The White Ribbon - Palme D'Or Winner at Last Year's Cannes Film Festival

"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark."
--from "Hamlet"

Having seen "Cache" and "Funny Games," it has become clear to me that writer/director Michael Haneke is more interested in giving the audience questions than he is in handing out answers. This method of film making is bound to frustrate a lot of people, but it makes him one of the more fascinating directors working today. With each movie, he forces us to find the answers to what he shows us ourselves, and not everyone will come to the same conclusions. In an age where audiences desperately want everything spelled out to them so they won't feel stupid, it is very daring of Haneke to get his captive audience to engage themselves fully and not be at all passive about what they are shown.

Look, I don't mean to sound all high and mighty about this. I did come out of his latest film "The White Ribbon," winner of the Palme d'Or at 2009's Cannes Film Festival, desperately wanting someone to level with me over what it was all about. With "Cache," I came out thinking I had a good idea of who was shooting those videos, but I could never be sure. Then there was "Funny Games" (be it the original or the American remake) which ended with me wondering if what I saw was real or a figment of the young men's collective imagination. The questions I had coming out of "The White Ribbon" seem to be double of his previous films combined. In retrospect, while initially frustrating, this turned out not to be such a bad thing when I look back several days after seeing it.

With "The White Ribbon," Haneke said that he set out to show "the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature." It is set in the Protestant village of Eichwald, Germany between July 1913 and 10 August, 1914, and the story is seen through the eyes of the village schoolteacher who reflects on the unnerving events many years later. The film starts off with the town doctor being thrown off this horse unexpectedly after the animal trips over an unseen wire. No one can figure out why the wire was there, and it remains a mystery while the doctor recuperates.

Later on, more frightening events occur including the death of a worker employed by the town's Baron. She dies after falling through the rotted floorboards, and her son believes this was due to the negligence on the Baron's part. This leads to the son to take his scythe to the Baron's cabbage field and destroying it. The repercussions of his actions echo throughout the entire community and affect everyone. Next, the handicapped child of a midwife is found severely beaten to where he may be blind. As certain people get closer and closer to discovering who perpetrated these heinous acts, the more we see this town for what it really is.

From a distance, it looks like a peaceful town with your typical church going people who look like they wouldn't harm a fly. But we soon come to see that it is an intensely strict religious town lorded over by not just the Baron, but the puritanical pastor as well. The pastor announces to his children in dramatic fashion that the following evening, he will punish them harshly for their transgressions. We don't know what they did, but the following evening the pastor will have each one whipped with a cane. This came looks too thin to leave much of a mark, but they yelp in pain much harder than you'd expect. Some of the other children will be forced to where a white ribbon (hence the movie's title) to remind them of the path of purity and righteousness from which they have strayed. When we see these ribbons being worn, they look to be symbolic of the stars Nazis made the Jews wear during Word War II.

But it gets even worse from there as the doctor eventually recovers, and we eventually see that he is far from a good person to say the least. Ever since his wife's death, the midwife has been there for him, but he soon humiliates her for all she is worth. Through their arguments, we also find that he has been molesting his daughter, and the midwife has known about this all along. While the doctor truly deserves the most severe of punishments to be inflicted, the midwife who is entitled to feel wronged as she has been is no less in the clear. Can she expose the doctor and live with the part she played in all this? Remember Mo'Nique's character in "Precious"?

If you think I have given away too much of this movie, trust me when I say that I haven't. "The White Ribbon" is constructed to bring about different reactions from its audience, and there is no one way to look at it. Many will have their own opinion as to what really happened, and that is exactly the way Haneke wants it.

The way I see it, "The White Ribbon" is a very strong examination which shows that the more we try to keep the children from sinning, the more likely they are to sin. Those who have been abused are more likely than not to do the same to others. Throughout the movie, these kids are given unrealistically high expectations and standards to reach but will never be able to, and it all it does is warp their already twisted values. In order to be free from sin (if such a thing is possible), you have to understand the nature of sin first. No one in this world can ever truly be free from it. Instead of protecting the kids, the adults are just making things worse for them. One boy in particular has already perfected his Stanley Kubrick glare.

Michael Haneke remains a master not just of suspense, but of implication as well. We don't see much of the violence that is perpetrated in the film, so we can only guess how it looked. The scene where the children are whipped is all done behind a closed door that Haneke focuses the camera on. It makes you wonder what is worse; seeing the children being beaten or hearing them being beaten. We wait with considerable tension as we look at that door because we know what is going to happen. The question is, when will it happen?

There's no need to single out any performances here because every single actor and actress is uniformly excellent. The cinematography by Christian Berger is brilliant, and the choice to show this movie in black and white is perfect for the time the story takes place in. If there is one problem I have with "The White Ribbon," it's that it runs on a bit too long. At a running time of two and a half hours, I found myself getting a bit restless. Not that I have anything against long movies mind you, but my instinct said this one could have been a bit shorter.

Still, "The White Ribbon" is visionary film making that has Michael Haneke's signature all over it. I'm not gonna tell you if it deserved the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival since no one was smart enough to invite me over there at their own generous expense. Maybe next year. Maybe...

***½ out of ****