The Best Films of the Zeroes: 20

20. THE WHITE RIBBON. (2009)
Directed by Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke is not a filmmaker that I like very much. The films of his which have been critically acclaimed, are films that range from underwhelming to dreadful in my opinion. It surprised me, then, when THE WHITE RIBBON blew me away late last year. This is the highest ranked 2009 film, which suggests that I did have it two places too low in my ‘Best of 2009’ list, at number three.

My previous enmity towards Haneke and his films have come from a lack of perceptible emotional engagement with either his subject or his audience. Several of his films seem to exist solely to point and laugh at his audiences for wanting to understand his films, or engage with his characters. I understand that this is, arguably, the point that the director is trying to make. This ranges from being deliberately obtuse, as with HIDDEN, or pissing in his audience’s face as in FUNNY GAMES. More than that, the latter film is also fuck-wittedly stupid.

It’s therefore fairly obvious that my expectations should have been low for THE WHITE RIBBON. They weren’t, not really anyway; I went in expecting something that would provoke a reaction, be that anger, annoyance, or to be genuinely impressed. Reviews had been very positive, and it had won the Palme D’Or at Cannes (like the previous two winners, deservedly as it turns out).

No matter what I had expected, though, I don’t think I would have been ready for the impact of THE WHITE RIBBON. This is a brilliant, austere and imperceptibly devastating film. Its setting is a village in rural Germany in 1913, and its focus is on the community in the aftermath of a number of seemingly random acts of violence and malice against residents of the village. Among the cast of characters is a cruel doctor, a distant landowner, a strict pastor and our narrator, a lovestruck young teacher.

Around the adult protagonists hover a cadre of young, imperceptible blonde children, who our narrator begins to suspect of being far less innocent than they look. Haneke is playing with our assumptions, given the setting, and the fact that the teacher is the essence of an unreliable narrator. It’s a film that continues to ask questions, that isn’t afraid of not being able to answer them, and that takes great pleasure in essaying a portrait of a community beginning to be ripped apart from within.

The film is gorgeously shot, in pristine black and white. Haneke handles the pace with an immaculate sense of how to build tension, and mould the audience’s expectations. It’s, by far, his best film; a true masterpiece, in every sense and a film to breathe life into anyone getting tired of arthouse cinema.