This is a scary movie. No, make that a very scary movie.
"The White Ribbon," written and directed by German-born Michael Haneke, is set in a small German town shortly before the outbreak of World War I, a time when the rumbles of change marking the arrival of the 20th century were just beginning to shake everyone's equilibrium.
But not yet in Haneke's town, where the Baron, the Pastor, the Doctor and the Steward hold absolute power while conditions are basically the same as they have been for centuries on the hard-scrabble farms and in the clean-but-shabby homes. The leaders have frustrations, too, but they have a choice of escapes. The poor exist to serve, and the symbolic quartet exercises complete control. And this control moves to the next generation, composed of the children. One of Haneke's points is that a generation down the road, in the early 1930s, these children were in the perfect position to be the nucleus of the Nazi party.
On one level, "The White Ribbon" is a paean to sadism and masochism, sometimes in a sexual context, sometimes as just a glorification of pain, either as giver or receiver. The Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) prays as he canes his children, then humiliates them by forcing them to wear white ribbons, even to school. The Steward (Josef Bierbichler) glories in punishing his, even as he exudes a feeling that it is the Baron (Ulrich Tukur) who is on the receiving end.
The Teacher (Christian Fredel), who also serves as narrator along with Ernst Jacobi in the later going, is too young and basically too weak and insecure to hold real power, but he sees things, even if he does not understand them, and his courtship of Eva (Leonie Benesch) provides the most innocent and charming scenes in the movie. And Haneke spares no one in his vicious tale. Even the Doctor (Rainer Bock) is involved in some kinky goings-on with his Midwife (Susanne Lothar).
When the children are not being beaten or molested, they turn on the weaker children, or they torture animals, or set sneaky traps to hurt the adults, and in one symbolic scene of what Haneke sees, there is a vicious attack on a field of cabbages.
Good acting, fine direction and writing. "The White Ribbon" is an Oscar nominee in the Best Foreign Language category, and Christian Berger is a nominee for Best Cinematographer. The camera work is marvelous, and the ghostly, washed-out, almost black-and-white look comes from Berger shooting the film in color, then bleaching out most of that color. It's fascinating.
Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
–Joe