Memorable, crazy movie

It is a performances centric movie

I'll tell you why so serious

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

In The White Ribbon, Haneke's mastery of building a quiet, unassuming dread is evident. It starts almost cartoonish, as an elderly school teacher recounts the events of the fabled village that have faded into legend and obscurity. He narrates via voice-over as the doctor's horse is suddenly tripped and he is flung from its seat. Who could have put it there? Little things begin happening that plunge us deeper and deeper into the mystery. Birds are found impaled with scissors. Children are found strung up and beaten. A disabled boy has his eyes gouged out. The villagers look at each other, and then avert their eyes because it could be any of them. In the midst of the crowd is the school teacher, who attempts to get to the bottom of the incidents while also wooing the young Eva. It is not entirely a whodunit. Haneke prefers not to give straight answers, and the voice-over admits that these events are not as crystal clear as he once experienced them. Perhaps he is the film's straightest character, and this slightly smoothens its edge. In one instance, in the period of their one year engagement, he plans a lake-side picnic for Eva and him, but within the context of the village's violence incidents, she does not feel safe about being all alone with him. His response to this establishes the moral pillar of the film from where everything else is judged, and he is the one to make the final accusation. This subplot does not entirely fit within the rest of the events; their quiet, giggling conversations and simple romance is so removed from the rest of the simmering tension. Haneke, I think, seeks to invite viewers to align themselves with this bespectacled every-man, and then harshly shakes his head at this decision. But even without the connotations of the rise of fascism and terrorism as Haneke has been so outspoken on (see how the narrator resolves to dig for the roots of national socialism, not fascism, and how he is suggested to have survived World War 2 - and then link the ages of the children to the date), it is a tremendously disturbing film, yet plausible. Haneke at first distances us from these events via these still long shots that do not outright display the atrocities that are being committed, but rather hint at them, as the muffled sounds of a beating emerge from behind a closed door. And then it becomes more evident, but revealed with great terror. Kurti peers behind a closed door to see his father and sister against each other, and subtly she slides down her dress while spinning a alternate explanation. When the steward's little boy presents a stolen bird to compensate for the one impaled, he is beaten senseless for being too young to understand the implications of his crime. The last shot gradually cuts away to a distance until the village is framed by the black bars of the gate, but Haneke does not ever leave these confines. He suggests that in such a closed environment it becomes so easy to stir up these hypocrisies and cycles of repression until we get...something beyond morally compromising. Haneke does attempt to draw comparisons between the terror that is political versus that of a religious nature. There are murmurs of a mother's death in the sawmills, and how the baron is dismissive of this, and how the villagers retaliate namelessly. And then there is the hypocrisy of the pastor, who preaches an absolute love and behind closed doors, practices an absolute discipline of faith that is theorised to be the root cause of these incidents. But it is also suggested that they share the same root problem, a human tendency to mutate into absolutism and authoritarianism without any opposition. How else will children learn if not from their parental figures? In this little village, there is no other answer.

a film about the roots of evil. precise. fascinating. using the terror in a special manner. a village. and few crimes. the children's faces. the adults ambiguity. and the tension like a fog. a film who reminds Ingmar Bergman's universe but who propose a different perspective about the angry who change, step by step, the life of a community for remind the truth about it. an useful parable about the evil who grow up in the middle of serenity. and a splendid film in which each scene becomes key for define the every day reality. a parable. not original but useful. because it is picture of fury who seems be part of accidents in ordinary place. and who becomes the rule.

It's quite different from what is usually seen on screens. It's one of the films unique, original in everything. From the point of view of the subject, it's almost hermetically - everyone will understand as much as you can; the aesthetic, the film enchants you with poetic black and white, photography; directing: a masterpiece. And there's also the possible meanings that even if you can not catch on entirely, all you felt you mustiind in this film worthy of the Palme d'Or and learned that last year (2009) . The key to the logic of this film seems to be the film Das Weisse Band that also a parable be taken to refer to dark period of German history the two world wars. Ethics fanatical, extreme guilt and masochistic degeneration odious faces appear in this film. There are scenes of horrific abuse and outrageous verbal and physical cruelty here: but that without proper insist on showing their actual ... bloody images: everything is settled and finesse but also strongly represented in these respects intellectual . White Ribbon movie title, had to gauger children's innocence Germany. But it appears innocence lost and lead to atrocities and disasters of historic proportions. By demonetizing children and young people, due to slippages fatal mentality and morality of parents, this movie is in lineage ideation and Demons famous novel, Dostoevsky's. Michael Haneke maybe wanted to capture in this film as a parable, hideous psychology of fascism, or fanaticism in general, then the decay of a culture reached a point of self-sufficiency and superficiality seriously dehumanizing. Very interesting is the anthropological vision of the film, with rural customs and mentality specific prewar Germany.

It's pre-WWI in a small German village. An unnamed man recalls strange incidents when he was the village school teacher. Someone had strung a near-invisible wire between two trees. The doctor is hospitalized after his horse trips on the wire in his regular ride. Then a tenant farmer woman falls to her death in an industrial accident. The village is a strict harsh place. The puritanical pastor punishes his children with a cane and ties white ribbons on his children as a reminder of their need to keep their purity. The strange incidents continue. The movie ends with the start of the first World War.I would have liked the movie follows one single lead as he/she experiences and investigates these strange incidences. The black and white photography is beautiful. The cold everyday violence is interesting. The movie portrays a very effective hard oppressive mood. However it is a lot of mood but very little drive. Sure this is not the regular North American movie but I just want to follow the police investigating these incidences. It feels somehow distant to follow the various villagers and the narration.