Haneke, Jeunet and Bonitzer

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Michael Haneke are perhaps two of the most innovative auteurs working in French cinema today. Both have their legions of fans and both have their share of critics and detractors. Their styles however, could not be more dissimilar.

Jeunet is known for his vibrant masterpieces such as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amelie) and Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement). Haneke is known his provoking and unsettling œuvres such as Cache and Funny Games that call into question the very essence of cinema and its purpose.

This post intends to examine their very different approaches to cinema and how they utilize screen space with reference to the Pascal Bonitzer article, Off Screen Space.

Bonitzer postulates:

“…the function of the screen is not just to allow us to see (the film), but also, as its name indicates, to conceal (from reality). The cinematic image is haunted by what is not in it.”

In Jeunet’s films every shot seems to have been carefully storyboarded and planned. We see on screen exactly what the director wants us to see for the purposes of the movie and not a stray plastic bag more. Color, tint and sound are all meticulously coordinated to produce an overall visual and aural experience.

Take for example, the opening scene in Amélie. The movie starts with an image of an insect buzzing down a street in Montmarte with narration set to the background of Yann Tiersen’s overwhelming background score.

Haneke’s film, Cache on the other hand begins with a long continuous shot of a house, with no background score and little explanation of what’s going on.

When viewing a scene, the field that’s reserved for the audience (i.e. the field in which the camera is placed) is referred to as L’absent. When the camera pans to the opposite side, the absent one is revealed. Once these two are sutured together, we now start to look upon the scene as if we were to examine it from the POV of the absent one’s gaze, and thereby the viewer becomes part of the scene.

Amélie is much more traditional in this respect. For example, in the shot where Amélie is leading the blind man down the crowded market streets, the camera pans across the street in relation to show what Amélie is describing – we get the impression that we are viewing the whole scene as if through Amélie’s eyes.

Cache, on the other hand, tries to challenge the notion of the absent one. Haneke seems to be accusing the audience of its scopophilic tendencies, suggesting that we are torturing this ordinary couple by acting as Peeping Toms into the most intimate parts of their lives. The film is definitely more self-aware and meta in this respect.

From Mulvey’s  Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,

“…[Freud] associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.”

I found it interesting how each of these films interprets that statement. In Cache, the characters are often viewed through long shots with very little camera movement. The characters in Amélie, on the other hand, are often shot in close-up with elaborate camera movements. In both cases though, the camera’s gaze (and by extension the viewer’s) is furiously trained on these characters.

Bonitzer also says,

“…[The majority of]any film depends on the verisimilitude of the narrative and the realism of detail.”

Bonitzer argues that a viewer when exposed to a film that does not play along with such representation will switch off.

Cache is grounded in reality, whereas Amélie requires a certain suspension of belief. Yet, both movies include subtle references that break the fourth wall (Amélie whispering “Seize!” to her audience, or the blink-and-you-miss-it placement of a movie camera in Cache).

Their approaches to reality may be gauged from these statements from their directors:

"Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth." – Haneke.

“Cinema since the New Wave always seems to be about a couple fighting in the kitchen. I prefer to tell stories.” – Jeunet.

Indeed, Cache and Funny Games are more in line with films of the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), a term given to works that stress neo-realism over classical escapism. Jeunet detests the New Wave and would rather be a story teller than an observer of the human condition.

Jeunet embraces the system, having worked with Warner Brothers and directing one of the Alien sequels. Haneke is averse to the Hollywood establishment. He once said,

“My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus." 

Ultimately, both auteurs challenge the Bonitzer article in different extremes – Jeunet challenges the concepts of reality by creating a surrealistic world in his movies. Haneke pushes the boundaries of realism leaving the viewer to question, just what is real?

Ultimately both directors refuse to accept that the notion that the viewer is uneducated or is looking to be spoon-fed a movie and will look upon the movie solely in terms of true/false.

Both their movies encourage discussion and reflection at the end of the movie, willing the viewer to experience the movie rather than passively view it.