Michael Haneke’s Cannes winner is a meticulously executed drama of life in a German small-town ahead of World War I. It proves one of the year’s most intensely absorbing and haunting movie experiences. It is also one of the most acclaimed and debated.
While Tarantino was busy romanticizing the downfall of German fascism, Michael Haneke set about exploring its roots, a masterful sociological drama that brought the Austrian filmmaker (who previously won Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize for The Piano Teacher and Best Director for Hidden) his long-overdue Palme d’Or. The setting is a rural German village during the year lead-up to World War I, where the local schoolteacher comes to believe that a rash of deadly accidents befalling the townsfolk may be the work of one or more of his eerily withdrawn, stoic pupils. (Source: World Cinema Showcase 2010)
Rich, troubling and novelistic in scope, Michael Haneke’s most ambitious work to date begins with a horse rider galloping straight at the screen towards an unseen tripwire. It’s a fitting image for the film as a whole. The townsfolk of the fictional Eichwald, their country, and the world at large are heading inexorably towards the cataclysm of war, and there’s nothing to be done but watch, wait and, hopefully, learn something.
Haneke is a master of the cinematic autopsy and here he turns his scalpel to the roots of extremism, most obviously Nazism. Delineated by their jobs – pastor, teacher, doctor – Eichwald’s ruling classes profess Christian values to their children and underlings but rarely practise what they preach. The doctor is vicious to his lover and abusive to his daughter; the pastor turns a blind eye instead of the other cheek. Directly, but in seismic, unseen waves, the sins of these fathers lead to the anonymous evils befalling the town – a ruined crop, a burned barn, injured children – as if such hypocrisy is a problem that can only be sublimated never solved.
In fact, very little of this is apparent during a first viewing, and though technically flawless – the cinematography and the child actors are stunning – some will find The White Ribbon overcomplicated and chill, even by Haneke’s standards. Stick with it, though, and the results resemble a beautiful ice sculpture. Up close, it’s a blur of meticulous details that don’t quite make sense; but step back and its towering ambitions become indelibly apparent.
By Matt Glasby, Flicks.co.nz
This gem of a film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, for a reason. It meticulously and in good faith develops and picks apart the psychology of fascism. Brilliantly. The setting is a small town in Germany, in the year before WWI. But it could just as well be anywhere where insular norms become a social prison for anyone presuming to be 'different.' The theme of the film is summed up by the biblical quote tagged on the attacked child, "The sins of the fathers will be visited upon the next generation ..." We do sow what we reap, and Germany in the earliest twentieth cantury (as well as America in the earliest twenty-first century) are examples of that proto-fascism in action. Clear your mind, see the film, and be prepared to think.
Hey Wtf, if you are as unintelligent as your childish grammar implies, your mindless-moronic comment shows you wouldn't have the brains to even know what 1 + 1 is, let alone understand what this brilliant movie is all about.
Coming from that ancestory this film is an amazing revelation on the turn of the century middle european psyche (my great grandparents) and that cultures' village life and values. Blindlingly brilliant in Haneke's austere vision and uncompromising execution, simply scary and stunning.
A murder mystery with a twist. Not a film I would see again. Really beautifully shot. A very slow paced film, so you need to be in the mood to see it.
Idk what this movie is about ots really boaring and i got sick of it half way through it
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 26th Aug 2010.
Release date: August 26th 2010.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
