Political allegory

Rating: 7/10 (16 November 2009)

Filmmakers can be excellent in the visual narrative, the structuring of a movie or the staged play itself. Only a handful of them are able to handle these three qualities simultaneously. Haneke for example, although competent in the latter two, misses visual imagination. His movies are mostly too static to be relevant in say 20 years.
Haneke's trademark is the hiding of the story beneath the surface and in this respect Das weisse Band can be seen as Caché 2. Besides heavy borrowing from his own movies there is also an extreme amount of copying from very diverse types of filmmakers.
Most remarkable is the acting here, almost Scandanavian in nature (restricted, inside-out) and almost identical of that found in Bergman's work. The pastor's section is strongly reminiscent of Fanny and Alexander, both in style and substance. Also borrowed in this segment is Bergman's strong symbolism, although generally less powerful and more direct here (the bird, e.g.).
The voice-over's diction and neutral tone reminded me of Dogville and Manderlay (von Trier). A lot of camera-work is also done by fixing the camera behind the character, showing his or her perspective in the story and mostly seen in work by the brothers Dardenne (and later Aronofsky's The Wrestler).
Haneke copied the shock-editing from Kubrick, and it is almost strange to see so few other filmmakers use it, while it has become one of Haneke's major styles. The other major style is mentioned before: hiding the story, whereby the reverse consequence is that 'The camera lies all the time' (taken from DePalma).
Das weisse Band also resembles The Village from Night Shyamalan, but here the overlapping is only superficial, as the political allegory about the dooming world war is more direct. The allegory itself, albeit intended powerful is relatively weak, as the mapping of events and institutions in the village is not always directly possible to the complex factors surrounding the start of WWI.
The whole movie contains almost no music (except for some live music), the persons representing institutions in the movie have no name, things also present in La Pianiste. The tranquility of the acting and the slow pace all transform you to the beginning of the 20th century, but again copied from Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (both Kubrick and Haneke make also heavy use of Schubert).
The problem is that Haneke's style is not innovative enough for me to be overwhelmed by his productions. In the first hour Das weisse Band comes a long way in setting out something new, but after all the typicality's of Haneke's movies are introduced, the interest on my side faded. I hope in the future he will act as another famous Austrian and ride more the waves of creative destruction.