Michael Haneke 'The White Ribbon'

Michael Haneke's films can be read as chapters in an ongoing, postmodern theoretical essay on moral equivalence, repression, alienation, and guilt. It is a consistently disturbing work, provocative in ways both subtle and overt, with its passionless acts of cruelty to both animals and humans, its logical, rational, 'ordinary' atmosphere of a society without values, its indictment of 'the best of us' - the liberal, compassionate, educated folks like you and me - and finally its forthright implication of the audience itself as a desensitized, vacant consumer, guilty not just of watching but of co-creating the meaningless and horrible acts it pays to see, of participating in the world that is conditioned by its watching and conditions its audience in return. It's as bleak a vision as anything out there, but it's never absolute, because Haneke chooses always and above all other considerations to stress what is questionable in human motivation rather than what can be explicitly packaged as evil or insane. It is ultimately his unanswered questions and their dimly recognized connection to our own interior landscape that make the films so disturbing and at the same time so compulsively watchable. It's a bit like seeing our own blind spots for an instant - the flash of self-interest behind the morally correct position, the hypocrisy of a sentiment, the potential for cruelty within alienation, the media-fed gluttony for breakdown and terror, the love of things we hate - and then being left with the matter unclarified, since resolution on the level of character analysis and even plot is radically denied. Haneke's characters are ordinary civilians whose violent acts proceed logically from their familiar assumptions, denials, equivocations; his mysteries open out onto further mysteries when, like a labyrinth, they are closest to solution. And so we are forced, through recognition, implication, and irresolution, to consider how we ourselves, not our leaders (or filmmakers), might contribute to some form of corrective for what is clearly our problem, the problem of our time and our society, the problem of us. It is a radical call to responsibility that echoes throughout every chapter in Haneke's book.

That being said, his latest feature The White Ribbon, a period drama shot entirely in black-and-white and chronicling the strange events in a small German village before the First World War, is something of a departure for a filmmaker who has seemed, especially lately, with the grotesque Funny Games, hellbent on disturbing us. We still find a clutch of unanswered questions, the usual cruelty to animals and violent acts posited as logical outgrowths of so-called normal societies, but the viewer is let off the hook a little, allowed by virtue of the distancing effect of the period and the classical production values to enjoy the film as a film, to consider the roots of its violence as sociological curiosities of its time and place, though of course extensive to other societies in principle. But we endure none of the direct referencing of the viewer that is such a hallmark of his other films and, it has to be said, the gorgeous visual sweep of this more conventional film is like a breath of fresh air after the horrors of Benny's Video, Code Unknown or Cache, with their scenes of videotaped torture and the despicable atmosphere of implied voyeurism that accompanies them.

The White Ribbon has more straightforward narrative aims, despite its unsolved mysteries. As Haneke has commented, the idea is to explore the "roots of terror" in a given community, and to consider the ways in which these roots connect with later, diabolical developments in society at large. In this case the connection is between pre-war Puritan absolutism with its sanctioned cruelty and suffocating repression, and the disastrous fascist period which followed in its wake. I wanted to present a group of children on whom absolute values are being imposed, Haneke comments. What I was trying to say was that if someone adopts an absolute principle, when it becomes absolute then it becomes inhuman. As a study of German development it seems a bit reductive - what about other Puritan communities that didn't breed a nation of fascists? - but the point is generally well-taken. As Jewish writers are at pains to point out, no social or psycho-analysis is adequate to the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, but since it is Haneke's stated intention to examine the non-stop fascism in France, Austria, Germany, everywhere you look, his study of German society can be understood generally. Certainly the sort of rigid, joyless, life-negating, entitled and cruel pedagoguery assimilated by the children in this village as normal expressions of societal order must have - has had - catastrophic effects in later life. Such effects are never portrayed - it is Haneke's style to present a psychological situation in situ and without comment - but it is precisely this technique which allows for consideration of effects according to the disposition of the viewer. It is a powerful form of political communication.

The film is also fascinating and beautiful to watch, and this for two reasons that are immediately striking. One is its atmosphere of mystery and dread. The tension established in the first few frames builds inexorably from one 'accident' to the next, swerving through more and more complex and detailed territory towards a denouement we begin to crave (and are denied). And the stiff, obedient, blond, ultra-conformist children who whisper to one another between episodes of punishment and tuition and who seem to have an understanding of things entirely their own recalls nothing so much as the spooky 1960 Village of the Damned. Combine this with the exquisitely visualized and highly researched look of the cast, their old-fashioned faces, to use Haneke's term, like those in a vintage photo. This superb cast is a revelation to behold before it even begins to act. It is reminiscent of the Mennonite community used in Carlos Reygadas' astonishingly unusual and authentic portrayal of contemporary (but not modern!) 'village' life in Silent Light. Haneke's German faces are studies in complexity, composed in various degrees of innocence, disappointment, resignation, rectitude, slyness, and contempt, marvellous faces we don't encounter very often in real life let alone in movies. And the acting is nuanced, collected within a register of repression that says as much if not more about effects and conditions as the strange incidents themselves. The character of Eva (a shy 17-year old who is courted by the teacher/narrator) is breathtakingly perfect; her scenes of courtship are impossibly, heartbreakingly discreet, understated, and exact. Haneke looked all over Germany for his child actors, and the results illuminate every scene. These children have a mysterious valence appropriate to their roles as both victims and possible perpetrators (the question is never settled), and it has something to do with their authenticity as well as the concentrated quality they bring to the parts; they are jewels which have to be seen to be appreciated. The film could stand as a study in childhood alone, realistic in spite of its outlandish events, but Haneke is at home in complexity, and he extends his detailed examination to all aspects of period village life, from its feudal dynamics, its labor practices and feast-days, its festering resentments, gossip, familial relationships, inter-generational conflicts, superstitions, societal accomodations, and sexual mores to its all-encompassing religious life and the sort of psychological types it engenders and destroys. It is a sort of masterwork in sociological and philosophic filmmaking, and freed of the usual discomforts associated with Haneke's output, but as sophisticated as any film he has made, more assured even, it is frankly delightful to watch - probably why it won him the prize of last year's Palme d'Or at Cannes. Don't miss this one.