, although we later discover him to be an admirable and committed presence within the culture, he is automatically construed as an 'alien' because of his colour?), and proceed to drag him (not Jean) away, taking Maria too, as witness. He asserts his dignity ('I'm coming of my own free will ... You don't need to touch me'--which is obviously true), but: 'If you don't comply, we'll put the cuffs on.' Struggle; blackout.

Commentary

The content of this first sequence-shot, at once complex (because it involves a number of characters, actions and responses) and simple (not quite, but almost, a banal, 'everyday' event, Amadou's intervention being the one act that we might find unusual), is remarkably rich and suggestive in its implications--in the implicit analysis of cause and effect, of 'what went wrong':

a. Chance (One recalls the title of Haneke's earlier, connected, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance). Haneke allows full weight, in this 'Chronology of a Minor Disaster', to things beyond the control of anyone, the unpredictable consequences of simple actions. If Amadou hadn't been standing in precisely that position on the sidewalk, he wouldn't have witnessed Jean's thoughtless, silly action, he wouldn't have been carted off to the police station and Maria wouldn't have been deported as an illegal alien; if Anne hadn't bought the pastry for Jean, he wouldn't have had the paper bag (emptied at that crucial moment) to crumple up and chuck in Maria's lap ... etc., etc ... All obvious enough, but it's important that Haneke acknowledges the pervasive element of chance in human lives and actions. We are (or, ideally, should be) responsible for our choices; but chance is beyond choice, and omnipresent in our activities. If the film invites us to applaud anything it is surely Amadou's intervention--which leads directly to the worst consequences. This does not make the intervention any less morally admirable.

b. The pace of modern urban life Almost everyone we see is in a hurry, from the leading characters to the most casually presented passers-by: a typical contemporary street scene, no more, scarcely a remarkable perception, yet a crucial one. No one has time to think, to reflect, no one has any distance. Anne is hurrying to an audition, after a late night, Jean is in a very bad mood, homeless unless Anne takes him in, the police pounce upon the apparent aggressor, no questions asked. It is this constant sense of hurry, of pressure, that leads to

c. Action without analysis Within this sense of rush, no one is able to stand back for a moment and view the situation, the events, analytically, hence take full responsibility for her/his actions; everyone acts or reacts spontaneously from his/her position, without taking other positions into account. (I shall argue later that this is what the opening 'framing' sequence, the deaf-mute children, is about). One might argue that this is simply 'human nature', but one might equally argue that it is a part of our 'nature' that could be modified in the interests of communication and an understanding that transcends our own narrow, immediate needs. It is also clear that it is exacerbated by the pervasive sense of haste and pressure in contemporary urban living.

d. Priorities and prejudices Anne automatically sides with Jean simply because she knows him (it is not clear that she even likes him, but he is her lover's brother and therefore, somehow, must be the one she supports). Whether racial prejudice enters into this also we cannot tell: on the one hand, she is presented as an intelligent and generally aware woman, on the other such prejudices run deep even when consciously rejected. That the policemen are racially motivated is beyond question, though here again there is nothing blatant or crude in their behaviour (such as one might expect to find in a Hollywood 'social protest' movie). They seize Amadou, yet he is, at that point, clearly the aggressor (Jean just wants to get away), and the cop asks him 'What's he (i.e. Jean) done?' It is only when Amadou asserts his dignity by refusing to play the submissive, humble role expected of him that their bias becomes clear: finally, without having obtained any clear account of the motivations and issues involved, they arrest the black man and let the white go free. But there is perhaps a more basic issue involved: the police are, by definition, concerned, not with morality, but with legality: two concepts which may occasionally overlap but are certainly not synonymous. Jean, by tossing the crumpled bag into Maria's lap, has committed an immoral action but not an illegal one; Amadou, by grabbing Jean in the street, has precipitated a fight, 'disturbing the peace', breaking the law ...

Even more interesting here, though so unobtrusive as to go unnoticed Coy the onscreen, and possibly the offscreen, spectators) is the treatment of Maria. She never speaks, remains completely passive, tries to creep away--and it is Amadou who is responsible for having her brought back. My point is that no one, throughout all this, pays the slightest attention to her as an individual human being, even though she is the unwitting cause of the trouble (as well as its ultimate victim). This is not even because she is a foreigner (which no one can know at this point): it is because she is a 'street person', a beggar, hence (having no significant position in the capitalist hierachy) a non-person. In so far as she is noticed at all, it is as an affront to capitalism: begging outside a store might make potential customers feel guilty, might interfere with 'business'--that hideous word that dominates, defines, and currently appears to determine the future of, our culture.

