This document provides an in-depth analysis of Michael Haneke's 2005 film Caché and discusses how it explores themes of colonialism, guilt, and the return of the oppressed "Other." The film depicts a well-off Frenchman whose comfortable life is disrupted by mysterious tapes appearing at his home that seem linked to his denial and repression of his role in harming an Algerian orphan as a child. The document discusses how the film examines issues of responsibility, exclusion, and the lingering effects of colonialism on both colonizers and colonized peoples in Europe.

1. The Return of The Other:
The Specter of Colonialism and the Politics of Guilt
in Michael Haneke’s Caché
Rachel Victoria Richmond

2. “We all believe we're so fantastically
liberal. None of us want to see
immigration laws tightened. Yet when
someone comes to me and asks if I
could take in a foreign family, then I
say, well, not really. Charity begins at
home with the door firmly shut. Most
people are as cowardly and comfortable
as I am.”
– Michael Haneke
The past always returns, either in memory or in form. It can live on the outliers of
consciousness and push its way in until there is no other choice but to address it. In
Michael Haneke’s film Caché, the past comes back for reasons unknown. Perhaps it is
out for revenge or maybe it just seeks acknowledgement of a transgression perpetrated
against an innocent person. In the film, Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a well off
television host, finds his serene life disturbed by the sudden appearance of videotapes of
his house and violent drawings. Georges suspects Majid (Maurice Benichou), an
Algerian man who came to live with Georges family as a child after his parents died in
the Algerian Massacre of 1961. Georges lied to his parents about Majid and concocted
terrible stories that eventually resulted in Majid being sent to an orphanage. In Caché,
Haneke discusses the power of guilt and denial but he also uses the story of Georges to
explore the complex web of repression and guilt forged by European colonialism and its
negative effects on the colonized. Caché highlights the tension between colonized and
colonizer and what happens when the colonized Other returns. Haneke does this by
encoding his film with a nuanced dialog about the French and Algerians but ultimately,
Caché reaches beyond France to encompass the effects of colonialism and post-

3. colonialism on Europe and how a system of exclusion and repression victimizes both the
formerly colonized and the colonizers.
In order to delve fully into Caché, attention must be paid to the history of
European colonialism and the struggle between Algeria and France to bring about the end
of colonialism. The idea of colonialism at its heart is about the commodification of
foreign lands and resources (even people) to bolster the wealth of another country. While
colonialism occurred in many countries throughout time, European colonialism changed
the course of history and ushered in a new era of war, violence, and profit. European
colonization practiced by the major Western powers (Britain, France, Germany, Spain)
eventually fell into distress during the mid-20th century. After World War I,
anticolonialist movements grew in popularity in the colonies occupied by the Western
powers. Algeria, one of France’s most important colonies, agitated for self-determination
but it was clear that France would not allow them independence. In 1954, the National
Liberation Front (FLN) began a guerilla war against France in Algeria.
Back in France, Algerians led rallies and protests against the French government
while renegade members of the FLN launched terrorist attacks against government
offices. On October 17, 1961, Algerians went to the streets of Paris to protest a curfew set
by the chief of police, Maurice Papon. Papon ordered the police to break up the peaceful
demonstration by any means necessary. The police open fired on the demonstrators,
killing countless Algerians. After the massacre, Papon and the French government
claimed only two Algerians were killed but eyewitnesses estimated that up to 200 people
were murdered. The media went silent and never questioned the official story and for
decades after, the French government suppressed all information about the October

4. 17 massacre and denied any responsibility for the deaths of the Algerians. Eventually
Algeria would win their independence but the damage had been done. The French
refused culpability and even refused to acknowledge Algeria’s successful struggle for
independence.
In his essay on Caché, “Drawing Trauma,” Guy Austin pays special attention
to the ongoing struggle in France to come to terms with the historical trauma of the
Algerian Massacre. Austin notes that the repression of the massacre eventually turned
into something more palatable for French citizens. He says that in the mid-1990's, France
underwent a period of historical "renegotiation and selective remembering" (Austin
530). In November 1996, President Chirac called for French citizens to be proud of the
important achievements made in Africa through colonization. Even in 2005, the French
government required by law that “school syllabi recognize in particular the positive role
of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa” (Austin 530). This lauding
of French colonial history without regard to its negative effects is a symptom of what
Austin calls “un passé qui ne passe pas” - a past that cannot pass, a past that cannot
be overcome (Austin 530). In fact, it was not until 1998 that the French government
acknowledged that the Algerian massacre even occurred. Then in October 2001, the
mayor of Paris dedicated a plaque to the Algerians massacred on October 17, 1961. This
move was one of the first admissions of the French government to their responsibility in
the event. The dedication of the plaque was met with fury from conservative French who
felt as though such a move was divisive and even dangerous to national unity. If they
were to accept the negative effects of colonialism and their responsibility in the massacre,
the idea of France as the symbol of everything that is desirable about European society

