One month earlier the French movie Caché had premiered in the USA at a film festival. But I had not even heard of it.
Today, I finally saw Caché. It has a scene where a chicken gets its head cut off and then it flaps headless around a farmyard. This event is central to the story.
I have not seen Chicken Little, Jarhead, The Legend of Zorro or Saw II, but I say confidently that Caché gets to the metaphorical jugular better than they do.
It is personally satisfying to spot an underlying theme in a brief bit of cultural history, and then later to have that confirmed when it turns out there was another similarly-preoccupied movie.
Especially when that movie resonates.
- If you have enjoyed high-brow movies in the past you might really like Caché. That is, unless you rationalize a lot (if you tell yourself 'white lies' on a daily basis that would make you the movie's target)
- At the beginning the movie seems to be about how terror unites a family. This is highly misleading. It is really about how adult personality forms.
[in an interview on the DVD the writer/director, Michael Haneke, chuckles about how much fun he had misleading the viewer] - The SF Chronicle referred to the chicken head-chopping scene as 'cruelty to an animal'. Strangely, the paper didn't say if they took ads from restaurants that serve chicken. .. In the same vein, the reviewer is somehow blind to the movie's considerable virtues.
changed on 11/28/2006
