Directed by Michael Haneke |
The White Ribbon The
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke won the grand
prize last year – the Golden Palm – at the Cannes film festival
with his film “The White Ribbon.” It’s set in 1913 Germany, in a
small village with a Baron and Baroness, who own most of the land; their Steward
and his family, the Teacher, the Doctor and the Midwife, and many
children. It is taken for granted
that children will be beaten for any infraction outside of blind obedience. There
are a series of mysterious events, which perhaps the children know about and
perhaps they don’t. First
the Doctor’s horse trips over a wire stretched just outside his own
property. The Doctor is injured
and the horse is killed, yet there’s no logical suspect outside of the
children..
No one will ever say anything about who did it. Then a farmer’s wife is killed
when she falls through a rotten floor.
Then the Baron’s cabbage patch is beaten with a scythe until
none are left. The Doctor has
been having sex with the midwife for years, and has evidently been abusing his
own daughter. The Pastor whips
his children and ties their arms so they won’t masturbate; he puts
white ribbons on them to show that they are somehow God’s children. A retarded child’s eyes are put
out. This is not child’s
play; something has happened to the children and we in the audience do no know what. A
barn is burned on the Baron’s property. No child will ever say anything to any
adult, and the mystery seems never to be solved. Finally, the next year War is declared
and life shifts once again.
What is happening in the village?
The film is shot in black and white (which Haneke
got by shooting in color then fading out all color and leaving only black and
white). It is both mysterious and
beautiful, and yet the mysteries remain Can
they be solved? Not in Haneke’s film, and there’s the weakness in
“The White Ribbon” for me; having set everything in motion, Haneke simply stands back and won’t even point us
in the right direction. The film
becomes a horrifying tempest, but in a tiny little teapot. Like his last film “Funny
Games,” there is never a ‘why’, just the events themselves,
and we walk out of the theatre feeling Haneke has
been playing games with us. |