5. would be called into question. This dilemma is truly at the center of Caché.
The process of decolonization affected European countries, especially the
Western powers, in one important way: decolonization allowed the formerly colonized to
move into the same sphere as the colonizer. As Professor John Milfull succinctly states
in his essay “Decolonizing Europe,” “the victims of empire come to dwell in the margins
of the metropolis” (Milfull 467). In Caché, Majid lives in the margins of Paris due to the
denial of a proper upbringing by Georges, the native son. But even further, Majid lives
in the margins of Georges’ memory. It is not until Georges receives the violent drawings
that he remembers Majid and is plagued with nightmares of memories that may or may
not be true. The return of Majid – the Other – into Georges life causes a contradiction
between the identity Georges portrays and the fears that he holds.
In Caché, Haneke plays with the stereotypes of the Other and the
colonizer, two archetypes bred of the era of colonialism. In the book Unthinking
Eurocentrism, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam argue that colonialist racial hierarchy
presupposes the power and intelligence of the white man. “Whites are the objective ones,
the experts, the uncontroversial ones, those who cause no problems, […] those 'at home'
in the world, whose prerogative it is to create laws in the face of alien disorder” (Shohat
200). This construction is what at first look seems the basis for Georges' character.
In “Deep Cuts,” an essay on Caché, writer Benjamin Ogrodnik investigates the
intricacies of Georges’ character. Georges, Ogrodnik maintains, presents
an “unproblematic identification in a western audience" (Ogrodnik 56). Georges is a
middle-class, white, French talk-show host who “is an advocate of specifically French
high culture, a person who defends, promulgates, transmits, and sustains the qualities of

6. French civilization” (Caputi 5). In Christopher Sharrett’s review of Caché, he notes the
house of Georges and Anne as being symptomatic of their characters. The home, filled
with books and art “shows less their erudition than the bourgeois appropriation and
administration of the entirety of Western culture - a Haneke preoccupation” (Sharrett 51).
On the other hand, the character of Majid is not fully formed and exists at first as what
Georges wants him to be – a villainous Other.
As the film progresses, the stereotypes that viewers are familiar with no longer
work. Haneke is able to subvert these stereotypes by contrasting Georges’ logical and
calm façade with his increasingly paranoid and fearful behavior after the arrival of the
violent drawings. The reemergence of the memory of Majid causes Georges' identity to
be called into question. Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha states that “the reality of the
formerly colonized presence signals the frailty of the colonizer's identity” (Caputi 10). As
Georges slowly becomes more disconnected from the viewer with his own dishonesty,
the viewer begins to question the idea of Majid as the source of the tapes and drawings.
Ogrodnik states that Haneke eschews conventions of commercial cinema by showing
Georges’ hidden negative traits, whereas more conventional cinema would use the
narrative to “provide an opportunity to reaffirm the moral righteousness of the West”
through Georges (Ogrodnik 57). By showing Georges’ negative traits, Haneke links
Georges to the West’s indifference to the plight of foreign minorities suffering in the
margins of their society and at the same time uses his fractured identity to “refute the […]
accepted authority and legitimacy of western characters in the cinema” (Ogrodnik 57).
Key to Caché is Georges’ denial of responsibility for what he did to Majid. The
main point of colonialism is the idea of European universalism. European powers occupy

7. foreign lands not only to profit from resources but to also further their own culture across
the world. Georges, France’s native son, had the opportunity to share the “greatness”
of the French culture to Majid. Mary Caputi, a political science professor at California
State University, finds then Georges’ “unwillingness to extend the privileges of French
society to the formerly colonized” as a contradiction (Caputi 4). She continues by noting
that “such unwillingness flies in the face of colonialism's first principle regarding the
superiority and desirability of French civilization” (Caputi 4). This contradiction can be
linked to the problem of inclusion in the process of decolonization. Now that the formerly
colonized lives in the society of the former colonizer, all the culture and opportunities
promised to him are taken away. The former colonizer takes a protective stance against
the foreigner and labels the culture as only for native citizens and never for foreigners.
The result of Georges’ actions results in a wide discrepancy between the life
Majid lives and the life Majid could have lived. In Étienne Balibar's book We, the People
of Europe?, he points towards decolonization and the failure of the process of integration
as constructing “systems of exclusion: the divide between ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’
and, more profoundly still, between populations considered native and those considered
foreign [...] who are racially or culturally stigmatized” (Balibar 8). According to Balibar,
these divisions are “reinforced by the history of colonization and decolonization” and
eventually lead towards violent tension (Balibar 8). Majid’s suicide at the end of the
film can be seen as the violent reaction to a lifetime of alienation and exclusion, a view
supported by post-colonialist author Frantz Fanon’s proclamation that “[violence is] the
expression of alienation” (Zahar 81).
In Caché, the story of Majid seems to have been forgotten by all the major

