Michel Haneke's acclaimed thriller/suspense, an expertly created, tight in all senses of the word picture that gets across its important thesis most strongly.
For all Haneke's observance and near obsession with the trickery, the artifice of the cinema, he is in truth an impeccable realist (rather perhaps because of his worries this is the case). We have our static cameras throughout, for the people and for the shots. We have minimal identification because of this, any that occurs would be thanks to the audience doing the entire legwork (this lack of sympathetic identification rather throws the viewer off, and is one of many challenged he presents to the bourgeoise audience). We like this style, Haneke lets the images speak (as far as his framings will, which because of the cloistered setting isn't an infinite amount), and for that deserves credit. He lets the viewer think.
As for the themes, Haneke's ideas are exactly what is in the air for your anti-capitalist critic, with dashes of psychoanalytic sympotmisation and repitition. Such intelligence is rarely shown on screen, and for that he deserves credit, although he doesn't do a huge amount more than repeat these ideas that can be read about elsewhere. The last shot, of the children, can be read as one showing maximum responsibility, or as one that is a bit hysterical.
Haneke proffesedly wants to challenge the cinema audience's voyeurism, and there are interesting ideas of disrupting our flow, through confusion of tape/P.O.V. and of violence, but this idea is not developed beyond a few (very effective stabs).
Haneke is questioning the bourgeoise mechanisms that have exclusion in their extension (we should probably ignore the fact that if they HAD taken Majid in he would have grown to be a nice little capitalist...), and how this process is unthinkly passed down. His characters, for all the excellent acting (Binoche and Auteuil) are symblos of a wider malaise. A film on a vital subject, well put put together.
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