A beguiling 'trojan horse' full of deep unease

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2009)

The White Ribbon is the latest from that master of creepy unease, Michael Haneke. But where Funny Games and Hidden were very much set in the urban present, this takes place in a vanished world, an Austrian farming village just before World War One.
The village is dominated by three men, the unlovable Baron, the despicable doctor and the convincingly monstrous village minister. They are surrounded by a web of apathy, malice, brutality and envy. As the Baron's wife said! But in the midst of all this innocence blossoms, as the narrator, the young schoolteacher, falls in love with the even younger nanny in the big house.
It's been shot in colour and printed in near monochrome, making each shot as worthy of framing as in any film-noir, and it benefits from the richness and subtlety of texture you'll only get with colour.
Added to that is the sheer intensity of the story telling, beyond Ingmar Bergman at his least stagey. There are hardly any extras; half of the characters get to be fully dimensional, and there is never any sense of acting. In this sternly protestant village they are all trying to keep their emotions buried but we, the fly on the wall, get to see the subtle signals in their faces.
The village is galvanised by a series of mysterious accidents and crimes, and these dramatic incidents link the whole thing together, but it's the fascination the camera has in these people that will hold your attention. It loves them all, the utterly vile as much as the sweet and tender. The White Ribbon is bookended by the longest fade-in and fade-out ever, and it felt just right at the end as we had been buried so deep in this other world.