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MOVIE REVIEW
The White Ribbon
Rating:
R
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Released: Dec 30, 2009
Reviewed by
Sara Michelle Fetters
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Mysterious White Ribbon an Unsettling Masterpiece
In a small German village a year or so before the start of World War I strange things are happening. The Doctor (Rainer Bock) has a not-so-accidental accident while riding sending him to a hospital to recuperate. A Farmer’s (Branko Samarovski) wife falls to her death through the weakened floorboards of one of The Baron’s (Ulrich Tukur) barns, while The Baroness’ (Ursina Lardi) beloved son is tied upside down in the woods and subjected to unspeakable torments.
The kids are not alright in Sony Pictures Classics' The White Ribbon
The less said about Michael Haneke’s (Cache, Funny Games) Golden Globe and Palme D’Or winning The White Ribbon the better. The plot is thin but it is so on purpose, the movie a treatise on belief, fascism, religion and childhood that’s difficult to describe. It is a haunting parable with no real beginning and no easy conclusion, and like life’s memories it is the meaning behind events that linger long past recriminations and accusations faded into the dark.
By now just about everyone knows this is a film revolving around children. Children potentially doing unspeakable things. Children transforming a community into a dark and twisted shell of its former self. Children who manage to bring to the fore the unsettling undercurrents that have silently bubbled under the surface seemingly unknown to those living within the village.
Haneke doesn’t pull punches but he also doesn’t give answers. Are the children responsible for everything going on? While the hints and the clues are there other then death of a small bird proof of their guilt is awfully hard to come by. Like the tiny harbingers of doom in Village of the Damned these pintsized cherubs travel in packs and leave unsolvable mystery in their wake, and while their powers are hardly supernatural their ability to unsettle is every bit as formidable.
The film looks amazing. Christian Berger’s (The Piano Teacher) stunning black and white cinematography recalls the best of classic The Seventh Seal era Ingmar Bergman or the wet, silvery streets of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. There is a haunting, deeply unsettling quality to the photography that is breathtaking, and even during the quieter moments there is always something going on just at the edges of the frame that made me wonder if the calm was real or just a grayish figment of my imagination.
Haneke is not a filmmaker who makes things easy for an audience. If you look at his career the man simply does not make motion pictures that make the viewer feel good about themselves or the state of the world afterwards. This remains the same with The White Ribbon, and although his story is set still in the early stages of the 20th Century the thematic undercurrents of distrust and intolerance are unnervingly current. This is a movie that speaks volumes, and for those with the patience, intelligence and nerves to listen Haneke’s conversation is one all of us could learn plenty from.
Film Rating: êêêê (out of 4)
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