mike mentioned this in the “time of the wolf” discussion–an earlier film by the same director–and it recently washed to the top of my netflix queue (i keep finding excuses for not watching “hidalgo” but i can’t bring myself to remove it from the queue). we watched it tonight. i liked it but don’t quite know why. i’m guessing this film is trying to make audiences question (acknowledge?) their relationship to cinematic violence. of course it is trapped in being exactly what it critiques and its pleasures finally are those of the genre it seems to want to make the viewer feel bad about enjoying. i am too tired to think of anything smarter to say about it–mike, please tell me why i liked it.
Yeah. I am hesitant to attribute motives to Haneke, or to hear him say what he meant to do–for fear that he’ll say the movie is meant to make us hate the violence… when, as you note, the film is so blatantly seductive with its victimizers and victimizing.
What I like is having my cake and eating it, too–there’s a scene where the central villain is wandering about, obviously about to cause some mischief, and then he looks back at the camera, smiling at us before enacting the mischief… That shot intrigued me because the villain isn’t really that charismatic prior to the scene, nor after; both of the bad guys are unromanticized evil, kind of banal and petulant, even, in their brutality. They lack, say, the gee-whiz-ain’t-he-evil flare of Anthony Hopkins or any number of less grandiose yet equally pleasurable homicidal fiends. So it is precisely the shot, the smile and stare drawing us viewers into complicity of a sort, that does the seducing. Thereafter I was hooked; I was having fun, wondering what would happen–and I think the glee came from being part of the victimizing. From being brought into the violence, explicitly, through the interlocking of gazes on- and off-screen.
[Atom Egoyan stole this shot for Bob Hoskins in … I forget the title. The film after “Hereafter,” which I thought was very strong, too.]
And then, of course, the film frustrates every narrative device which might normally disentangle us from such uncomfortable identifications. No one gets away. (Or there’s a self-reflexive bit of movie magic which prevents victims from getting away.) And the film carries on its push toward certain ends.
So… I’m kind of working my way toward dull and perhaps ambiguous commentary here, but: I think the film simply reflects back the real pleasures of cinematic violence, but resists the narrative/generic conclusions which might cover up or repress our pleasure in the violence… but that resistance to repressing the pleasure actually heightens the pleasure (intentionally or unintentionally, or just for us jaded fans of violent action) — I think because now my pleasure is equally representational and meta-representational. It’s a perfect film for academics who love ‘pop’ violence; we get to enjoy the violence, enjoy the text ‘challenging’ our pleasure, and enjoy the intellectual (funny) games which we play with texts in our attempt to make them (and us) safe.
Or something like that.
Forgot my password, and my computer at home is busted–so on this new laptop I can’t recall how to login. So I sent a message, following directions, and was sent my password, and it’s wrong.
So I’ll do a sort of post here. …
note to all: if you ever lose your password, do not do the password recovery thingy. it doesn’t work. instead email me and i’ll reset it for you. mike, look for an email from me with a new password for you. in the meantime i’ve moved your comment to its own post. jeff, since your comment responding to mike’s was just one line, i figure you’ll be okay re-posting it anew.
I think we should start a new blog about the technical issues that we experience here. Oh the fun!