The White Ribbon (2009)

The White Ribbon is the most realistically disturbing movie I've seen in ages. It feels like a Bergman film, in both cinematography and subject matter. It follows, mostly through the eyes of a 31 year old school teacher from out of town, events in a small north German village from the summer of 1913 until the start of World War I. ' It must have started with the doctor,' says the narrator, our protagonist teacher later in life. 'I tell the story of the happenings in our little village because I feel it might shed some light on what happened later', and I believe it does.

The incident with the doctor involves a wire deliberately set to trip him on his horse as he returns from a visit with the local barron, the not well liked, but respected employer of half the town. What it sheds light on is the zeitgeist in turn of the century Germany, and how it feeds into that country taking the world into a global war twice in the space of thirty years.

'I don't want our children to grow up in this environment' says the barron's wife, after returning from a long stay in Italy, helping her oldest son recover from a sever betting, and being tied up in the communal barn (which later mysteriously burns down). The village she says is a place full of 'malice, envy, apathy, and brutality, of petty revenge'. It is all these things, but bellow the surface, and nothing is to be mentioned about them, as the towns pastor says 'we don't want respectable families to be maligned'.

A parable of how a society can breed monsters, both from a crushing moralism, and out and out abuse. There is fornication, sexual abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, animal abuse, murder, incest, inequality, and hypocrisies of all types. All this counterpointed by the tale of the town teacher, and his remarkably chaste courtship of a young women who moved to town for work. These, the most sympathetic characters, are of course strangers to the village, normally I might protest such an obvious story telling choice, but I think the audience needs it, we need someone to root for. The town pastor comes close to being sympathetic, but though you can tell that he does mean to do well, he is also too committed to a failing system to really lift men's souls, even in his own family.

This is a remarkable picture, its two and half hours long, in black and white, and with subtitles, but it is well worth it, even to those who might not usually view such fare. Grade: A