Code Unknown

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dave s Director Michael Haneke, always challenging in terms of both theme and style, may have outdone himself with Code Unknown. As hinted at in the prologue, the film deals with sadness and isolation and loneliness, but vacillates between being immensely satisfying and deeply infuriating while it is exploring these themes. Centering around an egregious act of littering, the movie follows a variety of different storylines with intersecting characters and incidents. The film is mostly shot in a series of creative one-shot, long-take vignettes, some of which are exceptionally powerful while others come across as puzzling and pointless. It's a mixed bag from beginning to end and, while not up to Haneke's normal high standards, can be intriguing viewing at times. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review david f Kind of indirect and episodic with many characters crossing paths in varying ways. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Haneke sets up a chain of apparently disconnected sequences - a deaf school, a mugging on a Paris street, an actress with a war photographer boyfriend, a farmer and his errant son - and it is only as the film progresses that we become aware of the connections and mysteries. I love Michael Haneke's work: he respects the viewer's intelligence and obtains vigorously truthful performances while confronting sometimes very uncomfortable situations. There's no-one like him in world cinema. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member In Paris, a white teenage boy throws some litter into a panhandling older Romanian woman's lap and is told off by an older black youth and an altercation begins. The cops arrive and take everyone away (blaming the black man, a first signal that the film is in some ways about racism and failures of multiculturalism). Director Michael Haneke uses this incident, filmed in one long shot, as a starting place for a series of glimpses into the lives of those involved in or affected by this short moment in time. For example, the white teen has run away from his rural home where his father (perhaps lonely, perhaps poor) is hoping to pass the farm down to him because his older brother, a photojournalist currently dating Juliette Binoche, has already moved to the city. We see Binoche (playing actress Anne Laurent) both "in character" in films and plays and also on the Parisian street or metro - because the various episodes that Haneke shows us begin and end mid-stream, bookended with moments of black screen, it is often difficult to know what we are seeing: moments from the past, present, or future (relative to the key incident) and involving which characters (unknown until they appear)? The stories of the black youth (his family has legally immigrated from Mali and one of his sisters is deaf and mute) and the Romanian woman (she is an illegal immigrant who hopes to send money back to her family) are interwoven to paint a picture of the failures of French society (or any society) to come to terms with the needs for greater understanding that globalisation and multiculturalism require. This description may make Haneke's film seem straightforward but it is anything but. Instead, the purpose of the various moments we see can be elusive, perhaps only providing some background to the very different existences of different people in Paris, perhaps showing us clashes between those people, and hinting only sometimes vaguely at motivations and larger themes (for example, about the reasons for immigration from Romania or Afghanistan). As a starting place for a meditation on this changing world, at the start of the twenty-first century, it is never less than stimulating. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Completement decousu. Sans suite logique. Sans veritable histoire. Ca tien pas debout... Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Hauntingly, exquisitely cryptic jigsaw of our interconnected lives and our uncertainty about each other. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Code Unknown

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