Cast: Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Rainer Bock, Burghart Klaussner
Since his shocking 1989 debut ‘The Seventh Continent’, Michael Haneke’s style of distanced, uncomfortable, but undeniably beautiful filmmaking has developed and expanded throughout his fascinating career. After a decade working in his native German tongue, Haneke made the move into French filmmaking at the turn of the millennium, with a sparse but emotionally rich ensemble film, ‘Code Unknown’. His subsequent work with actresses Isabelle Huppert and Juliette Binoche has resulted in some remarkable performances and breathtaking films. In 2001, ‘The Piano Teacher’ won the Grand Prix at Cannes (it also won Huppert the Best Actress award), and catapulted Haneke into the highest order of filmmakers.
Haneke’s career took another turn in 2007 when he decided to remake his sadistic and brutal 1997 film, ‘Funny Games’, in the US with an all-star cast. The film, which concerns two sadistic teenagers who trap a middle-class family in their lakeside home and torture them with ‘funny games’ before killing them, was just as horrifying and unrelenting as it’s German original, and once again conjured up some fantastic performances, this time from Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Michael Pitt.
‘The White Ribbon’, which earned Haneke the prestigious Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, marks yet another positive step in his faultless career. And yet the film also seems to be a conscious step back for this progressive and dynamic filmmaker. After two decades of testing new boundaries both artistically and personally (directing a film in a language you do not speak fluently is a terrifying prospect, but one that Haneke relished), Haneke has returned to his mother tongue, and seems to have taken solace and respite in the historical heartland of the Germanic culture… the countryside. It is not that simple, of course; Haneke has used this humble setting to dissect the themes and messages underlying his previous films, and so ‘The White Ribbon’ really is another magnificent, emotionally resonant, and aesthetically stunning tour de force.
The film follows the lives of a few families in a remote, feudal village in northern Germany on the eve of World War One. When the village doctor is tripped by a maliciously placed piece of wire while riding his horse, the village is alive with whispers and theories about who could have committed the crime. But when a barn is set on fire, and two children are abducted and tortured, the repressed sentiments of the village begin to boil over. The schoolteacher (Friedel) who investigates the crimes also narrates the tale as an old man, and we are not expected to treat his narration as omniscient. The families we follow are those of the Baron (Tukur), the doctor (Bock), and the pastor (Klaussner); and by witnessing their various reactions to events in the town, we are given a fascinating insight into the repression, fear, and violence that exists below the surface of this small society.
Haneke chose the spatial and temporal settings of the film very specifically: he wanted this small feudal town, on the cusp of the modern world, because it worked so wonderfully as a microcosm of society, and also because your view of the children is coloured by a subconscious understanding that they will grow up to be Nazis. But this is not a film about German fascism specifically; it is a film about the dangers of repression and indoctrination, and the failures of previous generations to properly prepare the young for the world in front of them.
Many of Haneke’s films are about people who reach a point in their lives where they realise they are completely unprepared for the road ahead. From the suicidal couple at the heart of ‘The Seventh Continent’ to Huppert’s piano teacher and the scared husband in ‘Hidden’, these are characters who have lost all faith in themselves and their pasts and find themselves stranded in a terrifying present with no understanding of the world around them. ‘The White Ribbon’ is an attempt by Haneke to look back into the pasts of all his characters and work out what it is in our collective childhoods that leaves us stranded later in life; and of course the temporal setting of this film means we must also look at this on a social level: if a society is unprepared for the future, they are liable to grasp at straws and accept the first man who comes along with promises of safety and prosperity.
This film is certainly more tangibly philosophical and academic than many of Haneke’s previous films, and this may be partially due to the exhaustive research undertaken by him. In a recent interview he explained that he wanted the viewer to feel more detached from this film; hence his decision to employ the schoolteacher’s narration. The schoolteacher is a Dostoevskian character: a humble and impartial outsider who views the events around him with a simple intelligence. Viewing the film from (or at least informed by) his perspective prevents us from becoming attached to any of the characters, and so we float around the village, surveying and analysing and questioning everything we see.
This need for detachment also explains the ‘look’ of the film. Shot in black and white, the film looks so much like a Bunuel film from the ‘Viridiana’ era. Bunuel never wanted to coax the viewer into his films with unnecessarily well-composed shots, he believed that the image should serve the story and the tone and not simply be beautiful for it’s own sake. Haneke has followed a similar path here, and while the film is unmistakably well composed and strangely beautiful, it is also stark and brutal and real.
This is another truly remarkable film from one of the finest living filmmakers. It is not easy to watch, and it is not as openly shocking as many of his previous films; but it is intelligent and mature and there is not a single moment in the entire 145-minute running time that you doubt you are in the hands of an absolute master of the cinema.
