Directed by:
Michael HanekeScreenplay:
Michael HanekeCinematography:
Christian BergerCast:
Ulrich Tukur, Susanne Lothar, Rainer Bock, Christian Friedel, Leonard Proxauf, Leonie Benesch, Burghart Klaußner, Steffi Kühnert, Michael Schenk (more)VOD (2)
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The story of the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families: the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, the tenant farmers. Strange accidents occur and gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Who is behind it all? (Independent Cinema Office)
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Reviews (8)
The White Ribbon is not so much a dark thriller or even a crime drama as it is a journey into the early 20th century and a precisely executed depiction of the societal thinking and hierarchy of that time. It is a late patriarchal system where the word of the family breadwinner was law and upbringing took place not only in a strict religious but primarily authoritarian conservative spirit. Order, discipline, and authority, where many dark stories took place under the guise of orderliness, and many things were successfully swept under the rug. Masturbation was a crime, but sexual abuse was not addressed. Haneke is an excellent director and it shows in this film. The unsettling atmosphere of the village, far from civilization centers, where the advances of modern technology and modern liberal philosophical movements have not yet reached. I have a problem with some of Haneke's films, with his manipulation of the audience's emotions and unresolved endings, but he succeeded here. The unsettling ending with lots of dark suspicions, hints, and terrifying visions somehow fits into the period of the beginning of World War I and the end of that old quiet patriarchal society. Overall impression: 90%.
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In a respectable one hundred and forty minutes, Haneke uncovers a truly incredible cabaret of the demeaning, hypocritical, vengeful, and cruel. The most depressing analysis of a closed society you're likely to come across. And the film pulls this off on its own without any judgement. In this work, the door plays a major role.
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Michael Haneke is an excellent author who can surprise you with each of his films because each one is different. It's a different genre, and often a different style as well, although it's true that his films usually share a slower pace. Here, you'll be completely captivated by the black-and-white execution, even though the film wasn't originally shot in black and white but later adapted to it.
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A humanistic probe into the midst of a group of black-and-white human souls, almost without emotion and without the twist that we would automatically and adamantly demand in the case of conventional narrative scales, but with the most breathtaking and purest visual and acting representation of a filmmaker's vision in many years. A breathtaking clash of angelic innocence and harsh discipline with violent human depravity, where what matters is not the who or the why but the HOW - perhaps the only Haneke film where, if we accept the master's exacting psychological game, we will leave with a warm feeling not only as spectators but above all of pure moral awareness.
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Set against the backdrop of those horrific events, The White Ribbon reveals the warped morals and stifling atmosphere of a German village, which escalates as the number of atrocities escalates. The spasmodically punctilious and often unnecessarily cruel upbringing of the children blinds the minds of the villagers in their search for the real culprits – unable to even admit or consider that their offspring might have had something to do with it... A very impressive drama indeed, with excellent child actors, in which interpersonal relationships and concealed loathing are excellently portrayed alongside unidentifiable evil (Haneke really takes the gloves off for this one). P.S.: I was pleasantly surprised by the almost full capacity of the multiplex. :) 90%
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