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Film: The White Ribbon
Release date: 15th March 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 144 mins
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesh, Burkhart Klaussner, Ulrich Tukur, Steffi Kühnert
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Germany/Austria/France/Italy
Michael Haneke has become renowned over the years for making confrontational, provocative and often controversial films. From the cold-blooded violence of a film like Funny Games to the explicit sexual scenes of The Piano Teacher. In Hidden he proved himself not only adept at tapping into an individual characters psyche but also a national one, on that occassion looking at France’s colonial guilt over Algeria. While very different on the surface, The White Ribbon again taps into a national psyche, but this time the focus is on Germany.
The film itself takes place over a year, from July 1913 to the outbreak of the First World War, in a small village in Germany’s Protestant north. It is a quiet village in which little takes place until they are disturbed by a series of unfortunate events, beginning with a horse tripping over a wire and throwing off its rider, the local doctor.
Soon after this, a field (of cabbages) is scythed down; the local baron’s son disappears, only to be discovered with his feet and hands bound together, and his buttocks lashed with a whip; a barn burns down; a farmer hangs himself; and the handicapped child of the village midwife is kidnapped and discovered tied to a tree, severely beaten, and with a message on his chest that suggests that all these occurrences are divine punishments.
While we are led to believe these are random and unconnected occurrences, the new school teacher (Christian Friedel) soon suspects that it maybe the children of the village that are somehow behind these seemingly unconnected events. The implication made to the audience that these blonde, blue eyed children are the same generation that will bring about the rise of Nazism, and ultimately lead to World War II…
This may all seem rather heavy, and a tad on the pretentious side, but is certainly not as dry or elitist as you may imagine. This is not to say that it is a particularly easy watch either - it is a picture filled with a creeping sense of unease and a claustrophobic atmosphere, which Haneke has always been very good at it. It also follows Haneke’s thematic interest in ‘the root of evil’, which can be seen right throughout his catalogue of works.
It is not so much what is happening that unsettles, but the foreboding and what you don’t see. Also, easy conclusions or resolutions are not present - Haneke rarely ties anything up for the audience - the opening narration tells us the story will ‘clarify’ some of the events, but by the end, you may feel there has been more obfuscation.
This lack of resolution and the general air of mystery are elements most frequently cited by Haneke’s detractors - that and the lecturing tone of some of his films, with Funny Games, which was very accusatory towards the audience, probably being the guiltiest offender. This is the most humane entry in his filmography to date.
The most notable example of this is the growing relationship between the school teacher (Christian Friedel) and Eva (Leonie Benesh), which is both touching and surprisingly innocent - not at all things that Haneke is normally associated with. Both Friedel and Benesh put in very good, understated performances.
The rest of the cast are indeed equally impressive, with Burghart Klaussner giving an imposing performance as the stern pastor who puts white ribbons on his eldest children, Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus), at the beginning of the events to remind them of their purity.
Praise must also be given to the cinematographer Christian Berger, whose somewhat languid and sober shooting suitably fits the pace and narrative - the choice to frame the film in black-and-white reflects the bleak mood and oppressive atmosphere that pervades, and was also used partly to resemble photographs of the era, especially those of August Sander.
There are, thanks to the village children giving off the appropriate air of sinister and menace, comparisons to be had with The Village Of The Damned, but the rather derisory comments that this is merely that film with art house frills is unfair and unfounded.
When a film is heaped with critical adulation and prizes - it won the 2009 Palme D’Or and was nominated for Best Foreign feature at the 2010 Oscar’s - it is easy to try and pick holes and rail against the critical wind. Here, though, Haneke has created yet another great film, after the misstep with his US remake of Funny Games, and once again cements his place as one of the best directors working within world cinema today.
Film: The White Ribbon
Release date: 15th March 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 144 mins
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesh, Burkhart Klaussner, Ulrich Tukur, Steffi Kühnert
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Germany/Austria/France/Italy
Once known as the enfant terrible of the art house, Michael Haneke has garnered mainstream acclaim for the maturation and restraint displayed in later films such as The Piano Teacher in 2002 and Caché in 2005. His latest film appears to continue this trend, winning critical plaudits upon cinematic release, along with the coveted Palme d’Or at 2009’s Cannes Film Festival.
