The White Ribbon (2009, Haneke)

The first compliment you have to pay to Haneke's The White Ribbon is that it looks gorgeous. It's the kind of glorious black and white cinematography that harks back to the best of Ingmar Bergman. The high contrast of black and white, as well as the sharp framing and strong visual direction, create the perfect sense of clinical sterility for Haneke's aesthetic. And then the plot begins to unravel with a series of accidents in this picturesque, pre-World War I German village. There's a sense of foreboding, brooding, and danger. And as Haneke tells his tale and the accidents build on one another, related in, again, almost clinical fashion... one thing is certain: the children are evil. In fact, I felt like I was watching a more meditative and lyrical companion piece to Village of the Damned.

And in many ways, that's kind of the heart of the film. But instead of science fiction, we're treated to a study of and exploration into, perhaps not evil, but certainly aberrant psychology and the way strong patriarchal authoritarianism can erode and decay over generations, mutating from some kind of moral, religious, healthy, and helpful code of behavior and twisting into something perverse and amoral. And Haneke, through the voice-over of the village's schoolteacher, frames this as an explanation of subsequent Nazism. Yet, in typical Haneke fashion, this voice-over established by a character we come to like and trust eventually abandons us without really drawing much of a conclusion to the proceedings. It's a film without an epilogue, or a thesis paper without much of a conclusion. To confuse matters even more, Haneke peoples the village with not only the likable schoolteacher to provide a counterpoint to the authoritative baron and pastor and rapist, incestuous doctor; but also with ingenue Eva, her stern yet fair father, and the pastor's youngest son Gustav, who clearly has a very healthy and positive relationship with his father that is 180 degrees the opposite of some of his brothers and sisters.

So while there's a poison in the village that's fermenting from generation to generation and across the class system, Haneke muddies the waters of his own argument. There's true compassion, understanding, and tenderness between Gustav and his father in his efforts to save a wounded bird; and a carriage ride into the country for a picnic lunch between the school teacher and Eva calls to mind Bergman's idyllic Smiles of a Summer Night, and the respect the school teacher shows his tentative ingenue is heartfelt. Even in the sternness with which the pastor disciplines his most worrisome children, we see the loving intention behind it, and a confusion and inability on the pastor's part to create any kind of effective discipline for his children who may simply have been born damned and evil. He can't even see the degree of twisted perversion in front of him and the degree of heinousness of his childrens' crimes; he's still living blindly in a pastoral existence where the worst crime he can conceive is his children being late for dinner, and his belief that if he can only teach them to value and blindly and whole-heartedly obey puritanical, Protestant, and patriarchal, moral codes... righteousness and goodness will decidedly follow. Along these same lines, another of the pastor's sons, Martin, even seems to absolve his father with the admission that he's simply evil in the way he offers God the opportunity to disempower him and kill him if his aberrant behavior and desires aren't natural and God-given.

What we're effectively left with is an argument of nature vs. nurture, and one that presents both sides of the equation while not offering much of a solution. In true Haneke fashion, the initial offering of an explanation and solution is subverted, and instead the audience is left only with a very ordered and detailed list of atrocities, evidence of both the success and complete failure of a society's system of governance, as well as the wild card of genetic morality or immorality, and finally, a boatload of questions with no clear answers. But that, in essence, is the genius of Haneke. Instead of wrapping things up with a final reel and a pat answer, his films turn the theme back to the audience itself for thought, meditation, and discussion. Likely extremely frustrating to those who like their answers spoon-fed to them, but Haneke is an expert at this style of cinematic sleight-of-hand and audience confrontation. And The White Ribbon finds him in top form, working with pristine yet lush visuals and an exceptionally talented cast. To call on Bergman's name one last time, what ultimately makes this film so effective, powerful, and likely timeless, is the way Haneke gets such naturalistic, Bergman-esque performances from his actors, places them in such an evocative, picturesque setting, and then counterpoints it with such sharp, stark visuals and his masterful sense of clinical detachment.

10/10