(It’s so hard to name it, I can only call it a hindsight)
George, a family of three living happily together, suddenly received a videotape one day. The video data on the videotape is a 24/7 surveillance of his house: George and his family members were tracked every move they made from going out in the morning to going home in the evening. At first, George and his wife thought it was just a prank by their son's friend and didn't take it too seriously. Immediately afterwards, they continued to receive varying degrees of "intimidation" and more private content on the son's side and the company's side. But the threat to the George family was not fatal, and the police did not pay too much attention. The police's ignorance and George's selective silence forced them to live with these ghostly tapes all the time. Until one day, George received a videotape with a clear message, pointing to the source of it all: an Algerian refugee child adopted by George's parents as a child.
At the beginning of the film, Haneke spent a lot of time describing George's stable life and social circle: a family of three; a certain social status, a well-known writer, TV personality, and a relatively important middle-level company ; There is a stable circle of friends in the same circle, with the George family as the core. As the plot unfolded, the relationship between George and these circles was gradually removed. In the face of these sudden spooky videotapes, George's first approach is to hide, solve privately, whether it is receiving videotapes, cards with scary images, he chooses not to let friends know, at a friend's party When he received the videotape, he wanted to pretend that nothing happened; he actually had suspicions about these videotapes for a long time, but he kept it with his wife. This way of communication caused his wife and him to have a big fight. In this series of actions, George claimed that he did not want to cause confusion or make people around him anxious, but only George himself knew what he was escaping from.
Finally, when his son's body was threatened, George finally took the step of calling the police and made trouble all night, but finally found out that it was a misunderstanding. Haneke created a trap here, throwing the protagonist into a situation where he had to go and tear it apart in person. Angry George, manipulated by the videotape, once again threatened Magee at Magee's house and found that Magee even had a son. The son has naturally become the object of suspicion. So far, the grievances of one generation have successfully escalated into the grievances of two generations.
Now that he has gone to the police station, what George has been trying to escape from the ground has to come to the surface after all. Under the pressure of his wife, George finally revealed his past when he was 6 years old: George’s parents once hired an Algerian refugee couple to work on the farm. After the couple died, George’s parents adopted Magee, who was the same age as George. Also a 6-year-old child, Magee got the attention of his parents, which gradually fermented George's psychological imbalance and turned into a damage to Magee, who was already mentally fragile-George made up a story in front of his parents. Lie, saying that Maggie killed a chicken. This lie succeeded in making the parents no longer trust Magee and immediately sent Magee to a mental hospital. The whole life of 6-year-old Maggie was changed because of such a lie.
Once the distrust created by prejudice is present, it is difficult to reverse. And such a sense of distrust, as long as you think about it, will not appear just because of a lie of George. "He was mentally ill." George unilaterally described 6-year-old Magee. Is it weird to kill a chicken on a farm? If it wasn't for her own prejudice behind this, why did Magee's parents, as adults with judgment, easily send Magee off the farm and ruin someone else's life just because of a lie? In the final analysis, the former colony refugees and race are the biggest original sins of Magee. George's lie confirmed Magee's "inferiority" and covered up the deep-rooted prejudice of the French people represented by George's parents. "You see, it's not that we discriminate against him, it's that there's something wrong with the man himself." One detail: George returned to the farm after receiving a videotape of his childhood farm. He asked his mother if she remembered the little boy she had sent away. Mother quickly replied that she didn't remember because she was old. Here, we have no way of knowing whether George's mother had selective amnesia.
Who placed the camera?
From "Fun Games" to "Paris Ukiyo-e" to "Hidden Cameras", Haneke has always been keen to express the relationship between the camera's gaze and the gazed. In "Hidden Camera", Haneke uses the camera as a god to examine the life of the protagonist.
Hidden cameras appear in five scenarios:
The first is across from George's house. It is the first shot at the beginning of the film, and it is also the content of the first video tape George received. This camera tracks the daily life of George's family, from morning to night. After receiving the tape, the audience asked the same question as George: Who placed the camera?
The second scene is George's childhood farm. As the plot progresses, George already has an object of suspicion in his heart. The appearance of this video tape proves that his thoughts are correct.
The third scene is the corridor of Magee's apartment, which leads George to Magee's apartment. At this time, the clues are already very clear, and George's psychology also has 7 or 8 guesses, and he has to reveal it himself.
The fourth scene is inside Magee's house: George finally finds Magee, enters his apartment, and asks him why he did it. Magee is shocked and confused, and denies it was himself. The next day, George saw himself talking to Magee in the frame.
The videotape of this scene makes George step by step believe that all this is a conspiracy planned by Magee. The prejudice deepened with the gradual fear, and the mistakes that were deliberately avoided in the heart were logically pushed to the weaker Magee. After receiving this videotape, George's focus was no longer on who placed the camera, but on how to pass on the mistakes he had made, from passive defense to active attack. George's incessant progress finally made the most sad scene of the film staged in this apartment.
The fifth scene is the gate of George's son's school: at the end of the film, in the large panorama, the audience follows the movement and scheduling of the camera to capture George's son and Maggie's son who are talking in the corner, but cannot see their expressions and Atmosphere, Haneke seems more willing to use an open perspective to see how this feud will transition to the next generation.
Going back to the question posed at the beginning of the film: who placed the camera? What is the purpose of TA? For George, the camera is undoubtedly a tool planned by Magee and his son to try to threaten him. Although Magee and his son strongly deny it, this is the "only" truth in the eyes of George, who is swayed by prejudice. People blinded by prejudice finally give up the pursuit of truth (ironically, the only sincere conversation George sees in the audience is in a dark room where the lights are turned off during the day). For the audience, the role of the camera has also changed from a clue of decryption to a tool of inspection. The initial close tracking of the protagonist's daily life, its triviality and nuance, is an almost invasive prying experience, but from Magee's house onwards, the camera has become a record of specific "events".
The opposite of "truth" in George's eyes has never been "fake", so the lies he told as a child are only his own ignorant fault, and the identity of immigrants and different races is the unforgivable original sin, and this kind of "fake" The evasion and cover-up of foreigners is precisely the escaping mentality of the French for foreign immigrants for a long time.
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