The White Ribbon (2009, R)

Rating: Null/10 (2 November 2010)

"The White Ribbon" begins with a series of mysterious happenings in a small northern German village before World War I to provide insight on the broader history of Germany and the rise of fascism. The director (Michael Haneke) holds back just enough information to prevent viewers from jumping to conclusions, feeling resolved about the story, and moving on to something else. If you want answers, you have to connect the dots and read the signs. It isn't difficult, just look for the gang of little angelic-demonic faces marching around like the cast of "Village of the Damned". But the controversial part is trying to explain how they become how they are.
The actors were chosen for their likeness to historical black and white photographs, and the film is presented in black and white (originally shot in color and then intentionally drained of color and modern elements later). The influence is a mixture of Ingmar Bergman black and white films and the mood of classic horror films. The camera slowly lingers on scenes. Most noticeably it pauses twice to merely let you listen to violent action that occurs off screen.
The story is told by the town school teacher (Christian Friedel) as an older narrator reflecting on the strange events (narration by Ernst Jacobi). Although the events occur in temporal order, the movie cuts sharply between events. A series of tragic events occur and receive no outward resolution: a doctor on his horse trips over a line intentionally tied around two trees, a woman falls through a rotten floor after being assigned to lighter work, a baby becomes sick after a window is left open, and two young kids are taken and found ritualistically beaten. Along with these is a young proletariat man who feels the bubbling of dissent and rebellion. He blames the Baron (who employs half the town) for his poverty and strikes back on a cabbage garden. These are only the mysterious public happenings. More happens in private.
The movie mixes benign acts of goodness and normalcy between the acts of horror, which all occur off camera as if the film itself adheres to secrecy like the culture it's observing. We know something is mysterious about the children. They start to act like a little collective, which amounts to every school age kid in the village, roaming around town together and appearing outside windows always with the excuse of being there to "help". The pastor's oldest daughter, Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus), seems to be the leader of the kids. It's best to begin with the assumption that the children are a parable for something like a nascent Hitler's Youth and future Nazism. Then try to figure out why they act the way they do. What would cause people to become susceptible to such a deadly ideological movement? This is where the film becomes most mysterious, and where answers vary the most. The kids have troubled family issues for one. The town doctor (Rainer Bock) molests his daughter and humiliates the midwife, who serves as his assistant and long time lover. The town pastor is an authoritarian purist. After his kids are late to diner, he makes them go to bed hungry and sentences them to 10 strikes each with a cane in front of their siblings. He forces his oldest kids to wear white ribbons around their arms to remind them of the value of innocence and purity (or, that is, publicly humiliate them in front of the rest of the town). He also makes his oldest son, Martin (Leonard Proxauf), bind his hands at night to prevent him from destroying his nerves (from masturbating, that is).
Martin's reactions to his inquisitorial father are particularly compelling. The performances by the children are collectively subtle, patient, and psychologically convincing. Martin's face is pure anguish. We see him dangerously walk on the ledge of a bridge as a God-test. His test: if he doesn't lose his balance and avoids falling, then he knows God doesn't disapprove of his actions. Is he blaming himself for his father's extreme discipline? Is he a central perpetrator in the acts of violence?
Another important theme is the public intrusion on private life. Doors are rarely locked and windows rarely closed. Such inappropriate behavior would instantly raise suspicions, and then you would have a gang of blond headed angels staring at you outside your window as if they wondered off the set of "Village of the Damned". They act like good neighbors to each other, but they also lurk around corners spying on each other (as Nietzsche liked to phrase it).
The parents, especially the pastor, protect their honor and dignity by ignoring the truth of their children, and the children mimic this behavior. Just try to get the truth out of anyone in such an environment. Most of the mysterious acts of violence go unreported, except for the ramblings of a girl about her dreams. The only way to hint at the truth is to dream of it and pass along your dreams to a rare truth seeker, the local teacher, since only fraudulence is allowed in the public domain.
If the narrative has any historical plausibility, then it must implicate our dark side as humans or as a society. Otherwise it would be impossible to generalize from the events that take place in a mere single rural town to a whole nation. Something about our typical responses to mordant themes in the movie – humiliation, intolerance, abuse, collectivization, invasion of privacy, and public fraudulence – cause the local children to become susceptible to violence for whatever purpose they might secretly have. Most of these causes always exist to some extent. The best thing about the movie is that we can ask the same questions about any culture, and we can wonder whether these causes are becoming prevalent enough around us to nurture terrorism or worse.