'The White Ribbon,' the new film from Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke, can best be described as chilling. The slow, austere aesthetic that pervades the film creates a palpable sense of dread, transforming everyday events as seemingly banal as children singing into moments of horror and suspense. 'The White Ribbon' examines the place of violence in Germany in the pre'minus;World War II years, before Hitler came to power, with finely crafted brushstrokes culminating in a painting that is simultaneously bleak and beautiful.
The film follows the inhabitants of a small, isolated German village over the course of a few years, roughly from 1913 to 1914. The village's schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), provides the film's narration and warns that the story may not be entirely true, due to the distance of memory and the proliferation of rumor.
What follows is an account of a group of people who experience a series of strange events: disturbing acts of violence that threaten to tear the community apart. Everyone in the village seems to be a suspect in the burning of a barn, the seemingly accidental death of a farm worker and two separate attacks on children.
While it is tempting to read the film as a mystery - looking for clues, finding suspects and deducing whodunit - Haneke leaves just enough doubt as to who the actual perpetrator is to prevent a clear explanation. The relationships between the characters in the village take center stage, probing the power dynamics between baron and farmers, caretakers and the injured and, especially, parents and children. The children of 'The White Ribbon' are among the central protagonists (or possibly antagonists), and director Haneke reserves some of his most pointed commentary for them.
Throughout the film, the children of the various villagers act as if they are hiding something from both their parents and the audience, and they seem to have an uncanny connection to the accidents that keep happening.
One girl asks the schoolteacher if dreams can come true. When prompted further, she reveals that she has had a dream that another child in the village will be tortured, and, sure enough, her dream comes true. Did she really dream it first, or did she know something was going to happen from the other children? As the schoolteacher has already warned, the truth of these events is elusive and possibly unknowable.
The film's title is a reference to a significant scene involving children, another hint that they are the main focus of the story. The village pastor, in order to punish two of his children, forces them to wear white armbands that serve to remind them of purity and innocence. The pure white of the ribbon stains the otherwise black wardrobes of the children, a direct marker of the cruel and damaging punishments dealt out by their father.
Despite this apparent condemnation of strict parenting, the film does not portray the children as innocent victims. These children are possibly even more jealous, vengeful and power'minus;hungry than the adults in the village.
The film views the children through a lens of distrust, and it is with the unpredictable nature of their actions that the movie gains its sense of dread and much of its power. In each scene in which the children are interacting with the adults or each other, there is a sense that the tensions created by the social class of their families and the stern reprimands of their parents may burst out of them with violent force at any time.
Haneke has stated that the film is his examination of the roots of Nazism. While it certainly makes a well'minus;argued point that certain kinds of cultural institutions like strict religious values, authoritative parenting and resentment of authority figures can prime a society for accepting a totalitarian regime, Haneke's creation is also much more than that.
The way in which the film uses formal technique, a mirror of the lifestyle of its characters, also makes a salient point about the ways in which all people interact with others. Each social interaction between people brings with it entire histories, both personal and cultural, and there is a myriad of ways in which violence and its consequences can come to saturate a community.
