Michael Haneke’s latest, subtitled “a German childrens’ story,†is an austere, black-and-white, period film set in a small, northern village a dozen or so months before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Beautifully photographed, rigorously self-disciplined, and meticulously crafted, The White Ribbon plays like mid-career Ingmar Bergman without the joie de vivre . . . and that’s not such a bad thing. Narrated by the village schoolmaster—who openly acknowledges he is an unreliable witness—some thirty or so years after the events depicted on the screen, the film opaquely yet convincingly illustrates Foucault’s dictum that power functions as a locus of struggle. In the film this struggle appears to be between an ambiguously malevolent group of children, their soft targets, and the authority figures (baron, doctor, pastor, the steward of the baron’s estate, fathers, husbands, etc.) who exercise discipline and control over said youth, who will, presumably, freely participate in the atrocities of Nazi Germany fifteen to twenty years down the road.
But during the second decade of the twentieth century, thoughts of genocide and world domination are not yet formed as the people work to understand a series of ghastly accidents and unexplained acts of cruelty which cast a dark (albeit beautifully captured) shadow over the land. The result is mass paranoia, pathological repression, fear, anger, and the inchoate desire for retribution. To put it simply, as one character succinctly articulates, the people here are full of “malice, envy, apathy and brutality.†Well, that’s not entirely true. The schoolmaster is a caring soul and his chaste romance with a young woman serves as the glue which holds this episodic narrative together is very sweet. Still, Haneke’s portrait of pre-industrial, rural life works to deconstruct the idea that the world was ever idyllic or safe or virtuous. Indeed, the spectator confronts (but doesn’t necessarily see) a gallimaufry of crimes against nature: incest, suicide, infidelity, arson, murder, the maiming of animals, religious persecution, child torture, and the destruction of a cabbage patch (and it seems the children are always hovering on the periphery of the action in the moments and hours following these crimes). Of course, Haneke doesn’t provide us with any answers. The schoolmaster does not entirely solve the mystery. But the idea that the world grew more barbarous during the twentieth century is challenged as Haneke eviscerates the film’s seemingly nostalgic evocation of a simpler, better time while also undermining the powerful need (within the film but also within the auditorium) to believe in the innocence and sanctity of childhood. Here, without a jot of moral bearing, the children carry the sins of their fathers forward with greater toxicity. A note pinned to a tree in which a mentally disabled boy has been hung by his feet and nearly blinded reads: “For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of their parents’ to the third and fourth generations.†I’m still not entirely sure how to unpack this very strange message (particularly out of context as it is a truncated variation on Exodus 20:5-6 and Deuteronomy 5:9).
The White Ribbon is certainly a very good film but not a great one. Formally, it is probably his most accomplished work, but form ain’t everything. Still, I’m glad I saw it and will look forward to seeing it again down the road.
Gallimaufry? Gesundheit. Congratulations, that was the secret word for today.
Tell Jeff what he’s won, Johnny.
Teehee.
White Ribbon is very close to a masterpiece. Despite clocking in at almost two and a half hours, it is utterly compelling from first minute to last. The austerity of the cinematography that Jeff notes is matched by the formality of the dialogue, and the mannered performances of the actors. The black and white landscape is rendered beautifully as the seasons change and there is something almost Tarantino-like in the equivalent beauty of sentence construction. The pastor’s extended explanation to the whole family of the punishment he intends to mete out to his older children for some minor transgression is captivating because its calmness and internal coherence almost mask its sheer brutality.
In the opening narration the film does imply some linkage between the events in this little village in 1913-14 and German fascism, but it is better read as a meditation on the intergenerational transmission of cruelty: the sins of the fathers (as the note left at the site of one of the tortured boys reads) are then taken up by their children. It is the casualness of the cruelty that lingers. The perpetrators of the central horros remain in the shadows, we never know their identity for sure, but we see up close and personally the everyday horrors perpetrated by the parents. The blond, well-scrubbed, polite children may bring to mind the Hitler Youth, but the film makes clear that it is the parents that created these monsters.