Set in a small German village on the eve of WWI, strange and mysterious events draw a cloud of resentment, repression and simmering violence over its inhabitants. A hidden wire injures a doctor travelling on a horse, loose floorboards cause a tragic fall, a boy is found tied up and thrashed, and a crop is savagely destroyed. The children of a strict disciplinarian pastor appear cool and inhuman.
As a young schoolteacher attempts to uncover the truth behind these sinister happenings, the moral corruption of the patriarchs of the village reveals itself, with dark implications for the next generation...
Haneke shapes his narrative as a series of interlinking vignettes, bringing to mind earlier works such as 71 Fragments Of A Chronology Of Chance (1994) and Code Unknown (2000), exploring the moral consequences of a pre-war context through minute, ambiguously symbolic actions.
Haneke has always been a divisive figure, and it is no surprise, then, to find that underneath the sterile tones and clean lines of his imagery lay emotional, political and thematic complexities which are ripe for critical and sociological dissection. Always an overtly provocative artist, he demands the viewer take a position, form an opinion, use their critical faculties and question what they are being shown. This is not just the effect of his style, but an intrinsic part of his philosophy, mirrored in both the substance of the film’s narratives (or lack of) and the forms they take.
In other words, Haneke’s films challenge conventional audiences, but they are also about challenging the audience. He attempts this balancing act by using transgressive, shocking elements to induce an instinctive yet intuitively moral response to the situations, whilst presenting characters’ actions without the given psychological motivations typical of Hollywood fare. Little explicit explanation is offered for the strange violence enacted by the village’s members, forcing the audience to interrogate the historical context, and wider themes of morality and consequence.
In many ways, The White Ribbon is a departure for Haneke. It is the first period film of his long directorial career and, after working in France for a number of years, it is the first of his since 1997’s Funny Games to be an Austrian/German production. The change of scene does nothing, however, to diminish or soften his unique auteurial vision, and Haneke has produced a morality tale of remarkable clarity, poise and power.
Haneke draws proceedings as a deceptively simple parable, a highly moral, vigilant allegory for the rise of fascism. The largely terrifying children of the village, at once supremely obedient and sadistically threatening, are shown as inevitable products of their upbringings. Whilst the children are ambiguous in their violent fragility, the adults of the village – the pastor, the doctor, the baron – are mostly revealed as brutish, strict, overbearing and hypocritical. They bring their children up in environments of violence and fear, yet expect of them innocence, subservience and perfect behaviour. It is these sad, confused, aggressive children, Haneke suggests, who will grow up during WWI and be instrumental figures in the rise of Nazism as adults.
Typically for the director, few narrative conclusions are revealed, answers are withheld, and the violence almost always occurs off screen. The camera lingers closely on faces, on blank, bleak landscapes, capturing withheld emotions and repressed violence. What makes the film such a success, however, is a newfound warmth in Haneke’s direction and his use of characters. Like all his films, The White Ribbon is difficult - a challenge to his audiences, but whereas in the past he has often refused to come in from the cold, here he constructs his vignettes around a central story of a budding romance between two genuinely likable characters.
Christian Friedel’s innocent, bumbling schoolteacher and Leonie Benesch’s nanny Eva provide a counterbalance to the cold sterility and tragic narratives of the rest of the film’s characters, providing a hopeful core of humanity. Both are played perfectly, but the acting throughout the cast is sublime. Haneke must surely be one of the most gifted filmmakers in world cinema in drawing out superb performances from child actors, and this film displays his gift in abundance. The pastor’s children, in particular, are entrancingly, chillingly well performed.
Composed with the subtlety and grace we have come accustomed to from Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon is a genuine achievement - a striking blend of style and substance with an unequivocal moral message. If you are prepared for the ambiguity and bleakness displayed by this film, you will come away surprised at the warmth at its heart. KI
Film: The White Ribbon
Release date: 15th March 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 144 mins
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesh, Burkhart Klaussner, Ulrich Tukur, Steffi Kühnert
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Germany/Austria/France/Italy
Michael Haneke is a master of suspense - a director whose focus has lay solely on his power over his character and his audience. His past successes, of which there are many, have all probed a little deeper than the horror at their surface, and his name has been made not just by his signature direction but by his ambition also. The award-winning, Oscar-nominated White Ribbon showcases another string to his bow.
The film follows the lives of the inhabitants of Eichwald, a rural village in pre-First World War Germany. The villagers are mainly employed as farmers by the baron who is the lord of the manor. The baron runs the village with a tight hand, and the villagers depend on his favour and a good harvest.
