“Did you ever wonder who tortured Karli?” … Michael Haneke’sitting A White Ribbon Link to this video
I’ve been half-watching, half-hearing this unaccustomed trailer for Michael Haneke’sitting Cannes-winning masterpiece in the corner of my computer cover all morning – maybe 200 times, give or take a dozen. And I’m still not sick of it (lasting effects may convey longer to materialise, of course). There’s in the same state much here to disturb, to provoke; and it’s so breathtakingly beautiful it makes me shivery.
- The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
- Production year: 2009
- Country: Rest of the world
- Directors: Michael Haneke
- Cast: Josef Bierbichler, Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur
The White Ribbon – three hours long, shot in swarthy and white, set in a small German village in 1917 – is a film that genuinely only gets more striking the longer it stays in your blood. As with Haneke’s US remake of Funny Games, I’ve only seen it once, but I find it comes back to haunt me within a little every week.
But repetition makes your perspective slip. Does this trailer strike you as especially hooky or hypnotic? Does it allure or chill out?
Am I right about my small, nagging doubts? Does this trailer, as luck may have it, ask the central question (“Did you ever wonder who tortured Karli?”) a touch too bluntly? And then design the finger (the children! the children!) rather over-insistently? Is it just me who has an unhappy flashback to The Village round the state they burn the barn down?
Mostly though, this is rich, isn’cheek by jowl it? From that opening shot to the opening of the barn door (hello Bresson!), the moments in the church (come right in, Bergman!), the touches of kiddie cuteness (like some morbid Etre et Avoir), all smothered in every awful ominousness. Two hundred times on and I still feel slightly squeamish watching this. So I’ll stop now – over to you.
• The White Ribbon is showing at the London film festival on 21 and 22 October, then opens at the Curzon Mayfair and nationwide from 13 November.
