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Fans of Michael Haneke's more morally shocking films such as 'Funny Games', 'Benny's Video' or the draining 'Time of the Wolf' might find themselves surprised by the quieter and slower analysis of evil in his latest work 'Das Weisse Band'. The action takes place in a North German village shortly before the outbreak of the First World War and in structure presents a number of subtly drawn individual characters as they are caught up in a mysterious series of violent events. In the hands of a mere moralist this could be an unbearable few hours. But it's credit to Haneke's skill as a film-maker that we are utterly caught up and absorbed by a large cast of children and adults.One of the on-going arguments in Haneke's films seems to be the origins of human evil, or perhaps more precisely put, evil individual acts of human behaviour. Are evil acts always an individuals' responsibility or are they born in a particular climate where certain energies at work? This is the question Haneke appears to be exploring. (this was also a central question relating to French society in 'Cache'.)One of the most disturbing things at the heart of the film is the fact that we do not know why particular acts of evil (including the maiming of a disabled child and the beating of a nobleman's son) take place, or who commits them. This is no 'whodunnit' although, with its retrospective voice-over from the School Teacher's p.o.v. we are let to believe for a long time that were in a crime/thriller genre.Throughout his body of work so far, Haneke seems to be suggesting that looking for the sort of easy answers films and TV all too readily supply is part responsible for our misunderstanding how violence in society in fact appears. (Funny Games). 'The White Ribbon' bypasses the usual dramatical devices of motivation and blame and instead softly focuses on an environment (in this case Germany in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century) in which certain unhealthy energies are at work. These energies include an emotionally repressed and joyless Protestantism, the mistreatment and oppression of women, the familial abuse of children, the fetishism of strong masculine and patriarchal values, and the un-breachable divide between the rich and the poor. Sitting over all this like an umbrella is the fact that the small provincial society depicted in the film is all but completely sealed off from wider society.Another poster here has pointed out that Haneke is using his village as a microcosm to reflect Germany as a whole, and I would agree with that. Haneke's Dorf, whilst having an individual character, is a relative of Von Trier's Dogville in the sense that it stands for a larger set of national values. As such, Haneke seems to be diagnosing German society in the run up to the 'Great' War as one of authoritarianism, religious doubt, intolerance, and fear.What is remarkable in such a film is how little human joy or love is to be found in such a seemingly idyllic rural landscape. the love strand (between the narrator Teacher and the dismissed 17yr old children's nurse) has a rather strained aspect. It is as if Haneke is suggesting that affection might also just be due to available opportunity. One of the most moving scenes of The White Ribbon is when a young child brings his father, a Priest, a caged bird he has nursed back to health as a present, as the father's beloved pet canary has been killed (by his daughter). She killed it because of the bleak loveless household she's been reared in, a home in which a father shows more affection to a small bird than his own offspring. Thus the scene symbolically depicts a child showing the parent love that that parent himself is unable of demonstrating. Tears fill the priest's eyes. It is a tiny moment of love and hope in an otherwise emotionally barren wasteland. It is also a symbol of how a new generations of Germans have had to deal with and heal previous centuries of pain.
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