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Code Unknown [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

In the prelude to Code Unknown, we watch as a class of deaf children play a very sophisticated game of charades. In response to a blank-faced girl shrinking slowly against a wall, the children guess: is it sadness, isolation, loneliness? We are not told the answer before director Michael Haneke cuts to the extraordinary opening sequence of the film. This nine-minute tracking shot along a busy Parisian boulevard, introduces the film's central characters: Amadou, a first generation French boy of West African descent; Maria, a Romanian illegal immigrant; and Anne (Juliette Binoche), a French actress, trying to make the leap from theatre to film. However, this is the only time we will see these characters together in one place before the film fractures into a series of vignettes, which slowly describe their lives, their cultural isolation and their search for small moments of beauty within this alienation.

Michael Haneke has been credited with reinvigorating and refreshing Austrian cinema with expectation-smashing early films such as Funny Games; if his newest pan-European films are anything to go by, he could be set to do the same for Euro cinema in general. Though Code Unknown is very different from Haneke's Benny's Video or Funny Games, like them this film also implicates and involves the viewer in the guilt of the on-screen characters. Its structure of intricately woven story strands is entirely provocative and stirring--politically, aesthetically and emotionally. It's exactly the type of film you want to watch again and again. As with the players of the opening game of charades, we won't be given any easy answers to questions about our collective guilt in the racism and alienation of an undeniably multicultural, multiethnic Europe. --Tricia Tuttle


Probably one of the more accessible of Haneke's dour, psychological studies.
Review date: 2008-01-15 Rating: 8 out of 10

Code Unknown; Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000) is another of director Michael Haneke's deeply austere and emotionally rigid intellectual probes into the human condition; and the various psychological elements that cause problems, not only in our personal lives and relationships, but in a broader, sociological sense as well. At this point it is perhaps worth noting that the film's essay-like subtitle alludes to the style of the film, which involves a number of long, unbroken shot compositions (some longer than ten minutes) that often end abruptly, with no real sense of resolution.

Presented as a series of loosely connected vignettes that focus on the idea of character interaction as opposed to narrative direction, Code Unknown is a difficult film to appreciate, at least at the level that many of us would probably approach it. One of the main focus points here is the idea of perception; how both we as an audience and the characters in the film perceive the action unfolding from the limited point of view that we've been given. Some good examples of this would include the lengthy and suitably tense scene early on in the story; in which a number of unconnected characters all come together through a seemingly mundane event that ends with a scuffle erupting between a white teenager and a young black man, resulting in both men - and the various onlookers - being arrested. Later, midway through a particularly disconcerting scene, a toddler playing on the balcony of a high-rise apartment slips, all the while watched with horror by his terrified parents who are powerless to do anything. Then finally, towards the end of the film, we watch in eager suspense as a young Arab boy harasses Juliette Binoche's character on a Parisian metro. Throughout the film and these sequences in particular we expect something spectacular and thrilling to happen but it never seems to arrive, until, of course, we realise that 'something' is happening.

As with his most recent film, the highly acclaimed Hidden (2005), there are a number of interesting sequences in Code Unknown, which, on basis of description alone, could easily lead one to believe that they are about to watch a tense, Hollywood thriller. The film obviously couldn't be further removed from this ideal, however, with Haneke once again offering us a dour, colourless psychological study, in which characters crash into one another almost at random and cause a ripple effect that disrupts the order of everything that came before. Clearly, Code Unknown is unconcerned with thrilling the audience, at least, not in the typical sense; with the film never allowing the dramatic tension to build to anything beyond the confines of these various character vignettes that are strung together one by one in order to build up the story. This is a film that wants to enlighten with a raw depiction of everyday life; taking the viewer from moments of deadpan humour (albeit, incredibly low-key humour) to scenes that evoke a feeling of almost crippling desperation. Once again, these techniques are used to mislead the audience into thinking that the film is heading in a different, very "non-Haneke-like" direction, before switching track and confounding us all over again. If you give it some time to really get going, then the results can be oddly thrilling, and - in my opinion - probably more enjoyable and satisfying overall than anything else Haneke has directed.

Still, the film does have that sense of screaming polemic that much of the director's previous work has occasionally descended into; with the loose ends and the experiments in cinematic formalism creating a cold and intellectual exercise that will naturally turn many potential viewers away. A real shame too, because regardless of these distancing intellectual experiments, the direction, photography and acting are superb throughout, and - like The 7th Continent (1994) and Funny Games (1997) - help to weave together a beguilingly tense tapestry of guilt, anger, misery and social despair.

