I love you Michael Hanneke

Rating: 10/10 (12 April 2017)

One of the great pleasures of watching a film for the first time is the bubbling of thoughts and ideas going through your mind about where this will all lead and of what meaning is being imbued. The White Ribbon is magnificent in that it keeps this constant inner dialogue alive throughout. By not over-explaining events you end up having a beautifully filmed and edited slice of life at it's most interesting. In life it often takes a period of time until you become fully aware of events and people's involvement in them and it's nourishing to know that your own instincts keep working behind the scenes to help understand things for the future. I love the way The White Ribbon doesn't tie up all loose ends, and although I have only seen it once, I have thought about watching it again many times.
My only disagreement with other 10/10 reviewers is the knife and fork linkage to Nazis. I think by inferring that the children of the film will be adults by the time of WW2 is clumsy and pointless. Michael Hanneke has on a few occasions held up the mirror that young people are not all harmless, lovable creatures and that innate fear by adults of this proposition is a much scarier vision than anything WW2 can conjure. It seems the English-speaking world are sick with the idea that nothing could ever be as bad as a Nazi. Hanneke knows better and so do I.