8. players except for Majid. Georges would seemingly carry on his life as usual if not for
the emergence of the tapes and drawings that spark in Georges an unnamable guilt. For
example, when Georges visits his mother and tells her that he dreamed of Majid, she has
no recollection of who Majid was. Georges himself cannot connect the dreams to his
culpability in lying about Majid as a child. However, Majid and Georges are connected
to the representation of both guilt (for Georges) and suffering (for Majid) in the tapes
and drawings. The videotapes Georges receives in the beginning of the film function
to permeate the fortresses of his secure life. The wide shot of Georges townhouse, its
stability, its cold and unwavering eye seem to burn a hole into the façade of normality.
The video is silently accusatory and seems to pierce a hole into Georges’ defenses. The
second images, the drawings open the floodgates of memory for Georges and reawaken
a dormant guilt that he has denied since childhood. Haneke clearly shows what film critic
Asbjorn Gronstad notes as “the capacity of the image to generate both reflection and
guilt” (Gronstad 142).
Both Majid and Georges are forever bound by guilt and suffering. According to
Frantz Fanon, colonization creates a “neurotic orientation” between the colonized and the
colonizer, with each acting out their own roles (Caputi 6). Neither the colonized nor the
colonizer can escape from the “interlocking suffering of the colonial condition” (Caputi
6). According to Fanon, out of a colonial system, there is no identity other than that
forged with in the colonial setting. Majid must act out his suffering and Georges cannot
reconcile his guilt for that suffering and they can only “face each other without any
chance of reconciliation” (Zahar 81).
Caché’s elliptical ending bolsters this claim but the argument can be made

9. that generations outside of the specter of colonialism can forge a new synthesis and a
new society that is free from the unending cycle born of colonialism. At the end of the
film, Majid’s and Georges’ sons meet in front of a school and carry on a conversation
that the audience is not privy to. Roy Grundmann, film professor and author, gives an
interesting read of the final scene. If the scene is to be read as the last part of a linear
narrative, the sons meeting could signify a union “as a result of the conflict, and as a
sign that the new generation wants to make peace and taking their place in the course of
history” thus ending the cycle of their parents’ generation (Grundmann 58). If this “new
alliance” is formed then Haneke’s vision of post-colonialism is one of true equality and
balance (Grundmann 58). Such a synthesis would then have to do away with the labels
of “colonizer” and “colonized” and find a new structure for society that is more than
post-colonial.
This reading of the ending of Caché is quite positive and seems a hopeful
view of the direction of European society. However, Haneke seems more concerned
about the present state of affairs in European nations. Caché is more than a allegory
about French-Algerian relations and the national repression of guilt over the 1961
massacre. Unfortunately, Max Silverman seems to teeter on the edge of this assumption
in his reading of Caché. He argues that Caché is a commentary on France as a society
that is “incapable of dealing with difference unless it is strictly at arms-length”
(Silverman 248). According to Silverman, the society cannot accept responsibility for
past events and the only way to break down the walls of indifference is to somehow
infiltrate the society. While that may be true, Haneke’s goals are to investigate all of
Europe as a whole. In an interview, Haneke said, “There are black stains of this sort in

10. every country, and in Austria and Germany they are brown” (Kamalzadeh). Repression
of national traumas and acts which governments are ashamed of is a universal
phenomena and Haneke uses France as a mirror for which to view all of Europe,
especially countries that were former colonizers. Haneke has also stated that “What
[Caché] is really about is the primal legacy of colonialism and the nations involved
labouring with the consequences. And there is no one solution to this” (Kamalzadeh).
Gronstad sees within the film an exploration of “social turmoil simmering beneath the
pan-national veneer of the ever expanding European Union” (Gronstad 138). The social
turmoil stemming from broken promises of multiculturalism and inclusion in Western
societies that ultimately react negatively towards foreigners.
However, some critics have found much lacking in Haneke’s argument in Caché.
Historian Paul Gilroy counters that Caché “offers precious little” beyond Frantz Fanon’s
original indictments of colonialism:
We leave the theatre jolted but with no clear sense of how to act more justly
or ethically. Instead, Haneke invites his audience to become resigned to its
shame, discomfort, and melancholia. (Gilroy 235)
However, Haneke does offer his audience more than just shame. In Michael Haneke’s
Cinema: The Ethic of the Image, Catherine Wheatley concerns herself mainly with the
idea of spectatorial guilt. Haneke explores spectatorial guilt in the way of character
identification and an internal sense of mise en abyme. Georges is a well-educated and
successful man, a connoisseur of art and knowledge. The viewer is able to connect with
him at first because he stands for all the things that the average Haneke viewer embraces.
Therefore, Georges becomes the mirror through which the viewers can see themselves.

