The White Ribbon

2009 [GERMAN]

Action / Drama / History / Mystery / Thriller

28
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 85% · 146 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 79% · 50K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.8/10 10 80133 80.1K

violence oscar nominated child abuse propaganda authority pastor

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Plot summary

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

Director

Michael Haneke Photo
Michael Haneke

Top cast

Rainer Bock Photo
Rainer Bock as The Doctor
Ulrich Tukur Photo
Ulrich Tukur as The Baron
Vincent Krüger Photo
Vincent Krüger as Fritz
Christian Friedel Photo
Christian Friedel as The School Teacher
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1.29 GB
1280*682
German 2.0
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
2 hr 26 min
Seeds 8
2.66 GB
1920*1024
German 5.1
NR
Subtitles
23.976 fps
2 hr 26 min
Seeds 42

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by mehmet_kurtkaya 9 / 10

Nurturing Fascism Somewhere in Black and White Germany

During the course of the year before WWI, a series of tragic and suspicious looking incidents take place in a small farming village somewhere in black and white Germany. The culprit or the culprits behind the crime wave will not be too easy to find.The doctor, the priest, the baron and the teacher who also narrates the film form the elite of the village. We get to know each one of them and a few other villagers along with children of this village, calm on the surface but deeply tormented by an undercurrent of brutality, envy, malice and apathy.The children's natural path to maturity is blocked by strict religious morality, cruelly enforced by the priest, thereby inhibiting their personal observation of the world around them. The priest feeds children with guilt and sexual repression instead of love and punishes even their most innocent mistakes. Certainly this environment will make it easy for them to not only accept but seek ruthless authority later in life.As might be expected, love in this town is restrained and uneasy, while incest and affairs are overlooked by villagers. The Baron employs half of the village in his farm, yet almost no one seems to be against feudalism, nor rise up against the accidents that happen in the workplace. Social justice is a stranger to town, yet villagers are entrenched in apathy.If adults do not face up the truth, however this truth might be against their convictions, rise up and take charge, then who will? And according to whose morality? Isn't fascism with racism, in short Nazism, misdirected popular anger and an easy response to deep injustices within a society ? Haneke observes mostly psychological, educational and religious roots of Nazism while leaving economic aspects mostly in the background.Visuals of the film are very solid. The symmetry in the shots and the tidiness of the houses, even of those belonging to the poor farmers hint at the discipline and rigor Germans are well known for. Acting is top notch by the whole cast, especially children's faces beam just like in Bergman films. Directing was superb.Haneke uses a village and a narrator similar in essence to Lars Von Trier's Dogville, still these two movies are clearly different.Das Weisse Band has also some similarities to Cache, but just one notch less satisfying than his masterpiece which had a slightly more intriguing and fulfilling story. This movie is made more accessible by Haneke with his choice of more obvious tips, where sometimes characters talk directly about the situation. But in a time and age when people are battling too many problems and drug themselves with TV and easy payoffs who could blame Haneke? Given the current global economic conditions and the fanaticism running high across all three major religions, this is a must-see movie for anyone caring about the future of our global village to avoid a Le Temps du Loup type of ending!
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Reviewed by molecule18 9 / 10

This is a movie against all extremisms

In an interview with the French newspaper "Le Monde" on 10/20/09, published on 10/21/09, Michael Haneke has explicitly and unequivocally declared his intentions in making the movie "The White Ribbon":

He intended to make a movie about the roots of evil. He said that he believed that the environment of extreme, punitive and sexually repressive protestantism in Germany, has laid the groundwork for Fascism and Nazism. He also said that he saw the same patterns developing in fundamentalist Muslim societies today, and that it is those societies that today were spawning terrorists and suicide bombers. Finally, he expressed the sentiment that "The White Ribbon" is a movie against ALL extremisms.

Michael Haneke has directed his vision in a very masterful and artful way: the cinematography, the acting, and the script are all superb.

The only problem I have is with the vision itself: The environment certainly plays a role, but to explain evil exclusively as the product of one's environment is simplistic and goes against common sense observation: The majority of people on this earth have grown up under repressive regimes and yet have NOT turned out to become murderers, mass murderers, terrorists or suicide bombers. Something is missing in the equation.

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