The White Ribbon (Wednesday, December 30, 2009) (213)

Michael Haneke has made a career out of interesting and shocking films that never shy away from raw violence and frank sexuality. His masterpiece, The Piano Teacher, deals with repressed sexuality, self-inflicted torture and abuse. Cache speaks to a much more specific post-colonial French guilt, but deals with it by showing that children have the potential to do terrible, dark things. Funny Games (both the Austrian and the American versions) shows how evil and terribleness are sport for disaffected youth who are otherwise bored in their dull lives. The White Ribbon uses themes from all of these earlier films to talk about not only the limits and effects of bad deeds in a community, but also the causes of those actions.

The title of The White Ribbon refers to a band that the preacher of a small Austrian village puts on his children's arms to remind them of their innocence and inherent goodness. Throughout a year just before World War I, the hamlet has several unexplained violent acts committed mostly by unknown actors on the townspeople, including a few acts against some of the kids. The film opens when the town doctor is thrown from his horse after the animal trips on a wire strung between two trees near his house. At another point, the rich village Baron's small son is kidnapped and beaten in the woods. Later a special needs boy is also kidnapped and beaten.

As this happens, the townspeople try to figure out what to make of it and why it is happening in their village. What we see is that just about every child is out of control, rebelling against the rigid strictures of their parents. The parents are bad people as well, as they bicker and fight, punish and threaten and rape and abuse one another as well as their kids.

The idea of the white ribbon is very interesting as it represents an old-fashioned out-of-touchness that the adult world has with the kids' world. It suggests that the children's world is not real but just a series of symbols and lessons. It ignores that they might have lost their innocence partly because of the horrible things they see in the grownups. The uptight protestant preacher is a hateful man who seems to relish disciplining his kids with a belt or stern lecture but almost never a loving sign. He doesn't realize that his lessons are not getting through to his kids and that all they get out of it is the hatred he seems to express toward them.

There is no question that Haneke is a master filmmaker from a technical point of view. Each shot is perfectly composed and perfectly executed. Cinematographer Christian Berger's beautiful black and white photography ass well as the monochromatic costumes by Moidele Bickel create a suffocating environment for all the action to take place in.

I think the script (also by Haneke) has a lot of problems with it. For one thing, it sets up an interesting mystery where we don't know who is committing many of the terrible acts we see, but leaves these questions floating in the air, almost not trying to solve them at all. Haneke points at one answer, but this is not taken seriously by the characters and the question is then left open. I get that this is a more nuanced, European style of filmmaking - to leave questions unanswered and leave the audience guessing - but here I think he just walks away from the mystery rather than engaging in any real debate. The film ends rather abruptly, creating less of an ending to the story, than a cut to the credits and an end to the film with no resolution. This is a bit too elliptical for my taste and I would have preferred a bit more examination of the story.

Considering how well sketched out some of the major adult characters are, such as the preacher and the doctor, the children in the village are rather nameless and faceless and lack any real identity. I don't think this adds to our understanding of things, as much as it's just sort of sloppy. They are a mindless mob who move from one place in the town to another, almost like a flock of birds. This is an interesting idea, but it falls apart when we are supposed to feel any sympathy for individual kids, such as the preacher's two oldest. I think if a few of the children had been better flushed out, the story would have felt much more intimate and emotional for me.

The story is narrated by the village school teacher, a nebbish who tries to discipline the kids while they are in his control, but realizes he is a small pawn in a bigger struggle in the village with terrible parents. This character, however, is basically unnecessary and the use of a voice over narrator looking back at this point in his life is ridiculous (I especially hate real-world narrators who are able to tell stories that happen between two people in intimate situations. How do they know what goes on behind closed doors?). That Haneke wastes time showing the teacher's crush on a young governess is just indulgent and pointless. I think a good 30 minutes could have been cut from the film to make it a more powerful story.

Many people have been interested by this film because it's a criticism of Austrians and Europeans who treated their kids so badly that their children subsequently grew up and allowed unprecedented atrocities go unquestioned in the Second World War. I think this is overly simplistic. I don't think it was just evildoing by adults that led Germans to become mute in the face of fascism. I think there is a level of mischief and badness in all people and when that is allowed out in children at an early age, bad things can follow. But I also think that there is a lot of good in people too and that there are not communities where every person is evil (as Haneke seems to suggest here). I appreciate his argument, but I disagree with it fundamentally.

Stars: 2.5 of 4