The White Ribbon

Written and Directed By: Michael Haneke

Starring: Christian Friedel, Ernst Jacobi, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, and Susanne Lothar

Director of Photography: Christian Berger, Editor: Monika Willi, Production Designer: Christoph Kanter

Rated: R for some disturbing content involving violence and sexuality.

    Michael Haneke is the type of director who tries to get under your skin, but does it intellectually more than viscerally. His films are often seen as violent, disturbing, and gruesome. But Mr. Haneke rarely shows us violence on screen—he instead suggests through his deceptive camera ideas and stories that are greater than our own control. He demands that we study our own method of watching more than the film itself, especially in films like Caché and Funny Games.

    All which makes his latest film, The White Ribbon, a curiosity. Returning to his natural language of German after a decade of films in French and English, Mr. Haneke returns to a script that while specifically focuses on Germany and its culture, is a universal tale about family, religion, and most of all, power. The White Ribbon, which is one of his most academic films, is also one of his most precise and engrossing.

    In a way, Mr. Haneke gives away the ending of his film before it ever begins. The film opens with the narration that explains that he will recall events in order to make the present clearer. The events, in question, take place in a Protestant village in Northern Germany in 1913, just before the First World War. Mr. Haneke has chosen the time and place deliberately, as the children of the film are those who will grow up and embrace National Socialism and take crime and punishment to a much greater threat.

    But in the village, a new schoolteacher arrives during a wave of mysterious crimes with no perpetrator. A doctor is knocked of his horse. A boy is beaten. A farm is set on fire. These shocking and brutal moments though make up very little of Mr. Haneke’s two and a half hour running time. The majority of the film is instead focused on the relationship between parents and children, men and women, and authority and the workers. Each scene is a play for power between two parties, where one dominates the other, and the other resists.

    The Foucault-like struggle is made more complex by Mr. Haneke’s astute coldness and realism. More than ever, he brings you into his characters and normalizes them. He often uses close-ups and shots from behind the back, and his characters speak realistically, to give a feeling of real observing. The film, shot digitally and then restored into black and white, gives a feeling of vintage photographs, as if this is our ancestors, no worse than we are, committing the same sort of crimes we are responsible.

    Some have criticized Mr. Haneke’s film for being too simple by complicating the matter. Who is responsible for the future atrocities? Everyone, and at the same time, no one. However, his message is much more frightening, one that asks about the very nature of human beings when in a state of nature. Mr. Haneke weaves his camera, giving us the minimal amount needed to push our minds deeper and deeper into the truth we already know. His shots always choose the most reserved access into the world, hiding us from what we fear, but letting us know it is out there. And while some think it is simply about Nazism, I think The White Ribbon says much more now about religious fanaticism and the control and abuse of power. In the end, the rebellion is always one step away, and while shocking, it is never unexpected.

READ AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR MICHAEL HANEKE