December 7, 2009
[WARNING: SOME HAVE DESCRIBED THIS REVIEW AS CONTAINING "SPOILERS". READ AT YOUR OWN RISK -ED.]
Austrian director Michael Haneke has said that his ideal viewer is "one who leaves with questions". Well there were certainly plenty of those after the showing of The White Ribbon at the Phoenix. It has already won the Palme d’Or, and deservedly shown. Stunningly shot in black and white, it tells the story of a string of violent events in a German village shortly before the First World War. A doctor is injured when his horse is brought down by a tripwire. The baron’s young son is abducted and brutalised. A fire is started on the estate. But who is doing this and why? The viewer’s suspicion is directed towards some of the children, but it is all left deliberately uncertain.
What does it all mean? The narrator – the school teacher – claims that he wants to tell the story because it helps to explain what happened later, by which presumably he means the world wars, and perhaps above all the growth of Nazism. The title of the film refers to the white ribbons that the brutal, stern pastor ties on his children when they have sinned to remind them of purity, but Haneke’s view of humanity is a pessimistic one. Even if it is the children who are committing the acts of violence, we are shown all too clearly the cruelty of the adults that they have learnt from: vicious beatings in the name of discipline, the sexual abuse of daughter, the casual sackings by the baron.
And yet this story is told extraordinarily, almost episodically, with tableaux-lie scenes linked by the narrator. The teacher’s courting of the 17-year-old Eva provides a welcome strand of light in a film of much darkness, and her father’s interviewing of the suitor is a gem of scene-stealing. But they are interludes to the main thrust of the story, as we are moved on to scenes in which a son finds his father hanging in the shed, the doctor tells his lover and mid-wife how much she disgusts him, and the same doctor is found by his small son in a typically ambiguous scene with his daughter. And then there’s the budgerigar.
The final impression then is of a brilliantly made film, deliberately ambiguous, outstandingly photographed and lit. It is without doubt worth seeing, and probably more than once.
Austrian director Michael Haneke has said that his ideal viewer is "one who leaves with questions". Well there were certainly plenty of those after the showing of The White Ribbon at the Phoenix. It has already won the Palme d’Or, and deservedly shown. Stunningly shot in black and white, it tells the story of a string of violent events in a German village shortly before the First World War. A doctor is injured when his horse is brought down by a tripwire. The baron’s young son is abducted and brutalised. A fire is started on the estate. But who is doing this and why? The viewer’s suspicion is directed towards some of the children, but it is all left deliberately uncertain.
What does it all mean? The narrator – the school teacher – claims that he wants to tell the story because it helps to explain what happened later, by which presumably he means the world wars, and perhaps above all the growth of Nazism. The title of the film refers to the white ribbons that the brutal, stern pastor ties on his children when they have sinned to remind them of purity, but Haneke’s view of humanity is a pessimistic one. Even if it is the children who are committing the acts of violence, we are shown all too clearly the cruelty of the adults that they have learnt from: vicious beatings in the name of discipline, the sexual abuse of daughter, the casual sackings by the baron.
And yet this story is told extraordinarily, almost episodically, with tableaux-lie scenes linked by the narrator. The teacher’s courting of the 17-year-old Eva provides a welcome strand of light in a film of much darkness, and her father’s interviewing of the suitor is a gem of scene-stealing. But they are interludes to the main thrust of the story, as we are moved on to scenes in which a son finds his father hanging in the shed, the doctor tells his lover and mid-wife how much she disgusts him, and the same doctor is found by his small son in a typically ambiguous scene with his daughter. And then there’s the budgerigar.
The final impression then is of a brilliantly made film, deliberately ambiguous, outstandingly photographed and lit. It is without doubt worth seeing, and probably more than once.