A Haneke Virgin Views the White Ribbon
@Matt Parks
That’s a little uncalled-for.
I’m pretty sure this thread has more to do with his being a virgin than it does The White Ribbon.
@Christofer Pierson
Oh shit man, you got to get on that!
Welcome to my thread, villagers!
The points you raise are quite central. Haneke’s film is entirely about hidden violence that occasionally rises to the surface before our eyes. There are several “Who did what to whom and why” mysteries that are never resolved. And several disturbing things that take place right in front of us. (For me the killing of the bird was the most eerrie.) Clearly Hanke sees violence as central to the human condition. Therefore for me the real mystery was the schoolteacher and the housemaid who becomes his bride. Why do these perfectly nice people exist in a world so full of hate?
Haneke is filled with unsolvabel mysteries (“Cache” being the locus classicus) but in “The White Ribbon” it’s all much subtler.
David: I noted that they were not from that village, although why that would mark them as so morally different from the others (they’re still northern Germans between the wars, after all) isn’t inherently explainable. Was it something about Germany that made these villagers so rotten? Or something about the times? Or something about being human?
“I’ll be honest and say I’m not a fan of horror movies, except as a rubbernecker from a safe distance, less so of torture porn, so actually seeing either version of Funny Games was not on my immediate agenda.”
Watch Funny Games. To call it torture porn is an extreme disservice to the film. Yeah, I mean Haneke’s often accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it too (i.e. engage in what he critiques) but I think that’s par for the course with any filmmaker who deals with violence.
RWP: What’s interesting along those lines is to compare the political expression of authority with the domestic form in this film: The baron (who’s absent much of the time) and the police (from the county or whatever the German equivalent is, so also absent much of the time), with the in-your-face sort of parenting—fathering, in particular—that the children get.. The baron is a mostly benevolent sort who throws festivals as thanks for the work the villagers do for him. He’s generous with his bicycle and carriage, at least. Yet he’s hated by the peasant’s son. Is that because he’s more of a political monster than meets the eye? Who knows? His wife seems more of a tyrant toward the tutor, at least, but she’s humanized at the end. She wants out of there, as any rational person would.
The police are quite a bit rougher on the face of it, especially toward the “dreaming girl.” But perhaps their hard-nosedness is a sign of their being from the concrete world, where tthe village’s seething malice is not a factor and one is free to know the difference between a dream and a lie to cover up a real crime one is implicated in by having knowledge about.
Ari: “Watch Funny Games. To call it torture porn is an extreme disservice to the film. Yeah, I mean Haneke’s often accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it too (i.e. engage in what he critiques) but I think that’s par for the course with any filmmaker who deals with violence.”
I’ve moved the Austrian version closer to the top of my list. I know it’s not fair to call it “torture porn,” less accurate to call it horror in any traditional sense. I didn’t care to make any nice distinctions about that when I first read about those films a couple of years ago.
I want to suggest a re-direct from violence, as central to human existence, to conflict as the basic human interaction.
People desire to be centers of influence and this causes conflict. When a person enters the sphere of influence of another person, a power struggle occurs between the two centers of influence; thereby, human relationships involve the resolution, suspension, or expression of conflict.
The father wants to maintain his centricity and uses the expression of conflict to maintain that order – the children follow suit – that is all they know.
The town’s people (e.g. the baron) suspend conflict by looking the other way – they deny the minister’s centric expression of conflict.
The White Ribbon doesn’t resolve conflict, but accepts the expression of conflict as a way of life.
This is the most interesting thing in Haneke’s cinema: that there is no resolution of conflict, which was the staple of Hollywood films.
Ari:
“Yeah, I mean Haneke’s often accused of wanting to have his cake and eat it too (i.e. engage in what he critiques) but I think that’s par for the course with any filmmaker who deals with violence.”