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Reviews


It's easy
Review date: 2007-12-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

If you do not wish to be challenged by films, if you do not wish to think about what you are seeing, if you think that the only point of a film is to entertain, if you think that a plot line must be spelt out, if you don't mind some dodgy dialog and schmaltzy acting as long as the explosions are big, DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE. It is not for you, please don't watch it because I fear it will make you angry, so angry that you may feel the need to spew your venom on this review page, unnecessarily filling cyberspace with a load of old pony that will only go to prove that you have the intellectual sensibility of a halfwit guttersnipe.

Anyone else, go ahead, at the very least it will make you think, personally I thought it was fantastic.

Crash For Adults?
Review date: 2007-10-15 Rating: 8 out of 10

Michael Haneke's multitude of mini interlinked storylines about different cultures living in Paris and how communications can be strained is, as with most of his films, definately not for everyone.
Filmed with the camera focusing solely on the main character of a particular strand of storyline is an interesting technique so that you the viewer only sees what the principle character sees.
Described by some as Crash for adults is certainly a valid argument. While Crash guided the audience through its interlinked storylines with minimal effort on the viewers part and certainly described on many occasions why prejudices occur. Code Unknown does the complete opposite, it has no music to dictate your mood, after the two main setpieces one at the beggining and one at the end there is no big dramatic moment involving the concerned characters. Haneke leaves you to decide on how you felt about each and every scene which as i've already said is not for everyone.
I have now seen this film twice and had a different take on events both times. The acting especially from Juliette Binoche is faultless and the two dramatic set pieces are absolutely riveting.
If you like challenging cinema with a little pretention than look no further than Code Unknown

Random multicultural experiences in Paris
Review date: 2007-08-14 Rating: 4 out of 10

"Code Unknown" seems to have divided reviewers into two camps , those who like it and those who hate it; there doesnt seem to be much in between. I must admit that I didn't like this film. I found it to be excessively disjointed and confusing and I couldn't see what message it was trying to convey. The structure of the film is a little like that of "Babel" and "21 Grams" ; a single incident draws a group of widely divergent people together in some way and the rest of the film explores these peoples lives in a non-chronological manner. In "Code Unknown" the lives of a French actress, a Malian immigrant and a Romanian beggar cross paths and various random scenes involving these characters and their friends and family are subsequently played out ,all to no great effect in my opinion."Code Unknown" ,which is largely plot free , is a somewhat baffling arthouse film which I didn't really enjoy.

Haneke is a Genius
Review date: 2007-05-12 Rating: 10 out of 10

Michael Haneke is an infuriating director. He bores you on purpose sometimes. This film is episodic and frequently banal - there is a five minute sequence of Juliette Binoche ironing a T-shirt.

But it really shakes you up. I lived for seven years in Bayswater, a multicultural community in the heart of London. Watching Haneke's characters stroll down the Boulevard St Germain, I knew exactly what he was saying. In modern cities there is so much confusion and misunderstanding. How can we make sense of it all? How should we behave?

The scene in the Metro is another example of how urban life is so lonely and frightening. He goes behind the scenes to Rumania, to see snapshots of the life Eastern European beggars abandon to be in the big cities. He shows the families behind the individuals.

Binoche is beautiful as always. Prepare to be bored, but at the same time enthralled by this film which gives you the feel of what it's like to be alive in a big European city in the C21st.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Alexandre Hamidi
Thierry Neuvic
Maimouna Hélène Diarra
Josef Bierbichler
Juliette Binoche

Creators:
Juliette Binoche (Primary Contributor)
Thierry Neuvic (Primary Contributor)
Michael Haneke (Writer)
Alain Sarde (Producer)
Christoph Holch (Producer)
Marin Karmitz (Producer)
Michael Weber (Producer)
Thilo Kleine (Producer)
Titi Popescu (Producer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Kino
Manufacturer: Kino
EAN: 0738329025120
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen,
Release date: 2002-08-06
Universal product code (UPC): 738329025120
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 118 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2000
Language: Arabic (Original Language)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Original Language)
Language: German (Original Language)
Language: Romanian (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitled)

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