11. Wheatley argues that “an emotional experience can lead us to consider our own behavior
and […] learn about ourselves and our standards of living. We discover that […] certain
goals are valuable and we have failed to live up to them” (Wheatley 166). Gronstad
bluntly states that Caché “violates the viewers' sensibilities by [...] rubbing their noses
in the moral insufficiency of their own politics” (Gronstad 140). Haneke calls out the
viewer and the entire society of former colonizing states to see what they have done
and how their lofty goals of multiculturalism and inclusion were in the end nothing but
empty promises. Like Georges, those who laud multiculturalism in one moment, lock
their doors and hide behind gates the next. Fear of the foreign Other contradicts the goal
of inclusion and creates a “liberal bourgeois life” that is “a thin veneer covering archaic
stereotypes transmitted unthinkingly from generation to generation” (Silverman 246).
Shohat and Stam argue convincingly that multiculturalism must be more than inviting “a
few token people of color” to a suburban barbecue. Instead, they say that substantial
multiculturalism “has to recognize the existential realities of pain, anger, and resentment”
- all things that Georges in Caché could not come to terms with (Shohat 358). Haneke
may not outline specific steps one must take to tear down the old frame of mind but as
Catherine Wheatly says, viewers are in essence called to “engage morally [the] film” and
examine their own beliefs (Wheatley 174).
Frantz Fanon sought in someway to in some way unravel the web of violence and
victimization inherent in the colonialist system. Fanon's technique was to try to “train the
eye on the colonizer in the process of looking at the colonized” (Silverman 245).
Through studying the colonizer, one could expose the fears that they had towards the
untamed Other and how the system of colonization alienated both sides. Haneke's does

12. exactly this in Caché. Max Silverman states, “[Caché] reverses the gaze of the western
colonizer and exposes the hidden fears and fantasies still at play today in a postcolonial
re-run of the colonial encounter” (Silverman 245). Through this replay of the “colonial
encounter,” Haneke is able to look at many different effects that colonialism has had on
the European mindset. Through his film, Haneke does more than launch an attack against
the failures of European government and the society to live up to the expectations that
post-colonialism laid out. Haneke is able to get the audience to look at themselves and
how they fit into this scheme. And like the tapes that arrive at Georges’ home, the key to
confronting a problem is to infiltrate past one’s defenses and look with an unblinking,
steady eye at what is being hidden.

13. Bibliography:
Austin, Guy. "Drawing Trauma: Visual Testimony in Caché and J'ai 8 ans." Screen 48.4
(2007): 529-36.
Balibar, Etienne. We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship
(Translation/Transnation). New York: Princeton UP, 2003.
Caputi, Mary. "Caché and the Trauma of Citizenship." Centre for Cultural Studies
Research Conference Journal (2007): 1-12.
Gilroy, Paul. "Shooting Crabs in a Barrel." Screen. 48:2 (Summer 2007): 233-235
Gronstad, Asbjorn. "Downcast Eyes: Michael Haneke and the Cinema of Intrusion."
Noricom Review 29.1 (2008): 133-44.
Grundmann, Roy. "Haneke's Anachronism." Unpublished manuscript; forthcoming in A
Companion to Michael Haneke. London and Waltham, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 1-
82.
Kamalzadeh, Dominik. "Cowardly and Comfortable" SignandSight. 30 Jan. 2006. Web.
01 Dec. 2009. <http://www.signandsight.com/features/577.html>
Milfull, John. "Decolonizing Europe?: The Colonial Boomerang." Australian Journal of
Politics and History 54.3 (2008): 464-70.
Ogrodnik, Benjamin. “Deep Cuts.” Film International 37.1 (2009): 56-59.
Sharrett, Christopher. “Caché,” Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No.1, Winter 2005, 50-52.
Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the
Media. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Silverman, Max. "The Empire Looks Back." Screen 48.2 (2007): 245-49.
Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. New York:
Berghahn Books, 2009.
Zahar, Renate. Colonialism and Alienation: Political Thoughts of Frantz Fanon. Benin
City: Ethiopia Publishing Corporation, 1974.