Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009) Reviews

• A careful and ambiguous analysis of evil

  rolls_chris2009-10-18

  Fans of Michael Haneke's more morally shocking films such as 'Funny Games', 'Benny's Video' or the draining 'Time of the Wolf' might find themselves surprised by the quieter and slower analysis of evil in his latest work 'Das Weisse Band'. The action takes place in a North German village shortly before the outbreak of the First World War and in structure presents a number of subtly drawn individual characters as they are caught up in a mysterious series of violent events. In the hands of a mere moralist this could be an unbearable few hours. But it's credit to Haneke's skill as a film-maker that we are utterly caught up and absorbed by a large cast of children and adults. One of the on-going arguments in Haneke's films appears to be the origins of human evil, or perhaps more precisely put, individual acts of evil behaviour. Are such acts an individual's responsibility or do they spring from a climate in which particular energies are at work? This is the question Haneke appears to be exploring here (just as was a central question relating to French society in 'Cache'). One of the most disturbing things at the heart of the film is the fact that we do not know why particular acts of evil take place (including the maiming of a disabled child and the beating of a nobleman's son), or even who commits them. However, this is no 'whodunnit', although with its retrospective voice-over from the School Teacher's p.o.v. we are let to believe for a long time that were in a crime/thriller genre. Throughout his body of work so far, Haneke has suggested that looking for the sort of easy answers films and TV all too readily supply is partly responsible for our misunderstanding how violence in society occurs. (Funny Games). 'The White Ribbon' bypasses the usual dramatical devices of motivation and blame and instead softly focuses on an environment (in this case Germany in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century) in which certain unhealthy energies are at work. These energies include an emotionally repressed and joyless Protestantism, the mistreatment and oppression of women, the familial abuse of children, the fetishism of strong masculine and patriarchal values, and the un-breachable divide between the rich and the poor. Set over all this, like an umbrella, is the fact that the small provincial society depicted in the film is all but completely isolated from wider society. Another poster here has pointed out that Haneke is using his village as a microcosm to reflect Germany as a whole, and I would agree with that. Haneke's Dorf, whilst having an individual character, is a relative of Von Trier's Dogville in the sense that it stands for a larger set of national values. In this respect Haneke seems to be diagnosing German society in the run up to the 'Great' War as one of authoritarianism, religious doubt, intolerance, and fear. What is remarkable in such a film is how little human joy or love is to be found in such a seemingly idyllic rural landscape. The love strand (between the narrator Teacher and the dismissed 17 yr old children's nurse) has a rather strained aspect. It is as though the film maker is suggesting that affection might also be down to available opportunity. One of the most moving scenes in The White Ribbon is when a young child brings his father, a Priest, a caged bird he has nursed back to health. The father's beloved pet canary was killed (by his daughter as a protest against the bleak, loveless household she's been reared in - a home in which a father shows more affection to a small bird than his own children. Thus the scene symbolically depicts a child demonstrating the love that the parent himself is unable of showing. Tears fill the priest's eyes. It is a tiny moment of love and hope in an otherwise emotionally barren wasteland. It is also a symbol of how a new generations of Germans have dealt with, and healed, previous decades of pain.

  More

• I gave God a chance to kill me … Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon)