The pastor is also a figurehead in a very protestant village; he preaches the strict word of God to the villagers, and most strongly to his young children, who wear white ribbons to symbolise their innocence and purity.
The villagers depend upon their doctor, too; he is a single man whose wife passed away during the birth of his young son. The doctor treats the villagers with care by day, but by night, he takes advantage of his young daughter and housekeeper who is the local midwife.
In the months running up to Ferdinand’s murder and the declaration of the First World War, a series of mysterious and vengeful events begin to take place in the village. The doctor is knocked of his horse by a wire placed between two trees and he is hospitalised; the farmer’s wife falls to her death through the roof of their barn; and then on the day of the town’s harvest festival, the baron’s crop is destroyed. The events cause a stir in the village as the baron urges the villagers to find the culprit of the crimes, and as fear spreads, the baron’s young son is captured and tortured before being found hung upside down in the woods.
Word of mouth and suspicions are spreading around the village as the baron’s wife takes her young family away from the dangers of their home. Events continue to worsen as more acts of sabotage, including the burning of a barn, disrupt the peace. The village’s teacher, who primarily had been more concerned with his growing romance with the young Eva, begins to notice a pattern to the acts that could inclinate the very children he teaches…
The White Ribbon is Haneke’s most accomplished work. He instils a tension that is felt even stronger than his past thrillers Funny Games and Hidden - the anxiety is as affecting as it is subtle. He presents the scrupulous details of the narrative without a soundtrack or any backing music, and this creates an eerie silence around the otherwise disturbing events of the film, and installs an atmosphere of uncertainty that has viewers on tenter hooks even when watching the most trivial of conversations.
Haneke’s direction relies on non-glorious effect as he captures the events through a still and often lingering camera. Shots of closed doors only alert the viewer to the horror of the sounds inside, and we are treated to a consistently off centre camera, which really brings a higher appreciation of the scene in front of it. As the farmer sits at his wife’s death bed, he is hidden by a cupboard - we only see the ripples of his back as he weeps, and as the camera loiters, we are treated to a portrayal of pain that could not have been simulated with a standard close-up.
Cinematographer Christian Belger is no stranger to Haneke’s films, having previously worked with the auteur on both The Piano Teacher and Hidden. He received an Oscar nomination for his work here, which is more than justified as he provides an authenticity to the film’s events. It’s hard to imagine the film in colour – filming in black-and-whitet echoes the peculiarity of the village with cutting realism.
Haneke’s portrayal of the village is very well realised as he shows us a hierarchy, religious infatuation and family life that has rarely been touched upon, particularly to non-Germans/Austrians. The men rule the roost over the women and children with a strictness that is hard to comprehend, and sometimes disturbing to watch. The pastor ties his young son to his bed at night to prevent him “succumbing to the urges of his young body,” and a scene in which the doctor ends his affair with the midwife is shocking in its cruelty and lack of restraint. The attack is verbal but wounds deeper than any physical act as he tells her of his disgust at her bad breath and aging body.
These characters and their lifestyles are for Haneke the perfect roots for the evil of his film to grow. Perhaps none are more affected than the children, whose faces, full of desperation, live on in your memory long after the film’s end. Haneke’s ambition to show this growing evil is applaudable, and the film’s meanings are as susceptible and ambiguous as its conclusion. This may be somewhat frustrating to audiences who may feel, after serving an undoubtedly overlong running time, they are deserving of more closure.
That said, a return to moral balance or a simple resolution to the story would hardly be fitting of the film, or of Haneke. Instead, it seems better to consider the reasons why the mysterious events took place as opposed to the mystery man or woman responsible. As the baron’s wife notes the village is a place of “malice, envy, apathy and brutality,” and these seem to be results in the lifestyle of the villagers.
We consider this also in the light of the school teacher, a man who is portrayed ultimately as good. He does not concern himself with the envy of the other villagers and ultimately looks to serve others. His good nature is shown in particular with his pursuit of Eva to whom he is ever respectful - he contrasts the other villagers not just with the way his story ends but his actions leading up to it.
Eichwald is one of cinema’s most haunting locales, and the events there carried out between July 1913 and August 1914 (in Haneke’s world at least) are some of the most thought provoking and chilling cinematics of the director’s illustrious career. The talent on display from both cast and crew make this film not just a must see but Haneke’s greatest vision to date. LW
