A look back to Michael Haneke’s Code Inconnu is a striking cinematic thrill
“Pas simple, inéluctable”
A 2000 film by Michael Haneke, Code Inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages marked the first time that Juliette Binoche worked with the Austrian film-maker after she herself had written to him to express a desire to collaborate. Haneke’s films are extraordinarily spare, often experimental in their form and a complete antithesis to the Hollywood model. Instead, his work makes the audience work hard, asking searching questions of us and rarely, if ever, providing easy answers.
This film starts on a busy Parisian street: actress Anne (Binoche) is on her way to work when she unexpectedly bumps into her brother-in-law Jean. She buys him breakfast and goes on her way and as he leaves, he tosses a piece of rubbish at Maria, a Romanian beggar but when second-generation Malian Amadou, a teacher for the deaf, intervenes to confront him on his behaviour and ends up in a tussle with him, it is he and Maria who end up being taken to the police station. From there, the film follows these three sets of protagonists as the repercussions ripple out way beyond this morning.
In itself, the story is quite a difficult one to watch, the bleak view of intolerance and racism in Parisian everyday life weighs heavily as does the evocation of the soulless alienation that comes from so much of metropolitan living, Haneke asking us why we don’t know our neighbours better. But it is further fragmented by the splitting of the narrative into short scenes. Though sequences were filmed in long takes, every time there is a shift in perspective, Haneke takes us away to a different strand, constantly keeping us on our toes as we spin from story to story. The disconnectedness that comes may take a little getting used to but the editing job is simply superb and what emerges is a series of tableaux that are often extremely moving in their mundaneness – Binoche ironing a shirt whilst flicking through channels on the TV suddenly becomes a scene of charged emotion.
As her relationship with her husband, Thierry Neuvic’s war reporter Georges, founders in the unfolding of the film, we’re treated to some high class work from Binoche, the film’s form heightening the enigmatic nature of so much of what happens. Luminiţa Gheorghiu’s Maria is very well played too, as her deportation back to Romania leads her back to her family, the strength of the acting all around though is remarkable, given how convincingly realistic the three worlds are yet deeply complex at the same time. Not an easy watch by any means, but a definite recommendation for some highly intelligent film-making.
