Mysteries Without Solutions

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2010)

The White Ribbon was one of the best 2009 movies I saw. My only previous experience with Michael Haneke had been 2001's The Piano Teacher, which I loathed. I didn't know what to expect from this black-and-white movie; I feared I'd hate it or find it boring. Besides, it's winning all the awards I was expecting to see A Prophet win, which for me was the best 2009 movie. Now I'm not so sure.
The White Ribbon is above a well-crafted piece of cinema by a master of the medium. That's evident in the way he shoots the shadows and the outdoor light, playing with the contrasts and setting up beautiful frames; in the way he keeps the viewer in thrall without the need of music, wonderfully using silence as a part of the experience; in the way he recreates an era through dialogue, mannerisms, dogmas, social rules, costumes; and, for a movie centred on children, the way he gets amazing performances from the young actors, of several ages, who had to play complex roles. I haven't seen children and adolescents perform so well in a movie since Fernando Meirelle's City of God.
The story seems not to amount to much, but in the hands of Haneke it's a gripping mystery. In a small German village mysterious incidents happen: a doctor falls off his horse because someone put a wire across the road; someone sets a barn on fire; the local Baron's child is kidnapped and whipped. Who's doing all this? Are the events connected? Are the children involved? And if so, does it have anything to do with the oppressive way they're treated? People who enjoy puzzles will certainly enjoy spending hours discussing this movie, trying to make sense of it, even though I'd say it's impossible to ever get down to the truth. For those that don't care about speculation, these mysteries nevertheless allow us to see the way the village works, with its prejudices, hatreds, secrets, envies, fears, strange hierarchies. In sum it allows the village to become a theatre about the human condition, although one that only depicts the worst in mankind.
I've read interpretations that suggest that this movie is an allegory for Nazism; that it seeks to explain how Fascism appeared; that the children in the movie would grow to become Nazi generation. I think that's possible, but I think it's also too reductive and if that were so why Haneke bother with such a roundabout way of doing things? I think this movie mocks exactly such simple, reductive answers. Children are spanked and disciplined, and that led to Nazis! But the same generation that begot Nazis also begot Nazi opponents. The same educational system that created Hitler also created Einstein. And Germany wasn't the only country that used harsh methods to bring up children.
This movie is a mystery in the vein of many great European mysteries. I think Europe produces mysteries that go beyond the mere fascination about finding clues. They even go beyond the psychological mystery, which is about finding clues in a person's mind or behaviour. No, these are anti-mysteries, movies that suggest that reality is just undecipherable, that logic and reason are not enough to explain everything. This puts The White Ribbon on the level of masterpieces like L'Avventura, Blowup, Professione: Reporter, and Mr. Klein. Good European cinema continues to exist.