The Official Word: Michael Haneke’s latest, mesmerising work surveys the life of a rural Protestant village in northern Germany over several months from 1913 to 1914, ending, tellingly, on the eve of World War One.

[Please note: This is our short festival review. For the full White Ribbon review go HERE.]

Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s latest, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, marks his first film in the German language since Funny Games in 1997. It’s also his return to Europe after remaking that same film in America two years ago.

Shot in stark black and white, this precise, mesmerising work surveys the life of a rural Protestant village in northern Germany over several months from 1913 to 1914, ending, tellingly, on the eve of World War One. Moving from house to house, we visit the homes of the pastor, the baron, the doctor and the steward. As we experience the rituals and intimacies of domestic lives, strange, violent acts occur: the doctor’s horse falls over a trip wire, the crops in the field are destroyed, an accident happens in the mill…

It’s tempting to read the film as a comment on where German society was heading but Haneke keeps his story and themes closer to his chest than that, so that it ends up being a more universal essay on repression and violence. Partly a portrait of a time and place in history and partly a study of how sickness in the home can lead to sickness in society, it’s also a mystery that, in usual Haneke fashion, is down to us to unravel.

Our Verdict: As art cinema goes, there are few filmmakers who can rival the compelling richness of Haneke. The White Ribbon is no different. Layered with seething tensions in this small village, poking into various assumptions and prejudices, and gradually peeling away the innocence of an age about to end, Haneke creates a story which is frightening as much for its absolute realism than the many varied emotions and themes he touches upon.

The whole film is shot in black and white but avoids a stylised contrast in favour of the many shades of grey that form real life, similarly he avoids overt moral judgements and showboating statements conveyed through dramatic confrontation. Instead Haneke gradually envelopes his audience in a quietly pervading sense of time and place, and with it comes the dawning realisations of the realities these people face. The hardships of rural life (beginning with several ‘accidents’) and the physical and brutality that runs underneath such small communities could so easily have been impacted upon the audience with sudden revelations, but to offer a dawning revelation such as that provided by The White Ribbon is a truly valuable cinematic experience.

That doesn’t, however, mean that it is an entirely pleasant one. A friend of mine remarked on leaving the cinema that Haneke has succeeded in sucking all of the joy from cinema. Many people are likely to feel the same. There are few heady highs to be seen here, and even the heart-wrenching lows deny the usual adrenaline rush we’re sold by Hollywood drama, and so some might think – ‘what’s the point’?

The answer is that this is cinema at it’s most visceral and real. A genuine window into another world, now long gone. The recreation lacks artifice, and the showy trappings many of us have become accustomed to, and that’s what makes it so genuine and its story and themes so all-encompassing. If that’s something you appreciate in a film, then there will be few better than The White Ribbon. If not, this will be a long, frustrating and uncomfortable two and a half hours.

Rating: *****

or