Any time someone does something, in public, one mostly thinks about how it affects them personally. We only have one life, after all, working from one timeline, one narrative, and one perspective that naturally forms when we go through it. Code Unknown plays with this idea. It’s as if writer-director Michael Haneke wanted to recreate sonder into film form, as a single littering incident instigates a series of vignettes, each shot in real time, that cuts only when shifting between the strangers who witnessed the incident. Each cut feels intentional, with the way certain scenes linger, while some are cut short before fully concluding, and contrast between the scenes that are shown, and therefore, the treatment given after the incident, is pointedly different, with some finding it inconsequential to their day, and others becoming burdened with subsequent harassment and mistreatment that could have been avoided. Haneke, of course, remains as cryptic in the way he’s best known for, but Code Unknown, nonetheless, reveals just how much empathy is needed and is lacking in real life.
"The violence, in short, remains unseen, but that makes it no easier to bear; what lurks and wails behind a wall is, for Haneke, the most reliable wellspring of dread."
— Anthony Lane
"The most intellectually stimulating and emotionally provocative piece of European cinema of recent times."
— Richard Falcon
A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.
A young man litters on the side of the road, unexpectedly connecting four people coming from different lives in Paris.
The unusual structure.
I miss 2000s hyperlink cinema…
