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DVD Review: The White Ribbon The White Ribbon is a drama starring Christian Freidl, Ulrich Turkl and Burghart Klaussner. Directed by Michael Haneke. |
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| DVD Review: The White Ribbon |
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| Written by Administrator |
| Wednesday, 21 July 2010 12:48 |
 The White Ribbon is a drama starring Christian Freidl, Ulrich Turkl and Burghart Klaussner. Directed by Michael Haneke. There is something wrong here. In a seemingly quaint German village pre-WW1, one unpleasant event occurs after another and no one is quite sure why. There is a seeming sense of order in the village. It is run by a baron who owns most of the land and is the primary employer. There is a pastor who is the moral authoritarian in the village, along with a doctor and a young schoolteacher who is smitten with a young woman from a nearby village (he narrates the story years later). Like Hanekeís most notable films (Funny Games; Cache), a sense of perfect order is upset by a strange, unexplainable occurrence which slowly spreads through the formally ideal sense of order like a cancer, until it destroys what once was. It all starts when a wire trips the horse being ridden by the doctor, leading to the horse being destroyed and the doctor being severely injured. Other strange and sinister events soon follow:
An increasing sense of unease, dread and helplessness soon permeates the village. There is no uniform plan on how to handle the situation or to uncover the culprits. The baronís wife flees to Italy. The pastor, on the other hand, turns even more strict on his children (the white ribbon of the title refers to the ribbon he forces his children to wear to remind them to be pure and chaste). He will not spare the rod, or public humiliation, in order to enforce his will. It soon falls on the schoolteacher to unravel the mystery. What he discovers is disturbing, yet he must bring it to the town leaders. Will they believe what he uncovers? More importantly, will they accept it? Like most of Hanekeís films, there is a quiet distance, or coldness, in his work than can be off-putting. Furthermore, his mysteries tend never to be solved completely. He rarely explains his mysteries, for the purpose of them is not the answer, but how his characters react to the mystery, how it changes them and the ìglass houseî world they have established Other reviews have referred to the film that is an allegory, or ominously announces the arrival of Nazi Germany. No Haneke film is that simple. There are multiple potential answers. Is the violence a product of a repressive society hidden under an ideal faÁade? Did one act of malevolence cause the town leaders to overreact and create a backlash, thus destroying their village in the name of saving it? Does telling someone they are evil actually instead cause them to be evil? Though perhaps too cold and quiet at times (and lacking a bit of the eerie discomfort created by Cache), The White Ribbon is another strong, challenging work by one of todayís leading directors. There are numerous potential answers to the mysteries he creates, yet he knows life is too complicated for a pat answer every time. |
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