I shall devote the rest of this article to Anne's progress through the film and its implications (with a brief remark about the framing sequences). But to sum up so far:

1. THE NEED FOR EMPATHY

(Or, perhaps, the 'Empathicalism' that Stanley Donen imagined himself to be satiriziing in Funny Face, in order to inscribe Fashion as the 'Ultimate Good').

As Haneke's film suggests, this is the central social necessity and (in our contemporary world) a virtual impossibility. It also comes into conflict with what may be fundamental to 'the human condition', a concept which (in the West at least) has been centred on notions of the Self. I am not promoting here any grandiose notion of transcending Self altogether in order to enter into some new State of Being, a Nirvana. Simply, more modestly, that we should try harder to enter into others' viewpoints, to place ourselves imaginatively in their positions, to try for a moment to identify with their feelings, however provisionally. Could not Anne have been a little more understanding of Jean's needs, and he of hers, without entailing a sacrifice of the Self, merely a moment's sharing? Shouldn't Amadou realize, from his behaviour and manner, that Jean is under some kind of stress, and be content to curtail his moral crusade (admirable as its impulse is), which seems to degenerate somewhat into a matter of personal pride? Would it be possible for the two policemen (who are clearly not monsters) to bypass for just a moment their set of roles, laws, guidelines, and allow themselves to be aware of the scene's human content? (This theme is developed continuously throughout the film, and especially in the segments about Anne, merging at times with the examination of Anne's role as 'actress').

2 BEYOND THE 'PERSONAL'

Perhaps the film's ultimate distinction is the way in which, while seeing personal behaviour as the very basis of a workable society, continuously connects it to wider issues of the social and the political, demonstrating that, ultimately, the three levels are intricately interconnected, that, indeed, 'the personal is political'. It is all there, embryonically, within the intricacies of that first sequence-shot where, in the interests of analytical clarity, one may detach the following threads from the densely interwoven fabric:

i. Jean, social change, the generation gap, rural culture/urban culture. A basic failure of empathy: Jean cannot enter into his father's obsession that his sons (the elder of whom has already left, for the obviously legitimate ambition of becoming a recorder and reporter of international horrors) somehow continue the inherited tradition of farming the land. The father cannot accept that Jean belongs, now, to a different world, and that even the obvious bribe of a motorcycle, though initially seductive, will not keep him long from the more powerful seductions of the modern city (and, indeed, ironically offers him the means of escape). Haneke makes clear that here there can be no question of compromise: each must simply try to understand and accept the other's position. I take it that the brief, enigmatic sequence-shot (No. 34) of ploughing represents the father's stoical acceptance--after his virtually suicidal destruction of his livestock in the wake of Jean's desertion--of his need, at least, to continue, alone. It is perhaps Haneke's scepticism (which I share) about any possible human future arising within the current manifestations of capitalism (the world into which Jean has plunged) that prevents him from offering him the equivalent even of that somewhat bleak possibility of fulfilment: Jean simply disappears from the movie, riding his motorbike to nowhere.

ii. Amadou and race. The city in which I live, Toronto, prides itself on being a 'multicultural' city, and to an extent the boast is justified. But only 'to an extent'. Yes, I see black men and white women (or vice versa) walking down the main streets arm in arm, obviously (and publicly) in love. But it is abundantly clear that 'business' (which currently dominates our world and determines our future or, more probably, lack of one) is overwhelmingly, the higher one goes in the hierarchies, dominated by the Great White Heterosexual Male. Of course, no self-respecting black or gay man or woman would wish to rise into such hierarchies, yet there are plenty of non-self-respecting black or gay men and women who also find themselves excluded from the top positions in that hideous palace of 'deals', corruption, self-aggrandisement and power, a 'leaning tower' that no one seems to dare to give a good shove.

If the film has an 'exemplary' character it is surely Amadou, and this comes across not at all as some kind of sentimental, condescending gesture on Haneke's part ('being kind to blacks') but as the logical result of his being an outsider, hence in a position to achieve precisely the kind of distance that is the prerequisite of empathy. That Amadou has a deaf-mute younger sister partly accounts for his presence as a teacher in the drumming sequences, developing a personal commitment into a wider social responsibility. But there is also his exemplary behaviour in the restaurant scene (sequence-shot 16, roughly halfway through the film). He is with a young white woman, to whom he is plainly attracted, taking her to dinner. She seems equally attracted to him, to the point of removing her watch and deliberately leaving it behind because he says he doesn't like it. Yet when, in response to this, he attempts physical contact, taking her hand, making his desires clear without coercion, she nervously withdraws. He makes no protest, conceals his disappointment, understanding and accepting that her readiness to discount race or colour does not quite extend to a sexual relationship. He shows no resentment.

3. INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

a. Maria

The next time we see Maria after the police take her away she is being led, handcuffed, to the plane that will return her to her own country (Romania). We still know nothing about her at this point, except that in Paris she is reduced to begging (from which she instinctually recoils). She is deported because she is penniless and has no passport, and for no other reason (she has harmed no one, and her offence is simply her reminder that, under capitalism, not everyone is happy). This develops the film's clear distinction (despite obvious overlap) between morality and legality: she could have been helped rather than automatically rejected. No one acknowledges her as she is conducted on to the plane, no one pays any attention; a stewardess is laughing, but not at her. She is strictly a non-person, she seems not to exist for anyone but herself. Subsequently we learn that, in her own country, she is by no means penniless, homeless, helpless: she has a family (including her own children), an old, dark, clearly decrepit, house is being renovated for her. But we also see that the economy has collapsed: in a later sequence-shot (No. 17), we see her walking home a long distance from work, given a lift by an acquaintance, driven past a whole row of unfinished, skeletal houses, their construction abandoned. Later still (No. 29) we see her huddled in the back of a plane with other illegal immigrants attempting to move to a more stable, wealthy economy, and finally back in Paris, same street, different doorway, driven off by shop owners ... Her demands do not go beyond the demands of simple human decency, a phenomenon quite alien to capitalist thinking.

b. Georges

Today, perhaps, the most obvious extension of the 'failure of empathy' is the grotesque Palestinian/Israeli struggle As far as one can make out from western journalism, neither side seems willing even to consider seriously that the other has at least an arguable point of view, questions of territorialism, nationalism, and religion used to justify what seems basically a confrontation between two schoolyard bullies ('You step down first'/'No! You.'), though with the odds on the side of Israel, which has the support of the President Bush's United States. Religion, as usual, is a basic stumbling-block (less than the dominant motivation yet much more than a pretext): that (to me) astonishing belief that certain writings produced centuries ago in a culture and an ideology utterly remote from the present (writings which must be read and interpreted purely within the beliefs and social/political conditions within which they were produced) have still a literal relevance to the world today and, beyond that, are still true (which renders that word meaningless). This is, to me, the height (and depth) of human stupidity and self-deception, though I still find that I am expected to respect the right of others to hold such ridiculous views. Well, of course they have the right, but do I not also have the right to tell them their views are, indeed, ridiculous? Meanwhile, because of the supposed 'truth' or 'revelation' of such writings, many innocent people have died variously horrible deaths, from the Spanish Inquisition through the 'witch hunts' of Puritan New England, to the present Palestine/Israel crisis (in which of course more than 'ancient texts' is at stake, though they still play their part, and more was 'at stake' in New England than the burning of alleged witches). Meanwhile, while this monstrous absurdity continues, partly at least because of the 'eternal meaning' of these texts, many innocent people on both sides are dying hideous deaths (the suicide bombers, with their appalling indoctrinated 'commitment', being as absurd in their deaths as their victims). It would be funny if it wasn't so appalling.

The extension into international politics in the film is represented, first, by Georges' horror pictures of 'ethnic cleansing' (a clear instance of a failure of empathy, in which one ethnic group wishes to exterminate another, for no reason clear to myself, but isn't ethnic difference often just a pretext?--I don't know) and its toll in human lives in Kosovo, later in the subsequent photomontage evoking Afghanistan and the Taliban. He is the film's solitary 'committed' character. Georges' appearances in the film are relatively brief, and, like all the other characters, he is perhaps, to use a favourite Leavisian term, 'placed'. I say 'perhaps' because I am not certain what to make of the brief sequence-shot (No. 28) of Georges taking surreptitious photographs on the Metro: Is he taking pictures because what he sees can have political/social significance, or is he simply indulging himself in an obsessional activity? Haneke certainly sees Georges as one of the more admirable figures in the film, yet he is also shown as entrapped in his own single viewpoint (the view through the camera lens): in the crucial Supermarket sequence-shot (21), considered in more detail below, he is as unable to enter into Anne's viewpoint as she is into his. More charitably, one could say that he has by now witnessed so many deaths that he has become hardened to the notion that just one child may be in jeopardy. Yet, one might suggest, he could have listened to Anne, and consequently must, to some extent, share the guilt of Anne's failure to act.

