The strange events that occurred in our village

| Tuesday November 30, 2010 00:00

It is a fine film by Michael Haneke, the Austrian moviemaker. It won a Golden Globe for 'Best Foreign Language Film', the Palme d'Or at Cannes and other awards and was nominated for two Oscars. It has also been honoured for its stunning cinematography.

The key to watching a film by Haneke is to be open to a variety of possible interpretations of what is happening. 

He takes us on journeys over time that remains ambiguous, and what we see, hear and feel will be coloured by our personal ability to perceive and what biases we hold.  Your understanding of what the film is about may be right, and so might mine, because Haneke is a master of opening strange doors of perception as to what has happened.

This is both the mystery and power of what he has achieved again in White Ribbon.  To add to the ominous sense of being shrouded in the dark, the film is made only in black and white.

The story begins around 1913 in the small, feudal village of Eichwald in northern Germany near the town of Treglitz.  What should be a pleasant pastoral scene is altered by tensions and conflicts and a series of happenings caused by perpetrators who remain, for the most part, hidden.  The tale is told in the first person, years later, by the village teacher who was 30 at the start (acted by Christian Friedel; voiced as an old man by Ernst Jacobi).

Rural Germany then had a number of dominant forces: a punitive, sexually repressive, Protestant church; a system of strong landlords; peasant or tenant farmers; and a layer of stewards or foremen and other employees acting for the owners; plus those who service the community, such as teachers, a preacher, a midwife, and a doctor. Each is vividly represented in White Ribbon.

They all have their passions and secrets, while pretending to conform to the puritanical standards of the day. 

Violence lies beneath the surface waiting to rise.  From an entirely different perspective, also before World War I, these tensions were captured by Bernardo Bertolucci in his 1900 an Italian film made on a grander scale that embraces the drama and potential of class struggle at the start of the 20th Century and the roots of fascism.

At Eichwald assaults of unknown origin - at least to our narrator, the teacher -begin with a trip wire that throws the local doctor (played by a severe Rainier Bock) off his horse.  His collarbone is severely broken; he leaves the village for a hospital in town for two months.  Left behind are his 14-year-old daughter, Anna or Anni (Roxane Duran) and five-year-old son, Rudolf or Rudi (Miljan Chatelain).  Their mother died delivering Rudi, and they have been raised by a neighbour, the midwife, (Susanne Lothar), who has a son, Karli (Eddy Grahl) with Downs Syndrome. The doctor and his dependants have become mired in personal relationships that others despise, supposedly hidden behind closed doors and shutters of their house.  The mystery of the wire is never explained.

The pastor (Burghart Klaussner) is severe.  His son, Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and his older sister Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) get into trouble.  Teacher, out fishing for brown trout, finds young Martin walking on the railing of a bridge and orders him down.

Martin says in explanation, 'I was going to give God a chance to kill me'.  'Please don't tell my father'.  Teacher gives piano lessons in the pastor's house.  The pastor's response to unexplained events is to seek to stamp out the evil he sees possessing his offspring.  After a beating he forces his two older children to wear white ribbons as an example.  Martin is soon given additional punishments.

More direct acts of violence against others and oneself are attributed to one peasant family.  The mother dies after a serious fall at the sawmill - it was an accident that could have been prevented.  The father accepts the death of his wife, but their eldest son, who wants to blame the Baron, seeks revenge.

After a period of normalcy in the village another unexplained assault occurs.  Sigi (Fion Mutert) the young son of the Baron and Baroness (Ulrich Tukur and Ursina Lardi) vanishes and is found by a search party hanging upside down in the sawmill, half naked, and thrashed on his buttocks.  Why? Who is responsible?

There are some marvelous scenes that will last in your memory.  A number involve the pastor's little son and an injured bird he rescues and asks his father if he can keep, to heal.  If he succeeds he will have to set it free.  The teacher is attracted to a 17-year-old nanny, Eva (Leonie Benesch).  Her face is an amazing spontaneous mix of happiness, joy, rapture, caution and fear.  Both are symbolic of a different future for Germany. Where there is evil there is also innocence.

The children in this film are constantly changing. Their acting is superb.  They are also most upsetting-especially a core of seven who band together. One child, Erna (Janina Fautz), has dreams that come true - but are they really dreams?  She tries to talk to the teacher about them.  Karli is tortured.  Is this, as decreed in the Bible, to punish the child for the sins of his parents 'down to the third generation'?  The children fight with Sigi over a whistle, throw him in the river, and one steals it.

When the Baroness leaves again, she says, 'I can't stand this place anymore, dominated by malice, envy, brutality, threats and perverse acts of revenge'. The assassination in Sarajevo ushers in World War One and 'everything is about to change'.  Even the teacher senses that Martin and Klara are leaders of a gang of seven and tries to challenge them.  'What did Sigi and Karli do wrong?  Why were they being punished?' He never finds out.  White Ribbon is two hours and 17 minutes long.  It is rated 15+.  It is in German with English subtitles.  The director and scriptwriter is Michael Haneke.  The cinematographer is Christian Berger.  The editor is Monika Willi. 

The music is a children's choir and a band during a harvest festival.  It was filmed in Leipzig, LŸbeck and Brandenburg. sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk