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TORONTO -- The Answer Man recently received a letter from a reader who said he'd learned to really appreciate so-called "slow" films. He was tired of being bombarded by heavy handed movies that tell you exactly where to look and how to respond at all times. I suppose Michael Haneke's "Cache" might be considered "slow" because it consists of many long takes in which you find yourself waiting in nervous anticipation for something -- you're never quite sure what -- to happen. But that process of watching and waiting makes it almost unbearably suspenseful at times. I had a double espresso before the 10 a.m. screening and my heart was beating so loud during the movie I think I could have done without the caffeine, even at that hour.
This is my favorite kind of movie -- one that allows you to watch it. Indeed, insists that you watch it, that you meet it at least half-way. It begins somewhere in the neighborhood of David Lynch's "Lost Highway": A man begins receiving video tapes of the front of his apartment, where he lives with his wife and son, sometimes accompanied by crude, childlike drawings featuring splashes of red blood. Who is sending them and what do they want? Is it a prank, or a serious threat? How much of his anxiety, and his suspicions, should he share with the rest of his family? And how much of theirs will they share with him?
You ask the questions along with the characters, and you put the pieces together in your own mind as you watch the picture. On one level, it's a very specific mystery-suspense story; on another it's a parable about the roots of terrorism. It's not until the very last shot that crucial information drops into place -- but, even then, you may not have all the answers you'd like. And that's essential to what the movie is about. These people keep things from one another -- for whatever reasons -- and sometimes we just want to shout at them to explain things we already know, but one or more of them does not. It's excruciating (in an illuminating way), watching and listening as they offer up certain fragments of information and hold back others, trying to put their own spin on whatever situation they're dealing with.
There's one amazing scene in the living room -- a long take with news about Iraq on the television in the center of the screen, behind the husband and wife as they worry over the whereabouts of their son, while the woman calls the mother of one of the boy's friends -- that is the most effective expression of panic and information overload, of world events spilling into private lives in turmoil, that I've ever seen.
This is a taut, pulse-pounding movie without any of the "action scenes" we might expect. I don't say this often, but I can't wait to see it again.
