Saturday March 13, 2010

The White Ribbon

Austria / Germany 2009          143 minutes    15 certificate

Directed by Michael Haneke, starring Burghart Klaussner, Christian Friedel, Josef Bierbichler, Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur

Chilling, brilliant, disturbing – three adjectives frequently applied to the work of Austrian director Michael Haneke, arguably the premier cinematic auteur of the last 20 years, and someone who expertly uses the medium of film to dissect and dispassionately scrutinise Western culture. The White Ribbon, winner of the Palme D’Or at last year’s Cannes film festival, has already been hailed as superior to Hidden, his 2007 thriller that ranked numero uno in a recent Times survey of the top 20 films of the last decade.

Set in a remote village in rural Germany just prior to the outbreak of World War One, The White Ribbon documents the mysterious crimes taking place in an apparently conventional and peaceful community that reveals itself to be deeply dysfunctional beneath the surface – the local doctor is caught in a trip wire; an infant is abducted and beaten; a boy with Down’s syndrome is nearly blinded in a brutal assault; crops are trashed and barns ignited, there is bitterness, abuse, secrecy, grievance, unhealthy alliance and revenge. It is a ghost story, a whodunnit, a historical parable but without resolution or denouement, lesson or justice, although the narrator invites us to see it as prescient of later events in German history, perhaps a contemplation of what motivates people to extremism or antisocial behaviour.

Like the rest of the director’s oeuvre, this is a typically open ended and enigmatic narrative, and the viewer is left with the task of how to interpret it. If you want a tidy ending then this might not be for you. But this is not cinema as sedative or escape – it is a uniquely intelligent cinema that shakes you up and shifts your perspective on the world outside the theatre. Don’t miss it.

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