Highly Recommended Film: The White Ribbon

[PopHistorian]

Just watched. Anybody seen it? 2009, German language. This is a film that's not afraid to confront narcissism and psychopathy, and how it hides, and how it affects others, and the enormity of its implications. Really, it's no less than that. One critic wrote, "It's a film that will be watched and discussed for decades to come." Not that critics can't sometimes be prone to exaggeration, but maybe it should be that way. I can't think of another film like it, though I'm no cinephile. Would appreciate some other opinions of it.

Partial description from _IMDB.com:

During the course of the year before WWI, a series of tragic and suspicious looking incidents take place in a small farming village somewhere in black and white Germany. The culprit or the culprits behind the crime wave will not be too easy to find.

The doctor, the priest, the baron and the teacher who also narrates the film form the elite of the village. We get to know each one of them and a few other villagers along with children of this village, calm on the surface but deeply tormented by an undercurrent of brutality, envy, malice and apathy.

The children's natural path to maturity is blocked by strict religious morality, cruelly enforced by the priest, thereby inhibiting their personal observation of the world around them. The priest feeds children with guilt and sexual repression instead of love and punishes even their most innocent mistakes. Certainly this environment will make it easy for them to not only accept but seek ruthless authority later in life.

Well, it's not just the priest -- not by a long shot. Most of the adults among these average people are so "damaged" and the film seems to be telling how they pass on their disease, through their cultural programs, and how that can affect an entire nation and its effect on other nations. All of this told in the microcosm of a rural village.

 

[clerck de bonk]

I watched this one a while ago and found it very intriguing.
I also watched Funny games(originalversion) years ago which I also thought well made but totally infuriating... Haven't watched it since and don't think I'll watch again, but this one I probably will.

 

[andi]

This is a must see film for everyone. Thanks PopHistorian for bringing it up.

 

[Rabelais]

I watched this yesterday. It was depressing, but it certainly presented a wide array of aberrations. It develops many sub plots, but never resolves them. Why did the doctor and his sexually abused daughter go away? Was she pregnant with his child? Where did the midwife, who never returns with the borrowed bicycle go? What happened to her retarded son... was he taken by the doctor? And lastly, for a who-dunnit, we never find out who did it. We are left only with the speculations of the "gossips".

This may be high cinematic art, but the unresolved plot treatment left me dangling and somewhat disappointed. On a brighter note, the acting was believable.