white ribbon

[Cosimo]

the white ribbon

i see on wednesday at southbank

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/2413/thewhiteribboncannes4cw.jpg

psyched!

[Reigh Kaufman]

yo! blud, recommend dis. If you want to save a few shells, I have a sporty link I can give you fo' real.

good copy, word

[Cosimo]

thanks reigh, but i made plans with a girl to see it on the big screen. i don't want her thinking i'm some kind of knock off nigel, which is exactly what i am. so i might download, burn to disc and bring it with me just in case mrs likes the film, in which case i'll try to sell it to her. got to make my ticket money back somehow!

[Cosimo]

film of the year. impressive

9

[APzombie]

really looking forward to this. Haneke is usually great, if not sometimes extremely pretentious.

Will likely see it Friday.

[ilovemovies]

I thought this didn't open until late December?

[Bourne101]

It opened in the UK last Friday.

[SAI]

Review taken from my blog (www.24framez.blogspot.com)

Das Weiße Band
[The White Ribbon]
Dir: Michael Haneke
Cast: Christian Friedel, Burghart Klaußner, Leonard Proxauf,
Rainer Bock, Susanne Lothar, Leoni Benesch

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2009/10/28/1256753080510/The-White-Ribbon-Aka-Das--001.jpg

Michael Haneke’s cinema is deliberately, often explicitly, challenging. The White Ribbon lacks the extremes of films like Funny Games and The Piano Teacher but, like its director’s previous work, it is an uneasy experience.

The White Ribbon often seems like a set of contradictions. It is a film about violence, physical and psychic; but that violence is almost never shown. It is a mystery, a whodunit; but we never find out any answers, and the answers never seem to matter. It begins by saying it wants to clarify things, but then spends two and a half hours obfuscating. This is a film that could easily have dealt in explicit shock (imagine the same material in the hands of, say, Gaspar Noe), but what Haneke does instead is create an undertone; an atmosphere of impending doom and of utter dread that begins as an almost imperceptible background note, but grows with every passing frame to a crescendo. This makes The White Ribbon a deeply haunting, troubling film; the unease all the more deeply felt because you can’t find any reason or any culprit for the events that precipitate it.

The film deals with strange violent events in a highly religious German village in 1913 and 14. What it seems to suggest is that these events, which range from the tripping of a horse, leading the local doctor (Bock) to break his arm to the vicious attack on a local disabled child, are a manifestation of the abuse that everyone in the village seems to mete out. Though there is nothing explicit shown it is clear that abuse runs deep. The pastor (Klaußner) humiliates his ‘sinful’ elder children by making them wear ribbons to remind them they must be pure, deprives his family of food when the children misbehave and even ties his son’s hands to the bed frame so that he can’t masturbate, and in the most appalling scene the Doctor dispassionately details to his Midwife and lover (Lothar) how she now disgusts him. Some have read the violent events and the cycle of abuse as a suggestion of the incipient fascism that would come to fruition 20 years later. Personally, I think I’ll have to see the film at least once more to decide what I think Haneke is saying with it, but it is a rich enough film that I’m looking forward to doing just that.

Technically The White Ribbon is flawless. Haneke and DP Christian Berger shoot in stunningly crisp black and white. It’s Haneke’s first non-colour film, but he demonstrates a total mastery of both black and white and of his frames. The light in the film is beautiful, with stark whites and deep blacks dominant, in a story comprised almost entirely of shades of grey. The photography calls to mind directors like Bergman, Murnau and perhaps especially Carl Dreyer. Each shot is a beautifully composed tableau, a perfectly stark image, often painterly in its beauty. Even some of the more disturbing images, like that of a gruesomely (and symbolically) killed bird, are as startling in their beauty as their shock value. Another thing that really makes the film appear somewhat out of its time is the casting. Haneke’s casting department deserves some sort of award, not only for finding such a capable group of actors, especially among the many children who play pivotal roles, but for finding actors whose faces seem to fit the period. Haneke has said that this was a painstaking process, and that he saw 7000 candidates for the children’s roles, weeding out the modern faces. It’s stood him in good stead, as The White Ribbon is very convincingly set in its early 20th century period.