  jaredmobarak2009-09-18

  Admittedly, I was underwhelmed at its conclusion. I knew it was something great, especially in construction and visual prowess, yet I couldn't shake that feeling of clouded mediocrity. And then, after talking about it with my friend for an hour or two afterwards, it hit me. Haneke has intentionally filled our minds with detail upon detail, setting up conspiracies and unsolved mysterious, leading us to believe things only to plant clues that refute them. Looking back, I found that each second stuck in my head; I couldn't shake even the minutest detail because it might hold the key to solving this puzzle. Deaths, tragedies, and accidents are happening every day, possibly connected, but how? Our narrator, the town's schoolteacher played by Christian Friedel, is relaying the events that occurred before being sent off to fight once the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. He believes the strange attitude and mysterious activities all began with a freak accident of the doctor. Riding his horse back home, he is thrown off when its legs trip on a wire spanning two trees, causing a lengthy hospital stay to recover. Next come a death, a kidnapping, and a beating, all unsolved despite hunches and hypotheses going through the town. Something is in the air, but what it is and what will come of it is unknown. The children are the key to everything. They are the easiest to blame, as it seems they are always there by the tragedies. Definitely hiding something, the kids begin to stare authority in the eye and practice what has been preached. Haneke mentions in an interview attached to the press notes that he wanted to show the sort of "black" education going on at the time, breeding Fascism and terror. Good and evil fall to strict black and white, every action has a reaction, a punishment to set things right. The children are of an age that they are beginning to understand that life is not eternal, there are consequences in their actions and the adults are not afraid to tell them so. When you don't follow the rules, you will be caned, (a brilliant scene showing the young siblings enter the room, but allowing the audience to only see the closed door during the abuse), and you will have to wear the white ribbon in order to show the world your transgressions and need to earn back the right to be free, (the precursor to the Jewish stars perhaps?). What about the adults? What about those practicing adultery, or abuse of power, or destruction of property, or sexual abuse with a child? Who has the right to punish them? When, after the second kidnapping and beating of a young boy, a note is found stating intentions, that the children of transgressors will be discipline for four to five generations, you start to see the severity of the actions—as well as allusions to the Holocaust and the mass genocide of an entire people, rooting out the "evils" of the world by excising the entire population, killing the bloodline at the source. But it can't be the children, right? They are too young and innocent, unknowing of the world set before them. Yet with the upbringing in this town, treated as adults with responsibilities and accountability, anyone would grow up fast. Cause a raucous in class and be chastised; be the leader and stand in the corner. Forgiveness is a liability. When the oldest girl, and leader of the wolves if you believe the children are the monsters, Klara, (wonderfully portrayed by Maria-Victoria Dargus), is ready to accept Communion, her own father, the pastor, (a menacing man of authority realized by Burghart Klaussner), pauses, contemplating whether she deserves it. You know he doesn't want to give in, family bond means nothing. Haneke has woven a tapestry of intrigue that will keep you on edge throughout. The anticipation of a solution is palpable, and the fact it is never released makes this film so riveting and unforgettable. The payoff is that these children will grow up into the generation that becomes the Nazi party, making this sleepy rural town a breeding ground for young Fascists that will change the world. Retribution is being taught, atoning for ones sins practiced. World War II is after all an answer to the punishment inflicted on Germany after the first, isn't it? It's a cycle of getting back, proving one's pride, and seeking revenge upon the children of the enemy if the enemy itself is unavailable. God's will has to be upheld and that intrinsic fact is ingrained in the minds of the youth. When Martin, an effective Leonard Proxauf, is discovered walking along the railing of a high bridge, he responds to the yelling of the man that finds him with the line used to title this review. If what he was doing was wrong—we can only infer on his role in the incidents occurring around him—then God would have let him fall, paying for his sins. But the fact that he gets to the other side unscathed only proves his work is that of the creator of man. Haneke says he had another name for the film, God's Right Hand, and I think it would have been just as appropriate a title. A powerful film, sharing so much information without any answers; it takes our mind into overdrive, trying so hard to find a reason for it all. But sometimes there are none; sometimes bad things just happen. You can only speculate and hope to prevent them from ever happening again.

  More

• Haunting Prequel to the Third Reich

  anjru2010-01-17

  Filmed beautifully in black and white with subtitles, The White Ribbon is a movie that will leave viewers with a lasting residue long after it ends. The film portrays the residents of a northern German village, dominated by a baron, sometime before World War I. Inhabitants of this village, young and old, are sliding down the slippery slope of moral decline. The men in leadership positions - a doctor and clergyman, for example - are detestable, especially in their treatment of women and children. The most brutal scene in the movie, perhaps, was not one that portrayed physical violence, but verbal abuse towards a woman that served faithfully as caretaker, and more, for the town's widowed physician. As for the some of the children, although it is only suggested, it appears that they are budding sociopaths that perpetrate despicable acts against others. Weeks after seeing this film, I started thinking more deeply about the children in this town. I realized that they would become young adults during the time Hitler would rise in power. They live an incubator in which the cruelty that they experience they, in turn, perpetrate against unsuspecting victims. Their circumstances are such that they are being unwittingly primed for carrying out the atrocities that will come to characterize their future in Nazi Germany. The White Ribbon is a prequel for the rise of the Third Reich. Seeing this film led me to wonder about what present times are a prequel for.