To put it simply: Code Inconnu is about the difficulties of 'seeing the whole picture', whether the whole picture is a private relationship between two people or the political conflict between two nations. 'The enemy', therefore, is not an individual or even an inidvidual country, but whatever impedes this inclusive vision: egoism, capitalism, nationalism, greed, the power drive ... The film's achievement is that, while no one within it (Amadou the nearest exception) is capable of reaching this vision, it encourages and enables the spectator to do so. That is what I meant by calling the film 'educational'. Its overall attitude evokes for me (and improves upon) two familiar tag lines. W. H. Auden's 'We must love one another or die' is, of course, glib, sentimental twaddle, but change 'love' to 'understand' and you arrive at the heart of Haneke's film. As for the famous epigraph to Howard's End, 'Only connect', one must say that Haneke makes connections far beyond the imagination and range of E.M.Forster.

III: About Anne.

Haneke's presentation (that central fusion of sympathy and criticism, held in balance with exemplary poise) of Anne plays very subtly on the two meanings of the verb 'to act' (to act in a play, to take action): she is, one might say, an actress who fails crucially to 'act'.

1. The Actress. We see Anne, in the course of the film, in a series of professional situations: auditioning for a film, performing in the shooting of the same film, auditioning for a play (Twelfth Night), appearing in the rough-cut of another, obviously quite different, film (the swimming pool sequence), post-synching her dialogue for the sequence we have just watched. I am not entirely sure why Haneke (and Binoche) present her as an excellent film actress and a terrible theatrical one (her ludicrous overplaying of Shakespeare's Maria). We are not surprised that she did not, apparently, get the role, her rendering seeming unconsciously calculated to alienate her auditors. (We may also wonder why, after starring in a remake of The Collector on screen, she would be applying for a very minor and somewhat thankless supporting role on stage--simply to extend her reputation, her range?). The suggestion is perhaps that she can lose herself (even at an audition) in a movie (even an obviously rather bad one) but becomes uneasy and self-conscious in the theatre, with the prospect of playing for a 'live' audience, and we might relate this later to her behaviour during the subway sequence-shot where she is called upon to 'act' (in both senses) before an immediate live audience.

The extraordinary audition sequence-shot is concerned with the extremely narrow, perhaps ultimately non-existent, dividing line between 'acting' and 'being', already hinted at in the first sequence-shot, where in Anne's plea to Jean ('Go easy on my poor little soul') she is clearly 'putting on a performance'. The most striking moment comes when, about halfway through the single take audition, Anne spontaneously produces real tears, the actress 'living' her role, the phenomenon extended to Juliette Binoche who is 'acting' the actress. In what sense exactly are these tears 'real'? Her director (whether it is the unidentified one directing Anne or Michael Haneke directing Binoche) is not really planning to watch her die, she has nothing 'real' to cry about, yet the emotion she is experiencing is clearly intense. The ambiguity is developed later in the film, in the pair of scenes from the Hollywood-style movie. The first (the love-play in the swimming-pool) turns out to be a sequence from the film (therefore 'acted'), buit the second (the post-synching) swiftly disintegrates, amid uncontrollable giggles, into a 'real' but remarkably similar love-scene with the same actor (it scarcely comes as a surprise, at the end of the film, that she has locked Georges out of her apartment by once again changing the entry code). The film suggests that we in fact act all the time, that as soon as we have someone to engage with we to some extent 'perform' in our attempts (as in a theatrical performance) to get reactions, like Othello (in T.S.Eliot's famous formulation) 'cheering himself up' at the end of Shakespeare's play. Do we also 'act' to ourselves, when we are alone, 'putting on a show' to convince ourselves of something necessary or desirable at the time?

Anne and Action

I recall from my youth one of the most resonant lines in the Church of England Sunday service, 'We have left undone those things which we ought to have done'--which, presumably as the more reprehensible, precedes 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done'. So I ask my reader, Are you as disturbed as I am by Anne's failure to intervene in the case of the abused child in the neighbouring apartment? To get really personal for a moment (but why not?), I feel intimately involved here. I have recently become concerned about a cleaning woman in my apartment building who seems to me grotesquely overworked; ten days ago I talked with her and, as a result of the conversation, told her I would write a letter on her behalf to the management. I have just realized, while writing this piece today, that I have still not done so, partly (but only partly) because I have been so preoccupied with this film and this essay. (1 am also afraid it might rebound on her in some way, but I think that may be mere evasion). How many of us, I wonder, are in the position to 'cast the first stone' at Anne? Certainly not myself, though I think she is clearly wrong not to act, just as I now think I have been. (1) Anne is, in a sense, responsible for a child's death--as is the elderly woman who leaves her the note then denies she wrote it, afraid to interfere. If Code Inconnu is a call to action, then action (like charity) begins at home, whatever its relevance world-wide.

