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The White Ribbon
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| Product Description: | | | | Like a Twilight Zone episode directed by Antonioni, The White Ribbon weaves an unsettling and enigmatic spell. Michael Haneke's film is set just before World War I in a village in northern Germany, where a series of strange occurrences take place over several months. These occurrences are sinister and cruel and often involve the children of the village--not merely as victims (although child abuse seems to be a far-from-isolated event) but also as perpetrators. At least that's the way it appears. Nothing is completely spelled out in Haneke's scheme, which hints and insinuates and thoroughly gets under the viewer's skin over the course of 144 edgy minutes. We might notice the children are of an age that will make them mature participants in the horror of Germany in the 1930s and '40s, but even this is left as an unemphasized point. Since Haneke is an expert at denying explicit conclusions for his projects (see also Caché and Funny Games for more on the subject), we shouldn't be surprised that he withholds the answers to the questions he poses, or that the film is even more powerful because of this withholding. Adding to the effect is Christian Berger's Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography, which has a ghostly quality appropriate to the topic. In the end, all the strange happenings of the village are absorbed into the town's rhythm of life--which might be the most disturbing conclusion of all. --Robert Horton
Stills from The White Ribbon (Click for larger image) | |
| Customers' Reviews: | |
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0 of 11 people found the above review helpful.: |  Yuk!!!!, February 27, 2010 |
| | Yuk! The only thing to "get" about this long movie is that it is awful.
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0 of 0 people found the above review helpful.: |  over appreciated, February 24, 2010 |
| | sigh, like most things i write about on here i dont expect most of you to relate with me here. maybe i just dont have a taste for true foreign film, but i did not enjoy this movie and it had nothing to do with the fact that it was not fast paced, or that it was in black and white. i actually really enjoyed the look that the black and white film brought. it promised a lot to me i think that never felt satisfied. i did not find the mystery of the town too curious or mind boggling and the things i did see that were obvious to understand i did not feel better off knowing about it. i did not enjoy the character of the doctor who had some very disturbing demons haunting him it seemed. all i can do is share what i was able to take away from the film. the cinematography was vibrant and alive. the town was eerie but more in a sad neglected way, not really in a mysterious caper sort of way. i did not feel attached to any character as i kept having a feeling that somewhere along the story a disturbing trait of some kind was going to reveal itself about each of them. i dont need happy endings, or feel good characters, but this film leaves something to be desired. i appreciate the artistic vision, as i did in amelie (wasnt a fan of amelie either..) but the movie did feel pointless to me. if anyone knows a movie about german people that is not about war or crazy towns people id like to know.
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1 of 2 people found the above review helpful.: | | Huh?, February 19, 2010 |
| | So, I decided to see this movie after watching its review on At the Movies. What struck me was A.O. Scott's sour reaction to Haneke's films, for what he described was Haneke's tacit statement that European liberalism stems from a guilt over the Holocaust, the World Wars etc. I don't know if I'm missing something, but I didn't pick up on that at all - in either this movie or his previous one, Cache.
I left the movie with more questions than anything. What is Haneke trying to say about the roots of German fascism? Is he trying to say anything at all? The only thing I took away from the movie was an eerie appreciation of the repressed sadism and evil percolating in this small town. Those kids are really creepy, and that physician is devoid of humanity. May be someone with a better understanding of existentialist or nihilist thought would more appreciate this film than me. Nonetheless it cultivates a spookiness, a malaise I haven't experienced in a film for a long time. Overall, it's worth seeing but jeewiz it felt really long.
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0 of 0 people found the above review helpful.: | | Provocative and engaging, February 13, 2010 |
| | I think it was back in November when I first saw a trailer for the Michael Haneke film Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon). Initially the film appeared uninteresting but when I saw a trailer for it again in December I really paid attention to it and I thought to myself as soon as it opens up in Minneapolis, I will go see the film.
I recently went to see The White Ribbon this month and I found myself constantly thinking about it after I left the theater. The time period of the film takes place just a year before World War I in a small German village. The village is plagued by a series of strange events that leads to human suffering. First the village's doctor is seriously injured when his horse trips over a thin wire. The doctor has to spend a lengthy time in the hospital. Another strange incident involves the baron's son who goes missing and is later found bound and tortured. A similar incident involving the midwife's mentally handicapped son occurs. Also a suicide, a barn burns down, and a young boy is restrained to his bed for admitting he self pleasuring himself happens through out the film. A lot of these strange events (not all though) somehow involves some of the children in the village led by the pastor's eldest daughter Klara.