  More

• Creates an impeccable sense of time and place

  howard.schumann2009-10-19

  Strange things happen in a small rural village in pre-World War I Germany. The local doctor is thrown from his horse and seriously injured because of a trip wire stretched between two trees; the wife of a farm worker is killed when she falls through a rotted barn door; a young boy is beaten and tied upside down; the son of the Doctor's mistress, a boy with Down syndrome, is blinded in a fierce assault; and the Baron's barn is set on fire. These incidents and others create a climate of fear and suspicion in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, winner of the coveted Palme D'Or Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It is the kind of climate in which a hornet's nest of guilt, repression, and abusive behavior that have been festering in the community for years begins to surface. Created and written by the director with an assist from award-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, the film is shot in high contrast black and white and narrated by the village schoolteacher (Christian Freidel), the film's most sympathetic character, many years after the events have taken place. Though the film is dark, the courtship between the young teacher and the Baron's nanny, a shy 17-year-old Eva (Leonie Benesch) lightens the mood considerably, almost a necessity in a film that stretches to almost two and a half hours and can be a grim experience. Although the children are named, the adults are referred to only in terms of the role they play in the village: the Baron, the Pastor, the Farmer, and the Doctor. The most powerful person in the village is the wealthy Baron (Ulrich Tukur) who employs most of the farmers and laborers. His wife (Ursina Lardi) is a woman of culture who looks upon the uneducated people in the village with disdain. It is a patriarchal society in which repressive and puritanical rules are rigidly enforced, everyone knows their place and, if they forget, the club of religion is used to make sure that they remember. In the meantime, acts of cruelty toward women and children are kept secret. The worst hypocrite is the pastor (Burghart Klaussner) who preaches about God's love but physically punishes his two oldest children Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) and Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and humiliates them by tying a white ribbon on them as a symbol of the purity and innocence they should strive for. He even has the boy's hands tied to the side of his bed at night so he won't masturbate. The doctor (Rainer Block) who cares for the villagers by day shames his mistress (Susanne Lothar) at night by means of cruel verbal assaults. As the bizarre incidents pile up, the mystery deepens as to the identity of the perpetrator(s) and even the police are called in but all they can do is to browbeat a young girl who claims to have predicted one of the beatings in a dream. The White Ribbon stirs up images of the Germany that would emerge years later under Hitler and there is a strong suggestion that the way the children are constantly punished for minor infractions played a role in that development, creating a vicious circle in which the distorted values of the parents are internalized by the children. Reminiscent of the austerity of Carl Dreyer's Ordet, The White Ribbon creates an impeccable sense of time and place, succeeding as an engrossing mystery, an insightful character study, and a cautionary tale that suggests that the roots of war and hatred lie not in ideology but in the corruption of our values and the emptiness in our souls. It is not difficult to see how the Jews in that setting could become scapegoats for that emptiness.

  More

• Intense and very rewarding

  markgorman2009-11-15

  Michael Haneke; infant terrible of the art cinema world is not to everyone's taste. He doesn't exactly make action movies. But the movie did win the Palme d'or at Cannes this year so certainly the critics liked it. It's long and it moves at a slow but steady pace. It's black and white (often dimly lit) but beautifully realised. In fact at times the cinematography is so beautiful that it's like a moving Ansell Adams. It is variously graded throughout with the merest hint of a cream or a brown creeping in from time to time that creates some variety. It's mesmerising. And it's weird. Really weird. Apparently, and this is not blindingly obvious, it is an allegorical take on the birth of fascism. It's yet another movie where the heavy hand of religion gets the blame for most evil. The pastor of the remote German village that it is set in, in the lead up to the First World War, is a central character and is the sort we've seen many times before (The Magdalene Sisters being a good example). Outwardly pious; inwardly, and to his family, a callous and vicious bastard. Quick to blame, shame and moralise. His presence throughout is powerful and visceral. The dawning of fascism is subtly portrayed because no politics enter the film overtly at any point. Class wars and sexual politics do though in what is clearly a male dominated culture and one where sexual transgression is rife (child abuse, domestic abuse, illicit masturbation and secret affairs are all featured). But it's the children (spookily played by one and all in a sort of village of the damned way) that steal the film. They appear to be forces of evil and if not (the plot is never explained and the strange occurrences left to hang - it is Haneke after all) they are certainly victims of it. Haneke seems to be saying that the rise of fascism came out of this age of suppression and a sense of revenge - after all the destruction of the Jews is often taken as a form of revenge for their post WWI success. Haneke makes films like only Haneke makes films. Some people find them slow and boring. I think he follows in the style of that French New Wave of the 60's but with a better grip on audience manipulation. He makes thought provoking masterpieces and this is another one. Simply wonderful.

  More