Creeping Unease but too self-consciously art-house

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2012)

Well made, restrained, mysterious, flouts conventional storytelling, but also too self consciously art-house and arrogantly authorial and intellectual. It is a film about a small village in preWW1 Germany where strange accidents (like child torture and barns being burnt) begin to occur. Who is responsible and why? The answer is never given, but hints of dark forces rising because of the nature of the society that the villagers are living in are given full rein. This leads to a growing sense of unease on screen and off screen amongst the audience.
I do feel it is about the fin de siecle of pre war comfort (but how comfortable was it really in an almost feudal society that tolerates child abuse and sexual exploitation?) leading to Prussian aggressive adventurism, so to the First World War, and, then more chillingly, the children who are to become the generation of Nazism with all its attendant horrors.
There are signposts to the Doctor with the bad shoulder (Kaiser Wilhelm) and the Baron, whose wife cannot tolerate him or his lifestyle (Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and his wife Elizabeth), which show the absolutism of empire and sleepwalking to war, but these seem minor compared to the horror of the following generations' actions which are caused by the repression et al of a society created by the older generation. The key moment is when the quotation from the Bible about sin of the fathers following down to the third or fourth generations is shown near the end - this is the central theme to the film.
But there is too much arch film making in a sort of fifties/sixties art house Bergfman/Antonioni homage to really leave you satisfied that you have watched a great piece of cinema. 'Cache' worked because it was not trying to be too clever - here the director is playing with you from olympian heights at times and it detracts from the well worked air and sense of menace which he creates brilliantly at times.