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Rating:
How does one set up a review of a film just seen, still to be digested, not understood in all its facets? Difficult. And yet there are films that make us go to sleep with a halo of unarchived memories, a sort of "visual responsibility" that brings to mind certain scenes, certain gestures, which need to be reworked more for what they leave inside than for the film itself.
Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, "The White Ribbon" presents itself as a snapshot of daily life in a small village in northern Germany, only to reveal itself as a ruthless and real depiction of early 20th century society destined to fall into the abyss of the First World War.
There are no geographical references, political allusions are practically absent, the village where the lives of the inhabitants intertwine is a microcosm with almost no contact with the outside; a tiny portion of paradise where life seemingly unfolds in harmony, but where the truth hides much more.
A couple of strange incidents disrupt a daily routine made of toil in the fields for most people, the unanimous acceptance of social hierarchies crumbles in the face of the laborer's son who wants to avenge the work-related death of his mother and damages the baron landowner's crops; a baron who owns the estate and gives work to the people, who is rich and strong but sees his family happiness vanish because of a wife in love with another and a son abused in the woods, although if he lacks great merits, he does not appear to have great faults either.
There is no act of accusation against the individual, not even towards the slimy figure of the village doctor who uses his lover only to humiliate her once he tires of her and abuses his teenage daughter. There is also no assignment of blame towards the despotic Protestant pastor who, through corporal and psychological punishment of his children (the white ribbon on the arm to purify them and bring them closer to the purity of religion is one such punishment), reaches the point of self-pity and perhaps even denies the truth to himself.
Instead, the finger is pointed at a social calm dictated by rules rigid beyond the limit of severity, where it is primarily the children who bear the brunt. Children who have had their childhood stolen, teenagers whose adolescence has been violated, future adults who will, in masses, fall into Nazi ideology.
A 2-hour film that could have been twice as long, a black and white that offers more shades than a modern comedy. Elegant even in the harshness of certain images, even more "strong" in the analysis that devastates the concept of childlike innocence, all embedded in a beautiful historical reconstruction and in a slow rhythm that further enhances the photography especially of landscapes. To make some moments even more chilling, there is the total absence of a soundtrack.
As the viewing progresses, we are assailed by doubts arising from our hasty judgments about a certain character, and we find ourselves lost in a place where the conventions that previously permeated village life falter, where the authority of the gendarmes is powerless in the face of the creeping social malaise, where the tender love feeling of the young teacher (the story's narrator) towards the baron's nanny if not tainted by malice fails to rise as a tool to combat the grayness and repression living within the houses, where incest and subjugation mark the hours within the domestic walls.
The credits roll, almost everyone remains seated in astonishment. The end... is missing.
The end is within us, we just have to explain it to ourselves, each in our own way. Where has the doctor disappeared to, his lover with the retarded son, who is or who are the responsible parties for the atrocities that shatter the peace of the village and force the inhabitants to suspect each other? The answers are missing because they are evident but perhaps historically too shocking, still shrouded under the veil of antiseptic respectability that serves as the supreme order.
A delicately ruthless tale that goes beyond the images on the screen.
A cruel prophecy of the role that the children of that period will have during the Second World War.
A film at times enigmatic and chilling, difficult to assimilate due to its starkness.
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