The sins of the fathers
Yesterday I saw Das Weisse Band , Le Ruban Blanc, which got La Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. I usually don't like Haneke's films for I think that, since Funny Games, he has just made films for the shock-value, to hurt the audience, to punch them in the face with the unbearable violence showed on screen, as if the film and the actors were just a tool used to cause a reaction. I don't mind violence and shocking scenes in movies as long as they mean something, and make sense story-wise, even if what it means is that some time violence is meaningless and just happens in the most cruel, uggly and gratuitous way, but Haneke always made me think that he didn't care much about his work, or at least cared less about it than about the uneasiness it caused. I'm sure it did it with the best intentions, to educate the viewers, just like the parents showed in Das Weisse Band.
So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.
However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).
In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.
The story takes place in a small village in Germany during the year prior to the launching of the Great War. The date is significant of course, firstly because WWI would be a first outlet to extreme violence, secondly because the children showed in the film would be adults in the 30's as NSDAP would take the country. In many interviews Haneke has talked about how much he wanted to suggest the connection between the society portrayed in his film and the rise of nazism in Germany. I wish he hadn't because of course his point of view bothers me as a historian -as explanations go, explaining nazism and the Third Reich with psychological trauma, with the violences and abuses that their future followers underwent as children is rather questionable and a simplistic short cut- and because the film doesn't need that light. Actually the film is better than the way his maker talks about it.
So let's forget about the subsequent events and let's focus on that village in 1913. It revolves on the concept of Pater Familias, either it's the Baron who rules the whole village, or the minister who rules the souls, or the father who rules his family. It's also about a society that works on tensions, frustrations, abuses and humiliation, but craves for purity and absolute.
It's about chirldren who suffer, desperatly want to fit in their fathers' vision yet are everything but innocent. It's about how violence fathers violence, and how the thirst for purity leads to harm and sadism. It's about authority figures, how they failed at living up to their speech and the principles they violently instilled into their children, and how their sins would be punished through their children.
Everything starts with a first act of malevolence when the doctor is sent to the hospital after his horse fell on a wire. The crime remains unexplained. Other crimes ensue, a spiral of violences unfolds under our eyes, among those crimes the kill of a caged bird with a pair of scissors, the attempt at murdering an infant with opening a window in the cold and the torture and mutilation of an handicaped child. The weak must pay for the failed leaders. The film doesn't really solve the mystery, the Baron can't suss it out despite calling for informing and the police investigation comes to a dead, end even though it's pretty obvious who did what and that the teacher (who narrates the story years after the facts) dares to voice his own conclusions. But this isn't a truth that can be heard.
It's harsh and dark in spite of a few moments of light and sweetness, mostly thanks to the love story between the teacher and young Eva, but also through moments of kindness from the children(Anna with her little brother, or the paster's young son when he genuinely offered a little bird to his strict father). The torturer do have a heart too, or did once upon a time.
You fell for the minister's children who are the victims of a rigoristic upbringing and have to wear the white ribbon (or have to sleep with their hands tied up to the bed to prevent masturbation!), for the doctor's daughter who looks too much like her late mother, for the vulnerable boys who got tortured (the baron's little boy first, then the handicaped son of the midwife) but the children of the film send shivers down your spine at the same time, especially the blonde Klara.
So yes this is a film by Michael Haneke that I rather liked. Not sure I would have given La Palme d'Or to it, for I found it sometimes too obvious and too long and I couldn't help feeling that something was missing, but it's an interesting movie with a few moments that are brilliant.
So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.
However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).
In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.
Click to viewThe story takes place in a small village in Germany during the year prior to the launching of the Great War. The date is significant of course, firstly because WWI would be a first outlet to extreme violence, secondly because the children showed in the film would be adults in the 30's as NSDAP would take the country. In many interviews Haneke has talked about how much he wanted to suggest the connection between the society portrayed in his film and the rise of nazism in Germany. I wish he hadn't because of course his point of view bothers me as a historian -as explanations go, explaining nazism and the Third Reich with psychological trauma, with the violences and abuses that their future followers underwent as children is rather questionable and a simplistic short cut- and because the film doesn't need that light. Actually the film is better than the way his maker talks about it.
So let's forget about the subsequent events and let's focus on that village in 1913. It revolves on the concept of Pater Familias, either it's the Baron who rules the whole village, or the minister who rules the souls, or the father who rules his family. It's also about a society that works on tensions, frustrations, abuses and humiliation, but craves for purity and absolute.
It's about chirldren who suffer, desperatly want to fit in their fathers' vision yet are everything but innocent. It's about how violence fathers violence, and how the thirst for purity leads to harm and sadism. It's about authority figures, how they failed at living up to their speech and the principles they violently instilled into their children, and how their sins would be punished through their children.
Everything starts with a first act of malevolence when the doctor is sent to the hospital after his horse fell on a wire. The crime remains unexplained. Other crimes ensue, a spiral of violences unfolds under our eyes, among those crimes the kill of a caged bird with a pair of scissors, the attempt at murdering an infant with opening a window in the cold and the torture and mutilation of an handicaped child. The weak must pay for the failed leaders. The film doesn't really solve the mystery, the Baron can't suss it out despite calling for informing and the police investigation comes to a dead, end even though it's pretty obvious who did what and that the teacher (who narrates the story years after the facts) dares to voice his own conclusions. But this isn't a truth that can be heard.
It's harsh and dark in spite of a few moments of light and sweetness, mostly thanks to the love story between the teacher and young Eva, but also through moments of kindness from the children(Anna with her little brother, or the paster's young son when he genuinely offered a little bird to his strict father). The torturer do have a heart too, or did once upon a time.
You fell for the minister's children who are the victims of a rigoristic upbringing and have to wear the white ribbon (or have to sleep with their hands tied up to the bed to prevent masturbation!), for the doctor's daughter who looks too much like her late mother, for the vulnerable boys who got tortured (the baron's little boy first, then the handicaped son of the midwife) but the children of the film send shivers down your spine at the same time, especially the blonde Klara.
So yes this is a film by Michael Haneke that I rather liked. Not sure I would have given La Palme d'Or to it, for I found it sometimes too obvious and too long and I couldn't help feeling that something was missing, but it's an interesting movie with a few moments that are brilliant.