Code Unknown Reviews

A humanist screed wrapped in a formalist adventure, Michael Haneke's Code Unknown represents a great leap forward for Austria's best-known contemporary filmmaker. This audacious near-masterpiece finds Haneke again casting an Olympian eye on his fellow man. Where his previous film, Funny Games, was conspicuously devoid of empathy, Code Unknown is decidedly more generous in outlook and tempered in tone. The movie's departure point is a bravura nine-minute tracking shot that links together the main characters on a busy Paris street. From there, the story lines branch off into fragmented bits -- perhaps a visual equivalent for the fractured world Haneke seeks to understand. As can be expected from the media-obsessed Haneke, the movie explores the power of images and the artist's complicity in perpetuating social attitudes. While such self-reflexivity is familiar in Haneke's cinema, what is not is the movie's poignancy. A contemporary global bulletin in its own right, the movie depicts a world afflicted by racism, xenophobia, apathy, miscommunication, and solipsism. Bookended by scenes at a school for deaf children, the movie all but explains its title, a reference to the seemingly lost language of kindness and compassion. "Have you ever made somebody happy?" a character asks at one point. It's a question this fiercely moral movie asks its audience as well.