review: the white ribbon

Michael Haneke's film The White Ribbon won the 2009 Palme d'Or at Cannes International Film Festival. And deservedly so. Haneke's story of a village in North Germany, set in the years immediately preceding the onset of World War One is completely and irrevocably captivating in its subtlety and intrigue. Written by Jacinta Mulders.

The film is narrated by the village schoolteacher who describes ? from a time in the future ? a series of accidents and tragedies which befell the village. A doctor is flung to the ground after his horse stumbles over a rigged tripwire, a woman falls to her death through rotten floorboards, a barn burns down and a child is abducted. But what is perhaps most unsettling is the behaviour of the village's children, who remain banded together, silent and inconspicuous, as anguish and anxiety unfolds around them. It was these children who became the ideological adherents to German fascism in World War Two. Haneke focuses on their upbringing and the psychological preconditioning that took place. We see, through these characters, what made this generation susceptible to feeling such hatred.

The children's lives, as well as that of the entire village, are told with a sort of quiet deliberation which makes identification of who is responsible for the incidents difficult to accomplish. Haneke has the capacity to impregnate situations of apparent normalcy with a feeling of impending disaster; largely enhanced by masterful lighting and cinematography, the film hints at a conclusion or a reason but never reaches it.

The White Ribbon is remarkable in that it insinuates brooding sense of dread with sensitivity and beauty, candidly displaying the preconditioning of a generation to the Nazi's ideological delusion.

Oystermag