Code Unknown Review
A humanist screed wrapped in a formalist adventure, Michael_Haneke's Code Unknown represents a great leap forward for Austria's best-known contemporary filmmaker. This audacious near-masterpiece finds Haneke again casting an Olympian eye on his fellow man. Where his previous film, Funny_Games, was conspicuously devoid of empathy, Code Unknown is decidedly more generous in outlook and tempered in tone. The movie's departure point is a bravura nine-minute tracking shot that links together the main characters on a busy Paris street. From there, the story lines branch off into fragmented bits -- perhaps a visual equivalent for the fractured world Haneke seeks to understand. As can be expected from the media-obsessed Haneke, the movie explores the power of images and the artist's complicity in perpetuating social attitudes. While such self-reflexivity is familiar in Haneke's cinema, what is not is the movie's poignancy. A contemporary global bulletin in its own right, the movie depicts a world afflicted by racism, xenophobia, apathy, miscommunication, and solipsism. Bookended by scenes at a school for deaf children, the movie all but explains its title, a reference to the seemingly lost language of kindness and compassion. "Have you ever made somebody happy?" a character asks at one point. It's a question this fiercely moral movie asks its audience as well. Elbert Ventura, Rovi
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