The White Ribbon

These are my notes for the film we are screening this Sunday - and this is the film I've been most looking forward to seeing all year. From everything I have read I do not expect to be disappointed.

The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte)

Austria 2009 (143 minutes)
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz

Awards and Nominations
Winner of Palme d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
Winner of the 2009 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for 2 Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film
A further 15 wins and 30 nominations

A series of mysterious incidents occur in a Northern German village in the 12 months preceding the outbreak of the First World War. The pastor, doctor and baron rule over the women, children and peasant farmers of the village, but although they exercise stern discipline over the members of their own families - the pastor forces his children to wear the white ribbon of purity as a punishment for wrongdoings – they are unable to identify the perpetrators.

According to Haneke, the film is about “the origin of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature”, but his film refuses to offer up easy answers or even resolve the events it portrays. The story is narrated by the local teacher, looking back in old age, who announces that these events “could perhaps clarify something that happened in this country”. It is not clear what motive the narrator has for remembering – or misremembering – the events: possibly after surviving two world wars and achieving some social standing in Germany his own hindsight is now questionable.

Michael Handke started his career on German television and came to international notice when The Piano Teacher/La Pianiste (2001) with Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel won the Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, while its stars won the Best Actor and Actress awards. Handke won the same award at Cannes for Hidden/Caché (2005) which was also nominated for the Palme d’Or. The White Ribbon received its first screening at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won both the Palme d’Or and the international film critics’ prize.

The Guardian included The White Ribbon at number five in its list of the best films of the noughties (sic) where Peter Bradshaw described it as:

"...a ghost story without a ghost, a whodunnit without a denouement, a historical parable without a lesson, and for two and a half hours this unforgettably disturbing and mysterious film leads its viewers alongside an abyss of anxiety."