The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Historical drama

DIRECTOR

Michael Haneke

WRITER

Michael Haneke

STARS

Burghart Klaußner, Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch

BEFORE

1997 In Haneke’s Funny Games, two psychopaths play cruel “games” on the family they have taken hostage.

2001 Haneke’s The Piano Teacher tracks the destructive power of sexual fantasies.

2005 In Caché (Hidden), Haneke exposes a family to its past, but who is behind the ensuing violence?

AFTER

2012 Old age deals a cruel hand in Haneke’s Amour (Love).

Having spent most of his working life in TV, Michael Haneke was 47 when he made his first movie, The Seventh Continent, in 1989. Since then, his reputation as one of Europe’s most important directors has only grown, with movies that are as stark as they are sophisticated, exploring humanity to disturbing effect.

The specter of death

Shot with an exquisitely detailed sense of realism, The White Ribbon tells the story of life in a small German village just before World War I. There, a series of cruel and mysterious events sow fear and confusion among the villagers, from the tenant farmers to the baron. Murders go unsolved, and mayhem reigns. Meanwhile, the local pastor forces his children to wear a white ribbon for any misdeed they have committed. The ribbon is meant to symbolize the innocence from which they have strayed, but it actually seems to represent their violation by those institutions that should keep children safe—home, family, and church. The ribbon means nothing to anyone because there is no purity to be found.

There is a shard of optimism in the form of a young couple falling in love, but the terrible realization is that a generation of children whose development is being warped by authority in the movie would come of age as the supporters of Nazism.

The congregation that worships in the village church is rife with secrets and resentments; is the violence in their midst a sign of the barbarism that will follow during the two world wars?

What else to watch: Le Corbeau (1943) ✵ Rashomon (1950) ✵ The Seventh Seal (1957) ✵ The Tin Drum (1979) ✵ Caché (2005)