Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Hidden
Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche in Hidden (Cache)
HIdden is a French film that casts a spell from the beginning, tightens like a vice as it progresses and doesn't release the viewer until the last scene dissolves any understanding we might have had of the plot, so we're left wondering what actually did happen.
Austrian director Michael Haneke plays visual tricks on us from the opening shot so we feel like voyeurs, and using long, still camera shots, builds unbearable tension.
Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche superbly play comfortably well off intellectuals living on the outskirts of Paris who's world is shattered by anonymously filmed video tapes that land on their doorstep. Georges' (Auteuil) past creeps back to haunt him bringing political and social undertones to underpin a family crisis and we begin to wonder whether what seems to be happening, is the case at all.
What also interested me was the parallel to everyday life and whatever we may think about something, it may not be as it seems. It all depends on our viewpoint. And I'm learning that no matter how I feel about any situation, I may be mistaken and someone else's reality may be quite different. We all interpret things in our own way. As W. Shakespeare said in Hamlet.... 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' Anyway, Haneke creates a spacious film that allows for many interpretations and it's had me thinking about it all week! This is a brilliant film and a 'must see' for the big screen.
Michael Haneke