Even if that’s the case (supposing he made Funny Games in part because he’d always wanted to film a thriller), it still fits in with Haneke’soverall project, since he’s never claimed to be outside of the influences and tendencies he’s commenting on.
Good comments re the film, Christofer. Like you, I came on to Haneke with some trepidation, considering what I had read about his films. Have yet to see Funny Games or Benny’s Video because I think I might find them too disturbing – but I will still get to them eventually. I have seen several other Haneke films and know he is a serious and very conscientious filmmaker, with a demanding attitude toward his work. His interviews are always informative – as much for what he doesn’t reveal as for what he says.
I think you have hit upon most of the themes in White Ribbon, as Robert and David have also elaborated. Yes, it is about the relationship of parent to child and authority figures of all stripes to those under their control (ie, teacher, pastor, police, etc.). Haneke is subtle and always allows his audience to draw their own inferences and conclusions, although he can also stack the deck.
This film can be seen as an allegory of the hidden level of societal violence – especially in the family – and how it resonates through the generations. Perhaps Haneke means to show us how a society inflicting a bad set of values and a whole hidden agenda of deep Freudian desires (Haneke is nothing if not a Freudian) upon its youth, can have unexpected consequences. It is just these unexpected consequences through the very acts of violence at the heart of the children’s reaction to their oppressive environment, that are at the heart of the film. It is all about consequences.
As you also relate, Haneke sets us a series of mysteries (many unsolvable) in this film,. This is also a trademark, especially to be seen in his brilliant work Cache (a must see Haneke film). As Robert says:
The White Ribbon doesn’t resolve conflict, but accepts the expression of conflict as a way of life.
This is the most interesting thing in Haneke’s cinema: that there is no resolution of conflict, which was the staple of Hollywood films.
That lack of resolution is the key to Haneke. But, in general, you have the essence of the film, I think. Try some more and get back to us. In the meantime, I will also be brave and tackle the Haneke I have been avoiding.
@Clayton Try some more and get back to us.
I’ve seen all of his films that I am aware of….
Mike Clayton, thanks for your thoughts and recommendations. I will see some more Haneke for sure.
RWP: I think Mike meant that remark for me.
Christofer Pierson
I’ve read a bit about Michael Haneke but The White Ribbon was the first of his films that I felt really compelled to see. I did that last night. As a little experiment, I want to test my Haneke assumptions, based on what I’d read and heard, against my actual viewing of this film.
I first became aware of Haneke when Funny Games USA was released. The Piano Teacher and Cache, not to mention the rest of his oeuvre, went right by me, as I had been focusing my interests elsewhere beside film for the previous decade and a half or so. But when Funny Games USA came out, I read an appreciation of him, by Andrew O’Hehir maybe, in Salon, and, of course, his reputation as a provocateur intrigued me.
I’ll be honest and say I’m not a fan of horror movies, except as a rubbernecker from a safe distance, less so of torture porn, so actually seeing either version of Funny Games was not on my immediate agenda. Nevertheless, Haneke’s ideas (as commuted to me via Salon, anyway) about movies and violence and their relationship with the audience in particular and society in general seemed to warrant deeper investigation. It’s been a concern of mine since I distressedly watched Dr. Zhivago, of all things, on the big screen as a child—my first exposure to the red stuff on film, and I did not enjoy it!
More than that, I responded to what I understood to be Haneke’s critique of film’s desensitization of violence and pain in the movies. It’s trite to say (but bears repeating) that violence (along with sex) has always been central to them, something they inherited from all previous forms of entertainment, including public lynchings and executions. Something there is in us not only can’t look away from the wreckage, but actually wants to look at it, to have it release us from our boredom with the ordinary. I appreciated what I presumed to be Haneke’s questions about that: Should this bloodlust of the audience be coddled by “entertainers?” Shouldn’t violence serve more of a purpose in a work of art than providing cheap thrills and nervous laughter? Do movies always have to glamorize (and mystify us with) violence? Is there a way to make audiences confront their own sadism and distancing mechanisms, to connect us with our sense of the brutal so that we can distinguish real violence from staged violence—e.g., footage of actual atrocities committed in the real world from Zombie Holocausts—and know how to feel differently about them?
