High Falls Film Festival - Under the category of “You Call That A Film?” was the French Film, Michael Haneke's Hidden.

Review of Caché (2005)(English festival title: Hidden)

Director and Screenwriter Haneke was born in Munich, Germany in 1942. Haneke is currently working on various movie projects and is also a professor for directing at the Vienna Film Academy. Haneke started his career as a playwright for the Südwestfunk (ARD) in 1967 and started working as a freelance director for TV and theater in 1970.He was raised in the city of Wiener Neustadt, Austria and later studied psychology, philosophy and theatrical sciences at the University of Vienna, Austria. Haneke is the son of director and actor Fritz Haneke and actress Beatrix von Degenschild.

I was pondering whether it was considered a good film because it was subtitled. The film was surrealistic, with weird dream sequences and flashbacks..

The film follows the life of a family that is being terrorized psychologically by a never seen videographer who wraps the tapes in child drawn pictures of faces with blood and dead roosters.

Lingering in the lobby of the theatre, I overhead some people saying that it was the worst film they had ever seen. On the shuttle others were discussing the true meaning or just trying to figure out what happened to them for the last few hours.

When asked how her evening had gone one viewer volunteered ,“ That film ruined my Saturday night”

The overall consensus of film goers was negative but I did meet up with one who loved the film. That viewer was from Europe and spoke French. I guess something is lost in translation.

Below is a link to the website Europeon Film Review that deeply analyzes the film and does make some sense of it.I never want to think that hard again to figure out what a film means or whether a dead rooster is just a dead rooster.