It's a sentiment we'll hear a lot over the next few weeks: Hollywood is leading us all downhill. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, which we have been told is a shoo-in for Best Picture, is beautiful. The star, Heath Ledger, is convincingly inaudible; the support, Jake Gyllenhaal, has a face that offers itself up to the camera on a plate like the young Travolta's did, all lips and cheeks. But it is pedestrian. The night I saw it, at least two people in the audience nodded off after ten minutes, which doesn't say much for Lee's command of tension and pace.
And although Steven Spielberg's Munich is at least "gripping", it's about as innovative as an Hercule Poirot Christmas Day special. See the crime! See it in flashback! See the perpetrators killed, one by one! A different deadly trick for every baddy! The checklist of bombs and explosions even involves an (utterly gratuitous) topless murder, with silenced guns hidden in bicycle pumps. Very 007. It even includes that vintage number, "Whoah! I'm gonna kill an innocent child," which is guaranteed to get thirtysomethings watching through their fingers.
Then, just as you think that cinema has thrown in the towel and resigned itself to the idea that the only intelligent goings-on involving a box office and an auditorium must reside in the theatre, Michael Haneke's Cache (Hidden) comes our way. Agreed, those Continentals know their way around a thriller. But by whatever criteria you choose, Hidden is a superior product.
Imagine, as we all sometimes do, your entire life as a surveillance film, shot neutrally and unjudgementally as if by a CCTV camera. Then imagine it being shown to the world - partners, friends, work colleagues. You are shown stripped bare, your mendacities and play-acting revealed for all the world to see. In the old stories, God used to play this role. These days the all-seeing being is the digital camera, which in the real world does indeed play judge and jury for countless little crimes, and some big ones.
Hidden has been greeted as a comment on modern-day surveillance techniques or the French political position on Algeria, or even as a reflection on Haneke's own country (Austria) and its association with the Nazi regime. It might be all these things. However, at its core lies a simple morality tale: does personal integrity depend on who is watching?
The protagonist has an enviable job presenting a highbrow arts programme. He is a celebrity, not in a vulgar way, but in an elegant way. He drives a great car. He lives in an artfully minimalist apartment. He has Juliette Binoche as his wife. Together, they have a delightful son who excels at swimming and they throw chic dinner parties. The presenter's private life is as refined as his public one. But it is his inner life where the problems lie. And when exposed, it is, as my mother would say, "nothing to be proud of".
His downfall reminds me of a cautionary tale. A journalist friend of a friend was ticking off a member of staff at a large London department store for a wrongly fitted appliance. She railed at him. Then she threatened him with public exposure in her newspaper if he did not replace the appliance. The store promptly sent the tape of the phone call to the paper's editor. She never wrote for that paper again. These days, it's best to be squeaky clean right deep down inside. Big Brother is watching all of us.
