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The White Ribbon (2008)

Director: Michael Haneke

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From Time Out London

Michael Haneke’s extraordinary new film is a black-and-white ensemble piece set in a north German village on the eve of World War I. It’s a sombre, roving drama that recreates the rituals of a rural Protestant community and imagines the private lives of its householders – the doctor, the baron, the pastor – to show how hierarchical, patriarchal and even feudal such a community may have remained even as the guns were being primed on the Western Front.

It’s a film that’s broader in its focus and less direct in its efforts to shock and tease than 2005’s ‘Hidden’, the Austrian director’s last original film (if you skip his American remake of ‘Funny Games’ in 2007). Yet it also feels like a continuation of a sort of storytelling that he developed further with ‘Hidden’. In that film, the racial guilt of an entire nation was projected through Daniel Auteuil’s hunted Parisian intellectual, and here again Haneke sets a drama in one period to explore issues relating to another. ‘The White Ribbon’, too, is an open-ended mystery about a crime or crimes. However, while in ‘Hidden’ Haneke used the present to ponder its relationship with the past, here he does the opposite, using the past to reflect on that era’s future.

Crucially, ‘The White Ribbon’ is narrated by a man whose elderly voice suggests he’s relating events to us from the perspective of the 1960s or ’70s. In the film, he’s a sympathetic 31-year-old teacher who educates many of the children who creepily roam the village in packs and whom we see subjected to extreme discipline and punishment (and in one case, sexual abuse) at home. The teacher is not from the village, which probably gives him a more objective eye, but he’s present as a series of events occurs: a doctor’s horse is tripped up by a wire; a woman dies in a sawmill; a barn is set ablaze.

Our narrator suggests at the start that what we witness ‘may explain what came later’. Which, of course, this being a German story in 1913, turns the mind to fascism. One looks at the faces of the film’s large cast, especially its children, and wonders what would their relationship be to National Socialism? But to linger too long on such literal questions is an error. This is art, not science, and I don’t think that even Haneke, that most rational of filmmakers, believes one could trace a direct line from his village to the behaviour of a nation two decades later.

What he offers are merely suggestions as to why a people might turn to antisocial behaviour, whether it’s as local as sabotaging cabbages and assaulting a disabled child or as national as following a leader whom you assist in carrying out crimes in your name. I’d hesitate, too, to assume that Haneke is saying something specific about the German national character at this time. Let’s not forget the key role of shame in this film: even the ‘white ribbon’ of the title is a band tied around the arms of naughty children. Let’s not forget, too, that it was partly the shame forced on Germany by the rest of Europe that led to the terrible events of the 1930s and ’40s.

Faithful and striking historical reconstruction is evident throughout. The superb performances also lend a period authenticity to the film. Yet, there’s also something essentially modern about Haneke’s perspective: he peers into closed-off parlours and invades intimate moments (a father lectures a boy on masturbation, a child questions his sister about death) to suggest links between the psychology of domestic regimes and wider societal behaviour – links that few of these characters could have even conceived of in 1913. It’s Haneke’s investigative and quietly accusing contemporary eye that links repression in the home with corruption in the community beyond.

As a thriller, this is much more muted and subtle than ‘Hidden’. The result is that there’s more space for Haneke – and us – to consider the behaviour of his characters and the relationships between them. It’s his least aggressive and most mature film – a masterpiece from a director who is increasingly making a habit of them.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2009-11-10 12:24:24

Time Out London Issue 2047: November 12-18, 2009

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User reviews of this film

Marco said...

Posted on Nov 20 2009 12:29 The pace of the movie suits the time and place where it takes place. I thought it was very good

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dave calhoun said...

Posted on Nov 19 2009 17:43 E A Dobson - Just to respon to your question about Geoff Andrew. He's very well. He's not on staff anymore, but he still writes for us regularly. He's currently working full time as the esteemed programmer of the BFI Southbank in London.
Thanks
Dave Calhoun

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david glowacki said...

