The violence of inequality

Michael Heneke graphically brings out the ambience of French society in Hidden. The tone captures how the French look down upon the immigrants or the underdogs, observes Ervell E. Menezes

Michael Heneke is a keen student of violence and his films often capture individuals or society on the edge. In The Piano Teacher (2001) he had Isabelle Huppert on the edge of her tether with loneliness. In Hidden it is a bourgeois French family whose peaceful existence is suddenly interrupted by a voyeur who keeps sending them messages of impending doom.

Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliet Binoche) is the couple who along with their teenage son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) are living a comfortable life till this voyeur decides to interrupt with drawings suggesting violence.

On the phone, through the post he gets at Georges, virtually stalking him and the ripples go on to his sensitive wife Anne with the growing Pierrot not much affected as he as a precocious teenager has problems of his own.

Could it be Majid (Maurice Benichou), an adopted Algerian servant whom Georges had probably wronged at the height of the French occupation of that country in the 1960s? He goes to his aged mother (Anne Girardot) to test his feelings.

The voyeur continues his game. Now Georges cannot take any more of it, so he visits Majid only to hear him denying any of the allegations.

A little later he gets the cops to arrest Majid’s son. The tone is clearly racist and captures how the French look down upon the immigrants or the underdogs. There is a marked difference in the behaviour of the two communities. Majid is subservient but not his son who shows aggression. But of the two, Georges and Majid, it is evident that Georges is the aggressor. Shades of the United States and Iraq and the old story of WMD.

The once tranquil bourgeois life of this family is now up in turmoil. But Majid is in turmoil of his own till finally when Georges visits him, he slits his throat and dies. This after a good deal of footage of inaction. The impact is stunning. Georges is left devastated because he is more the aggressor than Majid. It is a sort of guilt complex. How can he deal with it and hence the silent denouement.

Like Japanese filmmaker Ozu, Heneke uses the static camera effectively. So is his depiction of complacent life. It chugs along only because terror or violence is around the corner. Heneke seems to be a master at this medium. The ambience of French society is graphically brought out. So is its racist, superior attitude.

In Daniel Auteuil he has a brilliant actor who ably expresses his every sentiment and Juliette Binoche who over the years has been known for her sexy parts supports him.

Here she is different. Lester Makedonsky and Maurice Benichou have little to do and the veteran Anne Girardot has a small cameo but Hidden is an absorbing drama about the haves and the have-nots. Brilliant.

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