Das Weisse Band (the White Ribbon) Michael Haneke: A film that raises real questions As the Cannes Film Festival begins, I can not help but think of that ambiguous feeling that I experienced while watching the latest film by Michael Haneke Palme d'Or Festival 2009. Those who read this blog or who know me, know my passion for cinema and in particular that, unwavering, to Ingmar Bergman or Roberto ANTONIONI , among other giants of world cinema.
If I can watch all these movies that are commonly called "mainstream", they do not feed me. I still wish that on 7 th Art gives me the answers or better yet, refer me to other questions, about my own questions, the better to consider, consider.
cinema so we can reveal a bit more what we are and what we are made ...
The White Ribbon is one of those movies. It is a strange movie, slow and sumptuous unfolding in the dazzling purity of landscapes that seem inaccessible in the dark. There is in this film a sort of permanent suspense, where nothing in the end would really revealed. I remember that during the press conference at the end of the Festival which saw winning the Palme d'Or, Michael Haneke interview took place in German by a woman who asked for answers to the problems posed by the feature in question . Michael HANEKE which hitherto was polite, courteous, responding candidly as usual, questions from the press, eluded a smile. He argued that his role was questions , not to respond, otherwise he would not do this film, he would not film at all. A significant response that characterizes the work of this filmmaker ...
The voice that tells this story is hoarse. As for time raucous. It is in this context, see the film in VO , dubbed in French for non germanophones (like me).
But in this year 1913 which brought back the memories, the teacher was a young man. A good chubby boy had just met a pure, radiant and shy girl. He made his court. He was preparing to be happy. And then there was this cable. Solid and invisible, stretched between two trees he brought down the doctor who quietly returned home on horseback. What a stupid joke, we had thought ... Only a few weeks later, there was the son of wealthy landowner, beaten. Then a baby is left to an open window in winter. Worse still: the kid retarded the midwife who had been burned eyes. The horror ... bland
This film is a reflection on terrified people frustrated, inexorably pushed to the hate each other ...
Michael Haneke is a rigorous, one requiring a moralist dark. In his most successful films but sometimes frankly questionable , he only filmed violence. For him, evil is always running. As a gas, it spreads. Like a virus, it gives rise to the pandemic. This Once, he tracks down the origin. It reveals the roots. This position consequences. This German village on the eve of the great catastrophe of the 1 st War, he imagined, AZ, serves as laboratory to denounce all forms of terrorism, past, present and future .
In this cauldron stir oppressors and oppressed landowner indifferent to the peasants who seem born to accept the blows of fate, oblivious parents raising their children in fear that they seem to accept all the shots, literally as figuratively. A desire to revolt brewing, however, among the "victims .
While in the "executioners" dominates the certainty to act for the good of those they oppress.
But the director shows how consistently the authority they USED BY and abuse not hide the emptiness that overwhelms . These are all powerful beings to haunt the dried shell. There is a shocking scene where the pastor - who did wear a white ribbon to her children to remind them of the sense of purity - is moved suddenly, by his youngest son, came timidly into his office to offer him what ' he holds most dear in the world. The tears come suddenly in the eyes of the pastor, we feel a moment, just a moment on the threshold of the human. But no, he resists the grace and he is soon made to himself. Human, what for? After all, God to be, not necessarily to his creatures, we would try to write in a way that scares ...
What films Michael Haneke, they are beings in hell, there to feel less alone, trying to draw others to it. "You must suffer terribly for being so obnoxious," told the midwife to her lover, the doctor, who comes from the break, to reduce it to nothingness, in a scene bursting with atrocity would almost affable marital clashes Bergman in Scenes from a Marriage ... Because here HANEKE BERGMAN exceeds in cruelty. The children, they somehow resist: eyes Rudi enlarging the small astonishment when he learns what his sister's death. It is this memorable sequence that is breathtaking.
In another scene almost unbearable Martin is also crying against his father before this vigilante who humiliated for having yielded "the call of his young flesh" ...
What happens to these children broken in the name of the property, twenty, thirty years later?
When they left, silent and pervasive, they look like a disturbing ancient chorus, like blond boys with empty eyes of an old film of SF (SF) black and white, The Village of the Damned that my children have all enjoyed . The White Ribbon like that other movie less pronounced, however, is also shot in black and white. Anguish of those born deaf clips where everything always seems hidden behind closed doors and minds locked. But beneath its apparent austerity, it is burning furiously.
HANEKE masterfully filmed the darkness that seeps into our hearts. Hence it will escape more ...
Today in 2010, in adulthood, we evacuate this darkness with the help of a priest, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst ... And yet, with God's help ...
We're here in the presence of the most successful film by Michael Haneke, a true masterpiece.
