The White Ribbon Review.

Image found http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149362/

We watched a 2009 film called ‘The White Ribbon’ or ‘Die Weise band’, which is set in a small village in Germany during the First World War, directed by Michael Haneke.


The film was very suitable to our project and Chris’s lecture as it was shot with the aim of creating realism.

The long drawn out shots and un-idealistic world that the characters are placed in if far way from the normal Hollywood film that you would expect to see of such a modern making of a film. However it is not short of its cinematic trickery such as the use of black and white and shadows mimicking the style of noir to create unease and a darkened feel.

Also its lack of music and use of prolonged silences, although sometimes made the film feel dragging to a modern day audience, helped in placing you into the feel of a estranged village working on through a difficult period of history.

Image found http://www.moviecritic.com.au/2010-05/

It also looks at the behaviour of people of the time in quite detail with the inequality of the role that a female and male hold, best shown by a shot of the children leaving school, the boys running off ahead with no cares and the girls neatly and quietly walking behind, always aware of their image.
Also it showed a twistingly real versions of the family relationship in different levels of class and structures of families.

Although this film had alot of violence in different form it was never, I felt, the true theme of the film. That would be innocence, nicely symbolised in the white ribbons that get put on the children as a reminder to them.

In the story they are attempting to preserve the innocence of children, but at the same time are at times talking to and treating them like adults which is almost why the story is in a way so disturbing.

I did like the film from a cinematic study angle because of the use of shots and imagery was brilliant and beautiful but as a story I did find it at times too disturbing and slow to enjoy.