The children are uniformly excellent. In one especially strong scene the Doctor’s daughter (Maria-Victoria Dragus) tells her adorable young brother about death, both of them giving supremely natural performances. Also impressive is Leonard Proxauf, in perhaps the most important juvenile role, as the pastor’s eldest son. There’s a powerful, barely repressed, simmering rage behind his eyes in a few scenes (which lends a little credence to the idea of at least this character being an incipient fascist). It’s an effective and rather chilling piece of work. The adult cast is also excellent. The only lighter moments come from a little romance between the school teacher (Friedel) and his young fiancé (Benesch, a beautiful young actress who seems lit from within), but even these scenes sometimes have an undertone of darkness, as in a deeply uncomfortable carriage ride late in the film. Friedel does well as a man who seems something of an outsider looking in at this slowly imploding community, and as the only possible point of identification for us. Burghart Klaußner is chilling as the film’s biggest hypocrite - a man who preaches against and punishes sin, yet sins himself and ignores news of bigger sins when it is brought to him - but he’s best in the one moment when his severe mask seems to slip, letting us see for one brief moment that he does have emotions. Best of all are a pair of barnstorming performances from Ranier Bock and Haneke regular Susanne Lothar as the doctor and the midwife. That devastating scene in which he tells her how he is disgusted by her is astounding cinema, the kind of thing that burns itself into your brain and remains there long after the credits roll.

The White Ribbon is certainly an austere film, and there are audiences who will find it distancing because of that. Many will also find it frustrating, because of Haneke’s total refusal to answer the many questions his film throws up. It’s not a film for the casual cinemagoer, it demands your attention, it demands reflection and, frankly, it also demands repeat viewings. The White Ribbon is not an easy film, but it is a great film, the work of a man who has not only made a storming return to form (after the curious, pointless, Funny Games US) but who is working at the height of his powers, it’s a sight that should be seen. Twice.

[DaMovieMan]

I'm in no state to write a review but this film certainly deserves one so I hope i come back here with one, soon.

Suffice it to say for now that this film should be seen by everyone and is my personal favorite of the year. A near perfect film in every way, the time flew by and i was transfixed.

5 stars, 10/10

[Bourne101]

http://l.yimg.com/k/omg/us/img/eb/7a/3437_3530564681.jpg?y=660&x=616&q=75&n=0&sig=DKzu2lagkIrBBlbLZL0ZWQ--

The White Ribbon – 9/10

This is a truly fascinating piece of work. It is intriguing, compelling, haunting and very intelligent. It explores the psychology of these children who are soon-to-be members of the German society throughout World War I, and as grownups, World War II, which is really what is most interesting about the film. Having said that, the film does not try to explain German fascism and, as Michael Haneke said, that was not the intention. It’s really hard to appoint a genre to this film. I suppose one could call it a drama, but on the other hand it is so haunting and makes you feel so bloody uncomfortable that it almost passes as a psychological horror film. Haneke is the master of making his audience feel uncomfortable, and he does it brilliantly here. And he’s not using violence to make his audience feel uncomfortable, but rather the subtlety of the conversations and occurrences throughout the film. All of the actors are unknown to me, but they all did an excellent job. Apparently the child actors were chosen out of 7000 children who auditioned. They were all great, but Miljan Chatelain, Roxane Duran and Leonard Proxauf were particularly great. The scene between Chatelain and Duran where Duran explains the concept of death to Chatelain is one of my favorites of the year. The look in Chatelain’s eyes is brilliant. This is easily one of the best films of the year, and is sure to require a few more viewings before I can completely absorb all of the events that took place in the film. It may just be Haneke’s finest work.

[LordSimen]

White Ribbon is phenomenal. It's also a breath of fresh air to see another movie proudly wear it's black and white cinematography. 9/10

[Lazy Boy]

9/10

A brilliant breath of fresh air, from a filmmaker I'm mostly mixed on. I didn't like Funny Games, I thought Code Unknown and Cache were okay, but I really like Time of the Wolf.

As films like Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker, certain to win Academy attention, fade from my memory, here comes a near great film to end the decade of the aughts. Similar to Cache, Haneke has at least one (or maybe more) shock-inducing set piece, but they happen to deal with misanthropy, bitterness and the "sins of the father" rather than any onscreen act of violence. The opening fade-in, as we watch the town doctor riding his horse to a bizarre, fated accident, sets the tempo for the darkness that permeates the soul of this wretched little town. There are instances of innocence -- witness the tender love between a school teacher and the young charge whose services to the local baron, one of many characters to eventual reveal their disgust with their female companion/lover/mistress/wife, while the women are the characters to either see the true brutality of life in this 1913 village.

Another one of the more innocent and lovely scenes in Haneke films is the young child offering his pastor father a replacement bird (cage bound); the emotional confliction on the father's face is beyond touching, but his character remains coldly blinded to the fact that something deeply disturbed is going on with his children.

Haneke crammed a lot of movement into the final scene of Cache, so viewers not watching closely would miss a subtle clue; the final scene of The White Ribbon ends similarly, this time in the house of god. The purity of children (a mesmerizing group of child actors all) singing a choral, the delicacy in which our narrator explains his oncoming future, is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the sinful and the tyranny of oppressive men.

[phelonious]

Bump