I expected The White Ribbon to take up this theme, given that the press and reviews surrounding it implied that it was a sort of meditation on the mindset in Germany between the World Wars (talk about an audience with bloodlust!) that allowed the rise of Nazism. Let me just say that it’s not a good idea to watch a film with a hypothesis about it in mind, and fortunately for me, I did not watch it that way. My initial reading of the film, taking it at face value, was along the lines of a complicated mystery, which is probably not an unusual approach to it. Who put the trip wire in the doctor’s path? Who brutalized the Baron’s boy Sigi and Karli the midwife’s disabled child? Were they the same person or person’s? And why were these horrible events happening?
Those mysteries are not resolved, but we do witness several “crimes” as they’re being committed: the destruction by scythe of the Baron’s cabbage patch in revenge, apparently, for the “accidental” death of a peasant family matriarch; the doctor’s molestation of his 14-year-old daughter; the murder by scissors of Peepsi, the pastor’s bird, by his eldest daughter; the theft of Sigi’s flute and his near drowning by two of Georg the Steward’s boys. We also witness parents—the steward and the pastor, in particular—doling out brutal punishment to their children, the former in rage and the latter calmly, methodically, and with the power of Jesus guiding him. Sadism runs rampant in Haneke’s little village. Rarely does it seem that the sadist dealing it out is even conscious of what he or she is doing. Mostly revenge and occasionally envy seems to be the impulse behind it. Only the doctor, unless I’m overlooking someone, seems to be a classic Sadean kind of monster who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others (particularly on the midwife, but also on his children, of course).
Only one of the adult villagers seems to have any spark of warmth and consistent decency in him: the schoolteacher/narrator. But such is the oppression of the film’s threatening atmosphere that you’re relieved when he studiously agrees to ditch his plan to take his “barely legal” fiancee Emma off-road for a spontaneous (or not) picnic when she fearfully objects. Emma is not at all unkind, but she is so young that she’s more like the children than the teacher, even if she knows her mind and can take care of herself in her shy way. These two characters, like only the youngest of the children, are the film’s only adult-aged innocents.
So, this being Haneke ,it seems appropriate to ask, what is the audience’s relationship to all the violence in this filmic world? I ask myself, what was it that compelled me to see this film, knowing that violence was a central theme? First thought, in all honesty: the black and white film Haneke chose to use to create it. Maybe that’s just me: I’m a sucker for black and white. Second thought: I was not looking for an allegory about Nazism. I wanted something deeper than that. I wanted something that would do what I believed Haneke has said he is interested in providing: a connection with my own moral compass in the face of this kind of world. Which of the characters attracted or repulsed me, for example? Would I feel brutalized myself? Would I enjoy the violence?
It would take a whole lot of words to get into that, but I’ll try to be brief and wrap this up. (Do I hear applause?) I think the character who is at the center of these questions, for me, anyway, is the doctor—or rather, the doctor in contrast to the pastor. The pastor is repulsive on the face of it. (He even resembles Jerry Falwell, gods rest his soul.) He doesn’t smile when meting out punishment, and he’s not the flaming caricature of the perverted priest you find in Fanny and Alexander or Murmurs of the Heart, for example. But it’s clear there is something sick with his institutional, everyday sadism that he is hopelessly unconscious of. Perhaps even willfully unconscious. But the doctor is a monster: a conscious-less inflicter of incest and slashing cruelty to people who love and trust him. More than this, however, the doctor is a modern, more than anyone else in this world. Speaking for myself, I was seduced by his modernity, saw a bit of myself reflected back—to be clear. not as far as his sadism goes, but in the Bergmanian despair and alienation he seems to carry around with him.
I’ll leave it at that and hope others can also speak to these themes.