The White Ribbon (15.)
Directed by Michael Haneke.
Starring Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, Rainer Bock, Ursina Lardi. Subtitled. Black and white. 145 mins.
He knows when you’ve been naughty and doesn’t accept that you’ve been good – it’s time for another dose of the hardline according to Michael Haneke. His latest (the winner of the Barn Door at Cannes) is a savage indictment. I’m not quite sure of what, but something is indicted and savagely so, which has to be good.
It lasts two and half hours, is shot in stark black and white and resembles an episode of Midsomer Murders written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. In the year before the outbreak of the First World War, various individuals in a small, grimly Protestant village are struck down in a series of unexplained incidents, starting with the doctor being thrown from his horse by a trip wire. At the beginning an elderly, off screen, narrator assures us that this story may shed light on latter events in Germany.
Haneke is not a man to take up two and half hours of your time and not make you feel every minute of it. That’s not to suggest the film is dull, Haneke is a fearsomely impressive film maker and The White Ribbon is grimly compelling. As a piece of film making it as a good as anything seen this years. But even the odd moments of dark humour can’t leaven the clanking oppressive weight of seriousness it drags around.
I have to admire the genius inappropriateness of the woman who sat behind me with a bucket of popcorn. I don’t think she actually managed more than two or three mouthfuls throughout. She was probably expecting to find out whodunit – a vain hope as any Haneke viewer knows.
Except there is a resolution of sorts, but the film hedges in committing to it. When David Lynch (whose Lost Highway, Haneke “borrowed” from for Hidden) leaves you perplexed there’s a genuine sense of the unknowable. With Haneke I suspect the ambiguity is there to obfuscate what are relatively straightforward insights.
In the film we see authority figure like doctors, priests and landowners treat people, especially children, appallingly, continuing Haneke’s obsession with documenting abusive power structures and relationships. All of these seem to mirror his relationship with audiences – his film penalizes us by denying us the standard narrative rewards they set us up to expect. Typical of Haneke films, The White Ribbon is like being punished for a crime you didn’t commit.
Reviews of other Michael Haneke films
Funny Games US
Amour
The White Ribbon (15.)
Directed by Michael Haneke.
Starring Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaussner, Rainer Bock, Ursina Lardi. Subtitled. Black and white. 145 mins.
He knows when you’ve been naughty and doesn’t accept that you’ve been good – it’s time for another dose of the hardline according to Michael Haneke. His latest (the winner of the Barn Door at Cannes) is a savage indictment. I’m not quite sure of what, but something is indicted and savagely so, which has to be good.
It lasts two and half hours, is shot in stark black and white and resembles an episode of Midsomer Murders written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. In the year before the outbreak of the First World War, various individuals in a small, grimly Protestant village are struck down in a series of unexplained incidents, starting with the doctor being thrown from his horse by a trip wire. At the beginning an elderly, off screen, narrator assures us that this story may shed light on latter events in Germany.
Haneke is not a man to take up two and half hours of your time and not make you feel every minute of it. That’s not to suggest the film is dull, Haneke is a fearsomely impressive film maker and The White Ribbon is grimly compelling. As a piece of film making it as a good as anything seen this years. But even the odd moments of dark humour can’t leaven the clanking oppressive weight of seriousness it drags around.
I have to admire the genius inappropriateness of the woman who sat behind me with a bucket of popcorn. I don’t think she actually managed more than two or three mouthfuls throughout. She was probably expecting to find out whodunit – a vain hope as any Haneke viewer knows.
Except there is a resolution of sorts, but the film hedges in committing to it. When David Lynch (whose Lost Highway, Haneke “borrowed” from for Hidden) leaves you perplexed there’s a genuine sense of the unknowable. With Haneke I suspect the ambiguity is there to obfuscate what are relatively straightforward insights.
In the film we see authority figure like doctors, priests and landowners treat people, especially children, appallingly, continuing Haneke’s obsession with documenting abusive power structures and relationships. All of these seem to mirror his relationship with audiences – his film penalizes us by denying us the standard narrative rewards they set us up to expect. Typical of Haneke films, The White Ribbon is like being punished for a crime you didn’t commit.
Reviews of other Michael Haneke films
Funny Games US
Amour