What makes this film so compelling and engaging is that the filmmaker does make this film a who done it? type of mystery but rather focus on human nature and just the levels of cruelty that some people (young and old) are willing to go. The one thing about the film that I didn't particularly care for was the narration. I could have easily done without that but I suppose if the film did not have the teacher's narration (when he is older) it would have left a void in the film. At times the film prodded a little too slowly but overall I enjoyed the film immensely.
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10 of 10 people found the above review helpful.: |  Village of the Damned, January 25, 2010 |
| | Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" could be considered a mystery in that things happen for no apparent reason. The Doctor (Rainer Bock) breaks his arm after falling off his horse, which tripped over a wire strung between two trees. Not long after, someone abducts the eldest son of the Baron (Ulrich Tukur); he isn't found until the next morning, at which point it's discovered that he had been bound and beaten with a cane. A barn owned by the Pastor (Burghart Klaußner) is burned to the ground. The mentally challenged son of the Midwife (Susanne Lothar) is viciously attacked and almost blinded. Why is all of this happening? Are they acts of revenge? Are they punishments for the sin of weakness? Are they the beginnings of war, intolerance, and terrorism? Your guess is as good as mine. This movie isn't about solutions.
What is it about, then? The story takes place in the days before World War I, when authority was not questioned and life was lived according to much simpler routines. The setting is a German farming community, which has maintained stability by not upsetting the "natural order"; it was expected that the Baron would own the land, the men would have control over their women and children, and the peasants would not have the same rights as their superiors. The Pastor, for example, raises his children not to love God so much as fear Him, and he continuously instills the idea that they must feel guilty for everything that they do. So as to remind them of the path of righteousness from which they have strayed, he ties a white ribbon onto their arms - a symbol of purity.
But in spite of outward appearances, purity is not something to be found behind closed doors. The Doctor, so kind and caring with his patients, grossly mistreats the Midwife and sexually abuses his daughter on a regular basis. The Baron is a demanding man who does what he wishes with no regard for anyone else, including his own workers. But was he, in fact, responsible for the death of a local woman? Or was it an accident? The woman's husband, while grieving, knows that he can't prove it either way. The woman's son, on the other hand, is convinced of the Baron's guilt. This leads to an act of retribution that generates even more hostility amongst the villagers. By then, memories of the previous incidents rise to the surface. Suspicion spreads. Distrust builds. People suffer.
All this is told from the point of view of the Schoolteacher, who narrates as an old man (Ernst Jacobi) and is seen as a young man (Christian Friedel). Even though he courts a shy young woman named Eva (Leonie Benesch), he's not a participant so much as an observer, and he begins the film with a direct statement: "I don't know if the story I want to tell you is entirely true. Some of it I only know by hearsay. After so many years, a lot of it is still obscure and many questions remain unanswered." Indeed, the film plays not as an intimate portrait but as an examination of the facts - cold, hard, and, to the best of its ability, honest. We see into the lives of the villagers, and yet we're emotionally and physically kept at a distance, which probably accounts for the film's beautiful yet haunting black and white photography. It would also account for specific shots that, in the hands of a different director, would reveal everything in graphic detail.
Consider the scene in which the Pastor lashes his children as punishment for lying and disobedience; rather than actually show the act and its emotional aftermath, Haneke films the entire scene from outside the room with the door closed, and he ends it before the act is finished. Also consider a long shot of a coffin being wheeled out of the village on its way to the cemetery; the camera observes it from a far away location, never once cutting to the faces of the mourners flocking behind the carriage. This is not the kind of film that gives closure. It doesn't even pretend that such a thing exists.
The real genius of this film, however, is that the intricate subtexts are in service of a relatively simple story. We may not have all the answers, but at the same time, the goal is not to be confusing; the goal is to present the facts as accurately as possible, at which point we come to our own conclusions. If there are any to come to. Maybe we're being told that, when a repressive way of life is preferred for the sake of maintaining the status quo, a different and more evil form of repression will eventually surface. It could be a totalitarian government. It could be religious extremism. It could even be genocide. Who knows? Anything is possible. "The White Ribbon" is a superb film - carefully paced and cleverly structured, mysterious but not gimmicky, subtle but not lacking substance.
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