Caché and the Secret Image

Michael Haneke’s Caché (2005) is a psychological thriller in which a Paris family is haunted by past repressions. These repressions are of both personal and national orders. What distinguishes Caché is its ability to draw our attention to how visual information is produced, and what it means to be a witness. This paper considers the film’s pursuit of a revelation towards an articulation of historical guilt – its interest in accessing the ‘secret’. That secret is an image