Posted on Nov 17 2009 00:27 A good film but not a great one.Portrayal of Lutherian strict village life in pre ww1 Germany is intriquing.The big flaw is that every time a scene gets really interesting,the director moves on to another scene with another group without any real conclusion.We never know why or what about anything.Even the ending is a rushed conclusion with a lot left open ended.There are far too many children in the film and it is difficult to remember in each scene who belongs to which family.To compound it, they all look alike.It left me a bit annoyed and a bit irraitated.There is no need to have it in black and white.The severity of the lifestyles would still have been effective and as far as l know colour did exist in 1914.So why am l giving it 4 stars?Because of intrique,and mystery and the hold it has over the cinema goer.It has many fine moments,but the director's reluctance to truly reveal anything within the plot is a bit of a failure

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Rob said...

Posted on Nov 16 2009 22:25 Good lord, talk about high praise. Unfortunately this mono-paced collection of scenes featuring mildly intriguing characters is not going to set the movie world alight. Does it have anything to say about pre war German village life and the psyche of its inhabitants? Not really, much like Children of the Corn doesn't tell us about the inhabitants of Nebraska. Whatever message it wishes to tell gets snubbed out early on as the tale meanders between one simmering moment in a villagers house to the next, without any dramatic effect on the story. In the end only the narrator gives us any real clue as to what direction the film is taking, and as far as visual storytelling goes that's always an admission of failure.

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mark said...

Posted on Nov 15 2009 13:30 I was astounded by Hidden which I still think is the only effective film made so far about the West's confrontation with 'the East' and thought that the White Ribbon surely couldnt live up to my expectations. Haneke makes films with such depth - you can read this as having some relation to Nazism, but for me it was a film about the effects of a repressive patriachal society in general, and the particular expression of this through child abuse and the abuse of women. The death of Archduke Ferdinand announced towards the end of the film seems to be the logical culmination of all the repressed pain - so eloquently described by the midwife - in a scene which is the oral equivalent of the physical horror in Hidden. So much for the golden age when everyone knew their place and there was respect for authority! One of the characters compares his scything of the cabbages to what he would like to do to the heads of those in power in the village. As in Hidden, Haneke seems to me to be saying we live in a false paradise if we take part in abuse or become complicit in it (in the sense of living in a prvileged Western society which accepts the exploitation and lack of prviledge of much of the rest of the world) and expect there will be no consequences. A dark, dark, message, but in a world where the truth is in very short supply, the intellectual power of this film is extraordinary.

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E A Dobson said...

Posted on Nov 13 2009 17:37 Dave Calhoun,if you do read this,please can you tell me whats happened to Geoff Andrew? Has he retired? No offence your still doing a good job!
Regarding the film i won`t get to see it until it opens at the Pictureville(Bradford) soon but am definately looking forward to a return to form after his ok funny games remake,i absolutely loved Hidden(2005).

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Emilia said...

Posted on Jul 24 2009 15:01 The film puts more questions than answers... (The Reviewer D.Calhoun caught it right.) Makes you think.
Excellent actors and attention to detail, NO music (except from piano plays), so that it's difficult to believe it has been shot in the XXI century.
The relationships between people are extremely strict to us and indeed often unhealthy/derailed. Are they derailed because trying to strictly follow a Christian moral code they lost love and came away from God?...

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Jun 05 2009 00:18 oz is ecstatic his fave HANEKES white ribbon won palmedor at cannes-and i WISHED it on TIMEOUT weeks ago -I AM over the moon as haneke is the only western intellectual who inspires me in the global misery and i have heard of others-may all my wishes be granted by god -amen -congrats mike haneke

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on May 23 2009 15:25 dave i heard awful things about BRAT PITT AND INGLORIOUS TARANTINO -can you confirm as i am not surprised -quentin is a real junkie when it comes to self -indulgence and leaves lars von TRIER leagues behind -lolz

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on May 23 2009 14:21 thanks dave calhoun
haneke is the most intensely passionate ideologist at work in western cinematic media and this seems to be an intellectual reprisal of his immense prowess to focus subtly on the most crucial issues which face humanity .
haneke seems to have delivered another great movie which applies to universal paradigms and global themes as german character is indeed not restricted to germans alone and the traits mentioned as malice apathy revenge and greed are common to humanity in common dividend -i think the emotional intelligent quotient of hanekes cinema is unfathomable and simply beyond words -it is indeed the ignorant who will deny this intellectual his position as the foremost western cinema talent who presents the most provocate yet sensitively handled subjects in the best tradition of great art .
regards .
i will now try and forget your slumdog revu and just remember this and the duchess appraisals .
take care mate and enjoy the cannes .
are you staying at the carlton ?

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