Anne and Empathy

An actor is supposed to be capable of 'thinking' him/herself into any role. Anne can 'become' another character during an audition (to the extent of weeping real tears), but, ironically, she has great problems with empathy in real life. The supermarket sequence-shot (No.21) connects this with her reluctance to expose herself by taking action. Anne is trying to enlist Georges in the matter of the battered child, aware of the need to act but unwilling to assume the responsibility herself (needing, perhaps, a man to take charge, to extricate her from a situation that troubles her but into which she is reluctant to plunge?). She doesn't take into account that he is just back from the horrors of Kosovo and still preoccupied with what he has witnessed and photographed. On the other hand, he seems unable to make the obvious connection ('Only connect ...') between the unburied corpses of Kosovo and a single battered child in a Paris apartment. Later, we see him on the subway (No. 28), obsessively, surreptitiously, taking pictures: he is a photographer, the metier perhaps taking precedence over the content. The quarrel in the supermarket (a prelude to the collapse of their relationship) escalates out of each partner's failure to engage with the other's viewpoint.

Anne Acted Upon

Georges' brief subway sequence-shot is echoed by Anne's much more developed one (No. 38), among the film's most challenging, in which she is publicly humiliated by an aggressive young Arab. I rescreened the segment for my class and asked them what exactly were the rights and wrongs of the scene. Several (both male and female) immediately interpreted it from the viewpoint of gender and sexism: the vulnerability of an unaccompanied, attractive young woman subjected to male taunts and provocation. I of course agreed that that is certainly an issue, then pointed out that the students were reacting from only one viewpoint: what about race and class? They caught on immediately, the scene revealed as also interpretable from the young Arab's viewpoint: a well-dressed, comparatively affluent woman unwittingly inviting the resentment of an underprivileged man who also happens to belong to a racial minority. Anne's initial reaction (by refusing to react, sitting in silence as if the young man didn't exist), is perhaps the obvious way to behave in such a situation, but also arguably the worst: what could be more provocative and infuriating than being treated as a non-person? We discussed how else she could have reacted. By overt anger, denouncing the aggression and perhaps gaining the support of the other passengers? I suggested that the best response would have been to smile, and attempt to engage the young man in some kind of repartee, treating the whole thing as a joke, placing him on the same level as herself, establishing a complicity. My students doubted whether anyone, in that situation, would have the presence of mind to do this, and they were probably correct. But no one could deny its attractiveness in the possible breaking down of barriers.

IV: The framing sequences

The sequences that introduce and end the film, with the deaf-mute children, trouble me, though I am not confident that I have understood them correctly. As I see it, the girl at the beginning is miming 'Fear', very clearly, and not one of the children in her audience can decipher it because each (I think) interprets her mime in terms of his/her own particular anxieties: a clear enough introduction to the film's pervasive thematic. But the mime of the boy at the end appears truly indecipherable, merely confusing in its seeming desperation. This seems to end the film on a note of ultimate despair: communication is impossible, the 'unknown code' that might save us will never be found. If this is a correct reading, it negates what I have termed the 'educational' nature of the film as a whole.

The temptation to despair (which, the world today being what it is, hangs over us as a constant threat) may be, perhaps, in Haneke, the 'other side of the coin' on which is stamped an impossible idealism, the desire for human perfectibility. I think we carry too much within us of our pre- and sub-human ancestry to achieve such perfection in any conceivable future. (No, I will not swoon in ecstasy over Kubrick's rabbit-out-of-hat 'star child'). But if we can never create a 'perfect' world, we might at least fight to create a better one., in which people can live, if not in perfect harmony, at least in mutual understanding and tolerance: a world that would today be achievable only through the most drastic and revolutionary social changes, a world of cooperation, not competition, a world in which we can all slow down and find time to think. If I read him correctly, this is what Haneke's films are about, and why Code Inconnu, his masterpeice to date, should be so important to us. But that ending continues to haunt and trouble me.

V: Postscript

'Thou met'st with things dying, I with things newborn.'

