The best political movie of the year

Spielberg's Munich is stirring up so much controversy at the moment that the LA Times' Rachel Abramowitz actually asks: "[can] a movie be Swift-boated?"

But it isn't the best political movie of the year. It's not even the best political thriller.

Michael Haneke's Caché, takes not only the cake, but it took the Golden Palm at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Wrapped in the clothing of a highly personal psychological thriller, the film whose title means "hidden", is actually a scathing critique of racism and the lengths to which we'll go for our family's safety. None of which applies to American (or European) politics of course...

Without giving too much away, we "watch" an educated urban white couple in France react to a series of videos they receive wrapped in violent children's drawings. The videos, images of the couple performing mundane tasks like walking in and out of their home, seem to be shot from perspectives nearly impossible to pull off without getting noticed.

The way Haneke presents the videos gives you, the viewer, the eerie sensation of falling "in" and "out" of the movie. In a sense we are drawn into the film's action which, for an exploration of our own complicity in the cycle of racism in the name of the well-meaning defense of our loved-ones, is more than apt. And that's all I'm gonna say.