The White Ribbon (2009)

I'm pretty sure I've read someone praising The White Ribbon (In German: Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) in a Thursday Movie Picks post ages ago --that, or I just add movies on my watchlist at random. Anyway, I saw scrolling through my watchlist, I saw it was from Michael Haneke (I loved his Amour) and decided to watch it.

The film is set shortly before the outbreak of World War I in a small village in Northen Germany where strange and inexplicable things begin to happen. First, the doctor (Rainer Bock) is injured when his horse stumbles on a hidden wire; then, a female worker falls into a hole in the rotten floor of a farm and dies; the baron's (Ulrich Tukur) son is found hung upside-down and tortured; the handicapped son of a midwife (Susanne Lothar) is brutally battered. All this is narrated by the town's schoolteacher (Christian Friedel) who in the meantime courts the baron's nanny (Leonie Benesch).

The White Ribbon's is a complex story whose purpose is to show the roots of evil, as Haneke himself said in an interview, and that it's the extreme, punitive environment of Protestant Germany that eventually led to Adolf Hilter and Nazism. And it does that. The film indeed portrays a community in which cruelty and evil are a daily occurrence, where the relationship between its citizens is based on violence, the perfect place to incubate a soon-to-come monstrosity. Unfortunately, the story isn't nearly as intriguing as it's supposed to be as it all happens too slowly and quite boringly. Also, the narration doesn't really work as the narrator, Ernst Jacobi, is dull and lacks any charm whatsoever. 

The characters didn't convince me much either. They have depth and they are believable but at the same time they feel superficial. We get to see who they are, but we don't really get to see why they are the way they are. I know that they are the product of the environment they were brought up in, but the film would have benefited from an insight into each character. But at least the cast, every single member of it, children and teens included, does a really good job. 

Wega Film, X Filme

On the other hand, there's the visual aspect. The White Ribbon is indeed very beautiful to look at. From the haunting, atmospheric black and white cinematography by Christian Berger, to the impeccable costumes and sets, this is easily the film's best aspect.