A Brooding and Beautiful Film

Michael Haneke's latest film, The White Ribbon, isn’t for everyone, but those who appreciate it will enjoy analyzing it endlessly.

The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) is a painfully brooding film, psychologically harsh and direct in dialogue, mysterious in plot, and cinematically beautiful to watch.

Winner of the 2009 Palme d’Or at Cannes, Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke delivers an experience that will eat at your soul, if you can ever figure out what happened to whom, by whom, and for what reason. If nothing else, it will provide grist for the art house filmgoer, not to mention debate for overly-earnest film studies majors.

Those who don’t appreciate the film’s merits (and there are many) will no doubt derisively be told they didn’t get it. There are many clues and many possible interpretations, but those hoping for a conclusion that ties everything up in a nice ribbon, white or otherwise, will be sorely disappointed.

Shot in black and white, and set in a small protestant village in Germany prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the film is narrated by the local schoolteacher who, in old age, reflects back on a series of inexplicable events that may or may not be malevolent or related to one another. A doctor falls and is seriously injured when his horse trips over a wire strung between two trees. A farmer’s wife falls through the rotten floor boards of an ancient barn to her death while working as a labourer on the baronial estate. Several children are missing and later we find with horror that brutal punishments have been meted out, but we are never certain if they are the intended victims. Perhaps they are witnesses to or representatives of other larger crimes.

Both adults and children are guilty, to be sure, but their actions must be understood in light of a larger context, and no one character or action provides the key to omniscience or comprehension. Innocence and forgiveness are valorized but ultimately cannot be afforded.

The film is Tolstoyan in many respects – as the viewer, you are dropped into middle of the action, and it’s up to you to make sense of the large and interrelated cast of characters and what is happening around you. Nonetheless, the film’s slow pacing and careful editing allow you time to think and digest the consequences of episodic violence – made all the more more devastating because most of it occurs off screen. The narration helps, but even the school teacher cannot entirely understand the series of small yet horrible events that, taken together, seem larger than his capacity to make sense of them.

The film finely illustrates a culture where biblical severity, retribution, and obedience to authority are the norm, conclusively destroying the revisionist notion of simpler days in Central Europe before the horrors of war, economic collapse, and, ultimately, fascism.

At the same time, it might too didactically yield the conclusion that the roots of 20th century conflict and genocide lie in local, petty vengeance. Read more generally, the film speaks to the dangers of using vigilantism to right the wrongs of the past and the impossibility of escaping from history. Tradition offers no such salve. Intergenerational violence and hypocrisy yield powerful legacies indeed.