The opening shot, that lasts for minutes, has its coldest way to mislead us into believing the banal view of a townhouse on a side street in Paris is what we SEE at the beginning of a film. But it is not until we hear a man and a woman talking, and see the rewinding of the image that we realize that we have been watching a videotape that is, at the same time, being watched by the man and the woman in their house. Actually, we are deceived by what we have seen. Accordingly, every scene of Caché can be untrustworthy, and we never know whether we are seeing the simultaneous shots or the images taped on the video. Then, the illusion of reality in the film is gradully fading away. We have been watching Caché as if we had been watching the god-like director manipulating his characters in his own films.
Next, Haneke sent his hero one videotape to another, together with sauvage kindergarten drawings of a bloodied child or rooster, not only bringing us to the hero's deepest secrets in his childhood that will inevitably lead to the following events including domestic disturbance, distrust, fear , anxieties, conflicts, but also rendering us aware that we are deeply implicated in the director's plan and are participating in this terrible, wicked "funny game" which aims at destruction.
The film's last shot, still continuous, shows a staircase scene just at the schoolgate, where a group of students are releasing from school, and a lot of people are moving around. Then we may find some surprising hints about the charaters or the clues of the film. But I tend to think that this final shot is also taped on video, and then will be sent to the kid's parents or so. In such way, Haneke is supposed to enjoy his game just by continually tormenting his characters and revealing the film. audience the nature of cinema is nothing more than a game.
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