Director: Michael Haneke
The White Ribbon has 3 strikes against it to any potential viewer - it's foreign, it's in black and white, and it's a period film. Set in the early 20th century, The White Ribbon explores a breakdown in civility within a small German village. The film excels is at making this village and all its characters feel real. There's no one who is too attractive to have been living in an early 20th century village, for instance. It takes a while to get going, and some of the characters are difficult to distinguish from one another, but such is a black and white film where everyone wears drab clothing.
What The White Ribbon really feels like is Dostoyevsky, which is high praise for a film. There's elements of all his works in here; for instance, the reserved way in which the characters comport themselves in public being contrasted with the evil things that people do and have done to them in private. There's the way in which some characters celebrate their own baseness. Haneke explores how class affects people's relations with one another; small towns are a perfect place to do that. One almost comes away from the movie knowing less than when one went in, which is a kind of success.
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