Since his shocking 1989 debut ‘The Seventh Continent’, Michael Haneke’s style of distanced, uncomfortable, but undeniably beautiful filmmaking has developed and expanded throughout his fascinating career. After a decade working in his native German tongue, Haneke made the move into French filmmaking at the turn of the millennium, with a sparse but emotionally rich ensemble film, ‘Code Unknown’. His subsequent work with actresses Isabelle Huppert and Juliette Binoche has resulted in some remarkable performances and breathtaking films. In 2001, ‘The Piano Teacher’ won the Grand Prix at Cannes (it also won Huppert the Best Actress award), and catapulted Haneke into the highest order of filmmakers.
Haneke’s career took another turn in 2007 when he decided to remake his sadistic and brutal 1997 film, ‘Funny Games’, in the US with an all-star cast. The film, which concerns two sadistic teenagers who trap a middle-class family in their lakeside home and torture them with ‘funny games’ before killing them, was just as horrifying and unrelenting as it’s German original, and once again conjured up some fantastic performances, this time from Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Michael Pitt.
‘The White Ribbon’, which earned Haneke the prestigious Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, marks yet another positive step in his faultless career. And yet the film also seems to be a conscious step back for this progressive and dynamic filmmaker. After two decades of testing new boundaries both artistically and personally (directing a film in a language you do not speak fluently is a terrifying prospect, but one that Haneke relished), Haneke has returned to his mother tongue, and seems to have taken solace and respite in the historical heartland of the Germanic culture… the countryside. It is not that simple, of course; Haneke has used this humble setting to dissect the themes and messages underlying his previous films, and so ‘The White Ribbon’ really is another magnificent, emotionally resonant, and aesthetically stunning tour de force.
The film follows the lives of a few families in a remote, feudal village in northern Germany on the eve of World War One. When the village doctor is tripped by a maliciously placed piece of wire while riding his horse, the village is alive with whispers and theories about who could have committed the crime. But when a barn is set on fire, and two children are abducted and tortured, the repressed sentiments of the village begin to boil over. The schoolteacher (Friedel) who investigates the crimes also narrates the tale as an old man, and we are not expected to treat his narration as omniscient. The families we follow are those of the Baron (Tukur), the doctor (Bock), and the pastor (Klaussner); and by witnessing their various reactions to events in the town, we are given a fascinating insight into the repression, fear, and violence that exists below the surface of this small society.
Haneke chose the spatial and temporal settings of the film very specifically: he wanted this small feudal town, on the cusp of the modern world, because it worked so wonderfully as a microcosm of society, and also because your view of the children is coloured by a subconscious understanding that they will grow up to be Nazis. But this is not a film about German fascism specifically; it is a film about the dangers of repression and indoctrination, and the failures of previous generations to properly prepare the young for the world in front of them.
Many of Haneke’s films are about people who reach a point in their lives where they realise they are completely unprepared for the road ahead. From the suicidal couple at the heart of ‘The Seventh Continent’ to Huppert’s piano teacher and the scared husband in ‘Hidden’, these are characters who have lost all faith in themselves and their pasts and find themselves stranded in a terrifying present with no understanding of the world around them. ‘The White Ribbon’ is an attempt by Haneke to look back into the pasts of all his characters and work out what it is in our collective childhoods that leaves us stranded later in life; and of course the temporal setting of this film means we must also look at this on a social level: if a society is unprepared for the future, they are liable to grasp at straws and accept the first man who comes along with promises of safety and prosperity.
This film is certainly more tangibly philosophical and academic than many of Haneke’s previous films, and this may be partially due to the exhaustive research undertaken by him. In a recent interview he explained that he wanted the viewer to feel more detached from this film; hence his decision to employ the schoolteacher’s narration. The schoolteacher is a Dostoevskian character: a humble and impartial outsider who views the events around him with a simple intelligence. Viewing the film from (or at least informed by) his perspective prevents us from becoming attached to any of the characters, and so we float around the village, surveying and analysing and questioning everything we see.
This need for detachment also explains the ‘look’ of the film. Shot in black and white, the film looks so much like a Bunuel film from the ‘Viridiana’ era. Bunuel never wanted to coax the viewer into his films with unnecessarily well-composed shots, he believed that the image should serve the story and the tone and not simply be beautiful for it’s own sake. Haneke has followed a similar path here, and while the film is unmistakably well composed and strangely beautiful, it is also stark and brutal and real.
This is another truly remarkable film from one of the finest living filmmakers. It is not easy to watch, and it is not as openly shocking as many of his previous films; but it is intelligent and mature and there is not a single moment in the entire 145-minute running time that you doubt you are in the hands of an absolute master of the cinema.
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