The White Ribbon

When:
19:30 Wed Oct 21

Where:
Curzon Mayfair, 38 Curzon St, London, W1J 7TY

For quite some time at the beginning of Michael Haneke’s latest film, a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914, you wonder what you’re watching, how its disparate parts hang together and what it all might mean. As a series of brief episodes and incidences pile up – many of them domestic scenes – we move from family to family, pastor to doctor, teacher to steward, nanny to schoolboy. But something is upsetting the natural order of this peaceful village: the local doctor is injured when his horse trips over a wire wound between two posts. No one knows who’s responsible, but it’s clearly sabotage. As in ‘Code Unknown’, Haneke resists focusing on one story or a limited number of characters and instead offers a wide, rich canvas of people and experiences linked only by the fact that they are neighbours and increasingly all subject to a burgeoning threat from within.