The White Ribbon

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: December 30th, 2009 (limited)

Starring: Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, Josef Bierbichler, Ursina Lardi

Directed by: Michael Haneke 

Premise: In a village in Protestant northern Germany on the eve of World War I children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families – experience strange accidents that gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Who is behind it all?

[Stefen]

Haneke is one of the best working today. He's certainly one of the best filmmakers of the decade.

Someone has seen this. Maybe it was Mod or Ghostboys blog. A Xixaxer has seen it.

[picolas]

i did. i felt like i'd been living in a repressive village when i left the theatre... it's really good. just. like typical haneke, pretty traumatic. sbeen a while and i don't feel like writing a more detailed review right now...

[modage]

Yeah I saw this too.

The very definition of the sort of film you'd expect to find at the New York Film Festival, 'The White Ribbon' is a 2 1/2 hour, black and white, subtitled film set in pre-WWI Germany helmed by a World Cinema auteur.  The auteur in this case is provocateur Michael Haneke, responsible for 'Funny Games', 'Cache' and other feel-good films*.  While his films aren't exactly my taste I respect him as a filmmaker more than I do Lars Von Trier who mines similar territory more self consciously and less enjoyably.

This film takes place in a small German village and takes a look at the fractured lives of the families that live there.  Because most of the cast is blonde children it took me quite a while to distinguish which characters were which and I'm not sure I ever figured it out.  The subject matter is dark: suicides, rape, incest, and beating the retarded(!) are all touched upon though many of these are left ambiguous.  Those looking for the film to be tied up will be frustrated as I was at the end of the film.

*His films will not make you feel good.

http://modage.tumblr.com/post/208065026/nyff-the-white-ribbon

[Reinhold]

i saw this last night. there's a little more movement, and for a haneke film i thought that it was a remarkably quick 2 and a half hours.

more complete thoughts coming soon.

SPOILERS
so, y'all think the kids did the crimes? i think it was different groups of kids, for different reasons. they thought they were doing god's work because dad was so strict and they wanted to repent-- or maybe they were just evil little fucks. the quote of that passage from the old testament when the disabled boy was found is what got me thinking that. maybe the doctor's daughter caused his accident to get him off of her?

[for petes sake]

This is a very good film.  Not as good as CACHE, and certainly not as immediately gripping, but a definite grower.  I for one liked how the townspeople's conflicts weren't really resolved because that often happens in real life.  Revenge begets revenge and when bad things happen people try to understand why, sometimes can't, and generally just continue with their lives until something else happens.

Visually it feels very claustrophobic, although interestingly it didn't rely on any noticeably visual tricks to do so (no wierd angles, no unusually tight shots).  There is one extraordinary beautiful sequence that features wheat fields covered in snow that literally made me sigh.  Haneke is in complete control at all times, and his precise compositions and exact editing really help escalate the tension that builds until the historical event at the end.  In that sense I think the film really does serve as a microcosm of the changing times, the loss of innocence, and the gradual fueling of social animosity that would come to fruition in the fascist regimes of the '30s.  The film almost makes it seem inevitable that after generations of repression and harsh religious discipline, the next generation of Germans would become Nazis once they were free of the rigid social hierarchy of the old, pre WWI world.  

[Alexandro]

I was surprised to not like this film that much. I consider myself some sort of Haneke fan. I deeply love and respect Cache and The Piano Teacher. Love the way he fucks with our tolerance levels with Funny Games, and understood his decision to remake that one with Naomi Watts, because she really makes that film. In fact up until this one, I liked every film of his that I saw. But The White Ribbon felt way too long and way too joyless, pretty obvious from the start where it was going. About 30 minutes in I just knew, even though I hoped it didn't happen, how he was going to end this thing.

It has it's moments, certainly. The scene with the little boy offering the bird to his dad was probably my favorite, and a lot of interesting possibilities are opened with that many characters, but at the same time is that same amount of characters what makes it feel incomplete. too many storylines float around without enough time for any of them to sink in and make you give a shit. The cinematography was fine with some bits of true brilliance but i guess this needed to be shot on film (I don't know for sure but it looked like digital). Haneke is often accused of being humorless but i often find a twisted sense of humor or irony to cling to even in truly sour shit like Benny's Video. This time the whole argument is too simplistic to enter that territory. I spent most of the film being reminded of better Dreyer and Bergman films.

[Stefen]

I can't finish it. I still have it from Netflix. I watch about 5 minutes a day. I'm about an hour and a half in.

I love Haneke -- always have and always will, but I just can't finish this fucking movie. It's too much. It's like an endurance test. Scaling Mt. Everest. If I ever get through it, I'll probably be missing fingers and talk out of the side of my face. Just not worth it. I'll stick around for the next one, but I'm gonna sit this one out.