This is my favorite film by Michael Haneke, though I still haven’t seen anything from before Benny’s Video, including the supposedly similar and arguably better 71 Fragments. Code Unknown is just as rife with didacticism as any of his other work, but it is less offensive and belittling of me as a viewer than anything else I’ve seen by him, especially Benny’s Video or either version of Funny Games. I think this is true because the main element of the film that I focus on is its formal arrangement of the plot rather than the filmmaker showing me how cruel the middle and upper classes are to each other or how much of a failure communication has proven to be. While these are interesting and important topics, Haneke tends to talk down to anyone who happens to view his films. The amazing thing for me in Code Unknown is that there is a constant tension involved with whether I feel like I’m being manipulated to feel guilty, or if I actually feel guilty about what I’m seeing and my reaction to it, or if I can feel justified with who I am naturally sympathizing with.
Like in the brilliant subway scene near the end of the film, as I try to decide if I am a prick for sympathizing with Binoche’s Anne. She is being harrassed on a train by a jerk, simple enough. Oh, but he’s an Arab, would she ignore his questions if he were white and well-dressed? But would someone who is white and well-dressed speak to a stranger in this tone? Would I take her reaction to be more rude than defensive if he was white and well-dressed? Probably not. But I considered these things. Maybe because I knew I was watching a Michael Haneke film and that I know that that is what he wants me to consider. But the film is obviously about class struggles and struggles with language and prejudices, so it’s all in line with the film’s logic.
But, as the title suggests, the film is a code, a puzzle, presented out of order and supposedly orderable. It handles this form much better than Arriaga ever has or, probably, will, because the shuffled plot structure is truly baffling here. Where 21 Grams and the copycat Babel (has there been a more annoying plagiary in filmmaking this decade than this trite re-imagining of Code Unknown?) take simple and cliche narratives, slice them up and rearrange it all to make the viewer have to ‘think,’ Haneke made a puzzle where no matter what order one put the pieces in, at least one piece wouldn’t make sense, while at the same time, every possible ordering of it would have the illusion that it makes complete sense. Which is a pretty apt metaphor for the structure of civilization.