Highly recommended.
Hey Gio, five stars! Big praise . . . share more. Love, Jeff.
jeff–did you get into the schnapps saturday night? did you drunk dial any former girlfriends?
this movie is a delicious little romp into the life of a small rural community located in a pre-WWI german village. in humorous, mischievous, occasionally moving, occasionally hilarious vignettes, haneke depicts an almost utopian society held together by openness and a great capacity for sharing pain, joy, and the simplicity of daily life. this could have easily degenerated into schmaltz, but doesn’t, thanks to haneke’s restraint and discipline as a director.
of particular note are the children. haneke’s portrayal of childhood is one of the most enchanting since Cinema Paradiso. unlike tornatore, haneke does not focus on a single child but on the village children as a whole. this does not subtract from the individuality of each child, but has the advantage of conveying the magic if occasionally scary world children create with one another.
touching moments abound. in one of the first scenes, replicated later in the movie, a group of kids led by mature-beyond-her-years klara march solicitously toward the house of a classmate whose father has just had a serious accident, to offer help. later, they do the same for a disabled child who also suffered some kind of misfortune. by the way, the integration of karli, the disabled child, into the group of children, and the fond and uncondescending way in which he is treated by the other children, is a lovely commentary on the way children are better able than adults to embrace diversity and be, so to speak, color-blind.
the relation between the parents and the children in this small community is presented with such pedagogical and human acumen, i would recommend this film to anyone teaching parenting classes. there is a scene in particular in which a very young boy finds a hurt little bird and, after knocking and receiving permission, enters his father’s study to ask if he can keep it. the father interacts playfully and with mock sternness with the child, and the child clearly delights in the role-playing of this exchange. later, when the father’s own bird dies a natural death, the child offers his own now-healed (a powerful image of the resilience of life) little bird to the father. with the respect that characterizes all the parental interactions in the movie, the father accepts the child’s offering.
i could go on. let me conclude by saying that this movie filled me with joy and peace in a way no movie had since Fanny and Alexander, a film many might want to compare The White Ribbon to. highly recommended for adults and children alike.
OK . . . did we see the same movie? I want to believe. You did give it five stars on Netflix, no? Am I simply misreading your tone? I just purchased a copy of this film for my archives. I guess I must now go back and watch again to suss out the “delicious little romp.”
I think Gio is playing with us. Who knew the Italians did irony so well. Very clever.
“Tell Jeff what he’s won, Johnny”? What the hell is that? You’re getting lazy, reynolds.
Getting lazy?
He’s probably only read three books, commented on thirty-two Goodreads reviews, and seen two movies today. Somebody get this fellow a Red Bull.
hahahah, jeff. mikereynolds is very very annoying.
i liked this film. if i think of it in the didactic terms many a reviewer would like us to think of it i like it less, so i try not to. if i think of it as a historical explanation for nazism, i also dislike it, so i try not to. if i think of it as a commentary on the german population in 1914… well, you get the idea.
but it’s really watchable (beautiful) and engaging and infuriating and disturbing (as hell) and well done, and the acting is fantastic, and all the kids except klara are not yet sold to devil, and the nice schoolteacher is very sweet while all-the-other-men-bar-none are simply repulsive, and it took me only 4 sittings to watch it where in general a movie takes me somewhere between 10 and 20 sittings (haha, almost true, was true for a while, i’m getting better!)… so, yes, five stars!
fucking netflix makes the job of finding what your friends like so fucking hard. why why why. so that we spend more time on the fucking site? it took me a good deal of effort to find that you gave the movie 4 stars and mike gave it 3. sleuthing on the internests.
i particularly enjoyed the throwaway scenes, those scenes that did not necessarily move the plot forward. i don’t have one in mind right now but i had one in mind earlier. there are many.
I do like the confusion your clever use of irony brought out in my head. This is not the Gio I know! Yet there she is fucking with me. Applause!