Out of time

Rating: 7/10 (24 February 2013)

In Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon', a serious of dark, mysterious events overtake a German village in the year immediately before world war one. Haneke's portrait of life in this era is mesmerising but more poetic than realistic: the tyranny of aristocracy, the climate of sexual repression and the mask of everyday quietness and civility seem deliberately overdone, albeit in an understated way; the film's schoolteacher hero seems almost absurdly unauthoratitive, and it's hard to imagine such a person surviving in a real school in any age. Yet the film, shot in black and white, has a certain power, and remains watchable in spite of its length. The odd thing is that I'm still not at all certain what Haneke's purpose was in making it.