Cache

Many people in talking about the film Cache have commented on the films lack of suturing. Where suturing, as described by Graeme Turner in his book Film as Social Practice, is a way of tying the audience into the film so that they do not notice the camera. I agree that Cache does not suture you into the film in the same way many of today films do. I however would argue that Cache does suture you into the film in a different way.

Cache in my opinion exploits two different kinds of cinematography. It uses some standard practices when it is developing the story of the protagonists or telling something that is not important to the main plot. This is not necessarily distinctly noticeable on its own but it becomes so when we compare it to the other type of cinematography. That of long shots, in both the length and distance. These two types I would argue fulfill two different purposes. The first sutures the audience into the place of the protagonists. It allows us to relate to them if only a little. The second makes us aware of the camera. This is generally not a good idea as Turner says, but in this film the camera actually plays a part. The camera that is watching these people is a major part of the story, and by putting us in the place of the camera we become sutured to it.

The first shot of the film accomplishes this, by zooming out and having the protagonists be watching a film we understand that the long shot means that there is a camera watching. Haneke uses this fact by using other long shots that make the watcher wonder if there is someone else watching. This is actually a very neat effect because we are for part of the story watching the protagonists and for part of it watching the villian.

Another interesting thing about this film is the fact that most of it is not resolved. Alot of people comented on this in their blog. I found it very intersting but not unexpected for two reasons. The first is that the film already seemed to drag on and seemed like it needed to be ended. Also the whole plot of the film relied on the fact that we did not really know what was going on. This is the only reason that we can identify with any of the characters at all, because they are also trying to figure out what is going on.

The narative structure of this film is also an interesting example. While it is linier it spends almost the entire movie trying to do what the watcher does not expect. There is a sense of suspense that builds throughout the entire movie and only really culimnates in the scene where Majid kills himself. This causes the casual watcher to be bored throughout most of the long shots at the begining which then causes the effect of the death scene to be much greater. After Majid dies the watcher feels a new kind of suspense and expectation in each of the long shots from then on. This is a very interesting and powerfull effect. It also makes the watcher wonder even more at the end as his death is never really resolved along with so many of the other aspects of the movie.