In the introduction to Code Unknown, Michael Haneke makes it clear that he is unafraid to ask questions, even if he knows that he will still leave them hanging in the air unanswered. Like his 2001 La Pianiste, Haneke affords us fractured glimpses into the lives of several individuals in the throes of social and moral crises, demonstrating the inability we all have in effectively communicating out of our daily patterns of self-serving isolation. Code Unknown, however, greatly differs from La Pianiste in an important way. La Pianiste is a frustrating and unrewarding experience in which we impotently watch Isabelle Huppert morally plummet until she is abruptly abandoned like one of Von Trier’s female martyrs. In Code Unknown, Haneke brings denotative and connotative meaning to a standstill--call it a code of its own--and the mazed experience is the director’s most rewarding to date. Perhaps we could call it an unresolved story that brings resolution as an afterthought, received from both the fragmented narrative as well as the subtle lens that manipulates the emotions of the human eye.

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This page was last updated on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 4:03 PM EST .