Austinist Movie Reviews: Freedomland and Caché

We saw both Freedomland and Caché this past weekend. One we loved, the other, not so much. Can you guess which is which?

Okay, you got us, we are gluttons for arty French films. And yet, we always show up for the American thrillers, despite low scores on Metacritic. These two films actually do have something in common. They both deal with race and how racism affects the lives of individuals, directly or indirectly. Of course, one is done with beautiful, heartbreaking subtlety while the other makes certain to beat you over the head with its themes.

Freedomland gives us the usual awesome performances from Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. Julianne Moore's Brenda Martin shows up at a hospital near some New Jersey projects with bloodied hands. She claims she's been carjacked near the housing projects where she works. Jackson shows up playing a detective. Brenda tells him not only did the carjacker take her car, but that her sick and sleepy four-year-old son was in the backseat.

And then everything goes ballistic. Jackson shouts and hops around and appears to have some sort of asthma attack on speed. Jackson shouts at Moore and Moore shouts back at him and whoever is holding the camera is swinging it in circles. This happens to make certain that the audience feels not only riveted but totally tense and freaked out--just like Jackson's detective and Moore's freaked out mom might feel. Because there is just no way you might have a sense of dread and urgency otherwise.

The movie feels like a teenager learning to drive her first stick shift. It starts and stops with quick thrusts and harsh breaks and then you move along very slowly for a while until you are jerked around some more. Whew, boy. Of course nothing is as it seems and everyone's got a big speech to make and Jackson has a son in prison and you get to cry a little. And Moore gets to scream a lot and kick a lot and cry a lot and show off her New Jersey poor white trashy former drug addict grieving mother accent. Blah blah blah.

And then it ends.

Now, Caché, there's a fucking movie!

Michael Haneke is a master of menace. Ten or so years ago we watched his film Benny's Video, just us and our boyfriend (now husband). It had been sort of a bad week and that film tapped into something within us that freaked us out. We sobbed and sobbed and paced and paced and screamed at our boyfriend for having us sit through such a terrible, monstrous piece of celluloid. Michael Haneke likes to show the worst of humanity. Funny Games, anyone?

But he's a great filmmaker. He knows how to show ugliness without having to shove a spolight and a few obvious lines of dialogue on it. He knows how to give us the worst of what we can be and make us remember it. Moments in his films are both impossible to watch and impossible to turn away from at the same time.

Haneke gives us the family of Georges (Daniel Auteuil), Anne (Juliette Binoche), and their adolescent son, Pierrot. The first image of the film is a shot of the outside of their home. We soon learn this is part of hours of footage presented to them via a videotape left outside their front door. Later more tapes arrive, along with disturbing childlike drawings of a kid with blood streaming out of his mouth. The images on the tape start to tell a story, a story that presents a disturbing look at France's treatment of its Algerian population, as well as glimpses of Georges passive inhumanity toward those that need him. It's a film that dares to keep you riveted without pushing you off your chair. It challenges and disturbs and follows you home to bed at night. It's a film that changes you rather than assaults you.

Freedomland gets a big NO. Caché a HELL YES.

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