The (militant?) clatter of the deaf-mute children's drums is the only signifier of hope (itself ambiguous) Haneke permits himself and us at the film's end. Anne has brutally shut Georges out of her apartment, apparently ending their relationship without even a discussion, any tentative communication ended; Jean, presumably, is lost somewhere in the modern urban world; Maria is back almost where she started, just a few doorways further along, pushed aside once again. Only Amadou remains, the film's most aware character and a teacher, but he has dwindled to a figure in the background.

For the past few weeks, while immersing myself in Code Inconnu, I have also been rereading Nadine Gordimer's magnificent novel The House Gun. The final chapters, with their sense of a possible rebirth or new beginning centred upon the literal birth of a child, sent me back in turn to Shakespeare: not the Shakespeare of Hamlet and Lear, but the sublime, transcendent Shakespeare of the late plays, notably the last three acts of Pericles and, of course, The Winter's Tale. I have found the interaction among these works extraordinarily suggestive and fruitful. They have little enough in common. Haneke and Gordimer share an authentically complex and intelligent understanding of character and motivation, and the fusion of sympathy with a uniformly critical/analytical stance. Their difference might be summed up by saying that Haneke would never have sent me back to The Winter's Tale, the tentative and qualified transcendence of the conclusion of The House Gun having no place in his work. And it is indeed ironic that Shakespeare's 'positive' is the 'great creating Nature' so magnificently realized in the poetry of Act IV--the nature that today we are inexorably stamping out with our pollution, our pesticides, our global warming, our deforestation. Perhaps Haneke is right--he is a great seducer into despair, which is why I admire him and at the same time try to distance myself from him. Given the current state of international politics, with the Bush administration clearly bent upon world domination, speading a barren, corrupt and decadent 'civilization' across the globe, a 'democracy' in which millions live in poverty while a few glut themselves on useless, non-creative, non-fulfilling luxuries, a 'civilized' society that, at this year's Oscars, celebrated above all other films one of its most debased products (2), one might certainly argue that Haneke's pessimism (guided and controlled by his great intelligence, his insights, his deep concern with society and the individual life it should nurture but in fact frustrates and impoverishes), is 'realistic'. (Advance reports suggest that his latest film, Time of the Wolf, its title evoking Ingmar Bergman, whom it is difficult today to regard as a healthy influence, is concerned with the ultimate breakdown of all civilized order). Yet it is very dangerous to succumb to despair, however 'realistic': it can also become an 'easy way out' even a self-indulgence. Even now, in the U.S., a groundswell of protest and anger against the Bush administration is clearly developing. Little can be achieved without the existence of a strong, organized Leftist political movement, and the possibility of such a development seems for many reasons remote (money controls all, and who is going to pay for a revolutionary political party?). We need Gordimer's tentative, deeply moving progress toward a new hope, and, beyond that, the triumphant Shakespearean vision of the possibility of a new birth arising out of the ruins created by human blindness and stupidity.

NOTES

(1) When I wrote this I broke off and wrote the letter. It didn't achieve a thing, the woman in question, whose English is poor, had misunderstood my questions and actually worked only eight hours a day for the management, her other work being elsewhere, hence in no way their responsibility. I received a very courteous reply from the person in charge of 'support staff'. This opens the question, however, of whether she is underpaid, hence forced to work overtime in other places at the end of a 'normal' eight-hour day. But at least I didn't get her fired (rather like Amadou intervening on behalf of Maria, which is, coincidentally, also the name of the cleaning person) ... In any case, the praise or blame in this non-event goes to Haneke rather than myself: I was a mere intermediary. I record it here simply as an example of the direct influence certain films can have on one's actions, a phenomenon not often acknowledged. I feel that, since working for some weeks on Code Inconnu, I have become a marginally more aware, less self-absorbed, person.

(2) Yes, I know, all my friends keep telling me, 'No intelligent person Lakes the Oscars seriously', and of course they have no value or validity (or even meaning) whatever in terms of any intelligent, enlightened or uncompromised attitude to cinema. Yet they still survive as an 'institution', as the American Empire's annual celebration of its cinematic achievements, hence of great interest from a sociological viewpoint, as a kind of barometer of contemporary American values.

(3.) Since writing this I have been able to see Le Temps du Loup in the Toronto Festival. I was thrilled to find that the films ends on precisely the (tentative, ambiguous) note of hope that Code Inconnu seems to deny us: the young boy's attempt at self-immolation, in protest against the adult world, is thwarted by the man who tells him that "... everybody will hear about this'. It is this promise that seems to produce the train that may be coming to the rescue of the survivors.