The White Ribbon(GE) Directed by Michael Haneke  Written by Michael Haneke Starring Christian Friedel; Leonie Benesch; UJlrich Tukur; Ursina Lardi; Fion Mutert; Burghart Klaussner; Steffi Kuhnert; Leonard Proxauf; Maria Victori Dragas; Michael Krantz

The brilliant auteur Michael Haneke has long been interested in visual media and its influence upon society. Earlier in his career his films were more acutely concerned with specific examinations of the relationship between how our behavior and interpersonal relationships are affected by what we watch, as well as the interactive dialogue taking place between the makers of video and their audience. Though there has been some transitioning into films related to violence and sex and the way that we as a society both judge and participate in unconventional and/or repellent behavior, the sixty eight year old Haneke’s entire oeuvre represents a kind of ongoing dialectic involving personal morality as juxtaposed with societal morays. Haneke has done much of his recent work in French, but with White Ribbonthe native Austrian returns closer to home, basing his metaphorical tale in a rural North German farming community pre-WWI. Shot in crisp black and white, the story has an an eerie underlying tone throughout. The plot chronicles a series of violent acts occurring in and around a village centered by an expansive estate. The staunchly conservative protestant area is entirely governed by a self-imposed religious rigidity (the title refers to a form of punishment meted out to misbehaved children), the severity of which naturally leads one to thoughts of what would happpen in Germany several decades later. While there is some mystery involving the school teacher (Christian Friedl ) - we hear him narrating as a much older man - who tries to get to the bottom of what is occurring, Haneke is uninterested in building tension as in a standard potboiler. Rather, he unveils small clues slowly, leaving out as much information as he chooses to include. The ultimate revelations are more about human behavior and the insidiously pervasive influence repression and fascist thought has on those being raised under its influence than about the solving of the specifics of the incidents. Though he hardly refrains from indicting those who pervert their authority in the name of promoting a personal/ political/religious ideological agenda (A Pastor; A Baron; A Doctor), Haneke simultaneously allows for some explanation as to the powerful influence of indoctrination upon all those involved regardless of the exact methodology of delivery. By showing us a panoramic view of so many of these people across microcosmic class lines he exposes an audience to variations on the group experience, providing a breadth that may have been impossible in a more narrowly focused character study. The concept of troubled young people capable of acts of cruelty is one the director has explored before, and here the kids have a Children of the Corn-like bearing that seems to border on horror genre territory at various points, though authorial restraint keeps the events in a realistic realm. Only a filmmaker at the height of his/her talents could so artfully weave this many story-lines, dually making a 2 1/2 hour grimly dark period piece pass smoothly if not exactly briskly in the process. While the perspective is certainly a dour one, the brief glimpses of humanity are enough to keep us from utter despair.

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