The White Ribbon

Michael Haneke - White Ribbon

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke’s latest film which is set just before World War I, in a small village in northern Germany. When strange, sadistic events begin to happen, it appears that the suppressed children of the village are at the stem of the problems.

Without its Oscar nomination, The White Ribbon wouldn’t have had nearly as much global recognition, and why should it? It is, after all, a lengthy foreign language film without nearly enough explosions or car chases to attract a mainstream audience. However, if you look a little closer you begin to see why it has such critical acclaim and how the way it is directed actually reflects the way we feel about certain events in life.

Michael Haneke is famous for creating staggeringly awkward cinema. The way he sets up sequences, with a single uncomfortable shot, gives that feeling of when something is so awful you can barely bring yourself to look at it.

Imagine being a fly on the wall in a household where a father is hitting his son as punishment, or two children beating up a disabled child just because he’s different. The audience is agonisingly made to sit through this and all you can do is watch on in horror.

So no, The White Ribbon, (or many other foreign art house films for that matter), might not have laser-shooting robots, or romances between Brad Pitt and the latest hot thing to come out of America, but even in spite of the language gap, they’re often a lot easier to relate to than you might realise.

"The Not-So-Silent-Observer"