One of the great unnoticed jewels of the last 20 years of cinema history is Lost Highway (David Lynch, France/USA 1997), a complex and difficult journey into the mind of a psychotic that opens with a bizarre and unnerving sequence of events: a man awakens to hear a message on his home’s intercom system of himself saying, “Dick Laurent is dead” and then he and his wife begin receiving video tapes in the mail that show their home with a camera slowly panning back and forth across it, moving closer to the house with each tape until finally they begin to show the inside of the home. Caché (Hidden) begins with a couple, the Laurents, receiving long video tapes showing the front of their home but they are unable to find the videographer, even when they walk within inches of the camera looking directly at it. It’s clear that Michael Haneke is intentionally evoking Lost Highway—the similarities are just too unlikely not to be intentional—and it’s because he has decided to make a similarly difficult, nigh impenetrable thriller that instead of examining a fractured mind examines the relationship between entertainment and reality, using that reality-bending nightmare of a film as a touchstone.

The plot of this film, unlike Lost Highway, is simple enough: the aforementioned tapes start appearing and the couple tries to figure out why, with the husband convinced it is related to someone he wronged horribly during his childhood but unwilling to admit his past actions to his wife. Where this film becomes difficult is in (a) the lack of resolution to the central mystery of the tapes and (b) finding a meaning. If you want a typical thriller, slowly unraveling who left the tapes and why before finally revealing the full truth in the finale, you’re simply going to be disappointed. However, the film’s interesting examination of the relationship between entertainment and reality is worth paying attention to.

The film’s central character, Georges Laurent, is a television show host, hosting a book chat show. Every step of the way, we hear references to how odd his fans are and the strange actions that they would undertake, leading everyone to think that they are likely to be responsible for the tapes. There are layers of interest just in this simple fact. His job is to help facilitate discussion among other people about books, another type of media. Even the discussion he provides to the public is not entirely honest—we see him working to edit the show, making an extreme change to the point one of his guests is making, in order to keep the show from becoming “too theoretical.” It’s a cynical point about the realities of entertainment, but it’s also an important part of the theme of the film. As the plot unfolds, we learn that Georges grew up in privilege and—in a rather oblique plot point—got a servant boy his parents had adopted sent away out of only child jealousy and that boy is now a man living nearby. Georges is convinced that this man, Majid, is seeking a noticeably theatrical sort of revenge against him, and unraveling with the strain of his own past. Haneke includes nothing in the film that doesn’t somehow comment on the nature of the relationship between entertainment and reality, crafting a wonderfully focused film even if its meaning is not too readily apparent.

Visually, Haneke doesn’t take the kinds of chances a filmmaker like Lynch or David Cronenberg does. He and cinematographer Christian Berger provide a look that is simple and coolly-colored for the most part, only providing any real dynamics when using carefully placed shadows and high-contrast lighting in flashbacks to Georges’s past. However, they also place great emphasis on camera placement and composition. The film begins with a very long shot of the front of the Laurents’ home that does nothing to draw our attention to the off-center entrance, keeping us disconnected from the home and its inhabitants and reminding us that we are voyeurs into their lives and still not really seeing their lives and also setting up for the rest of the film a constant disconcerting feeling that every long, immobile shot might be a tape rather than “reality.” They continue to defy traditional composition rules for the remainder of the film, most memorably on the closing shot that might provide an answer to the mystery but doesn’t draw any attention to it. It’s a startling comment about how much is spoon-fed to the audience in traditional filmmaking that is only heightened by the narrative.

The acting is good across the board, though few have much to do. Daniel Auteuil has some weak moments but is generally fine in a lead role that hides most of its complexities underneath the surface. Juliette Binoche is a real standout as his wife, imbuing a character who could have been lifeless and one-note with an incredible depth and feeling. Her growing exasperation with Georges throughout the film is played with enough subtlety as to befit a film that is so filled with comments about the nature of film, but is definitely noticeable. The real scene-stealer in the film, though, is Annie Girardot, who only has one scene as Georges’s mother, but is absolutely riveting in a scene that could have been painful to watch but for her simply mesmerizing performance. It’s difficult to be noticeable in such a small part that seemingly has so little to do, but Girardot gives us a beautiful picture of who she is and exactly how she feels about Georges and much else in her past.

A note about the score: There isn’t one. It’s a perfect disconcerting fit for the film’s themes. Too often, filmmakers use a score as a crutch. Going without one can be extraordinarily effective when done for the right reason, and Haneke did that perfectly with this film.

All in all, this was an exemplary film. There’s hardly anything bad to say about it and its layers of complexity will continue to intrigue long after viewing. If Haneke’s most recent film, Amour (France/Germany/Austria 2012), is anywhere near this good, it deserved the remarkable amount of praise it received last year.