In many of the films we’ve watched in this class, particularly in the three Hitchcock films we’ve watched, the scopophilic tendencies of the viewer seem to be pandered to in the composition of the film. However, in one film we watched, Haneke’s Cache, the director seems to accuse the viewer for his scopophilia, making the audience wonder why exactly it is that they watch movies in the first place.
In all three of the Hitchcock films we’ve examined, every character is tailored to be looked at. The men are strong and exert their influence over the course of the film, while the women are attractive, and ultimately deferential to the men. However, in Haneke’s Cache, the characters are much more normal, with none of the usual character embellishments found in film. This alone gives Haneke’s film a weird atmosphere, as the viewer, instead of feeling like their watching some great drama unfolding, instead feels as though they’re examining a normal family.
Haneke further forces audiences to examine their own scopophilic and voyeuristic tendencies with the plot device of the videotapes in Cache. The opening shot of the movie, which is held for an abnormally long amount of time, turns out to be a videotape of the Laurent household that the family is watching in their living room. This technique of confusing the video tapes in the movie with the actual film is repeated several times, and gives the impression that the audience is somehow involved in this voyeurism of the Laurent family.
Furthermore, when the identity of the person sending the tapes to the Laurent family is never discovered, and a few clues are given that the tapes are actually coming from beyond the fourth wall of the screen, Haneke seems to be making a definite statement about the perverseness of the idea of going to a cinema to see a group of people playing out their personal lies. Haneke forces the audience to think about exactly what it is they enjoy about the movies.
Haneke does the same thing in another of his films, Funny Games. Funny Games concerns a pair of serial killers who terrorize a normal family on vacation, but Haneke intentionally refuses to directly show any of the acts of violence committed against the family on screen. This initially seems frustrating at first but begins to make the audience wonder why it is that they want to see all of these horrible things happening to the family.
We’ve discussed the voyeuristic aspect of watching a film, as well as read several articles discussing it, but Haneke is the first filmmaker we’ve examined who seems to directly address this aspect of film in his movies and imply a certain amount of guilt on the viewer’s part.
