Film Review: White ribbon

Overview

This brilliantly shot film in black and white give a startling picture of a small, rural, claustrophobic in a deeply religious,Protestant community.  In some ways there is order with the count, the biggest landowner, though not liked, is  respected as he controls the lives of the rest of the village.

The story tells it story gradually showing the undercurrents of dissatisfaction and disturbing trends, which highlight the fragility of the community, the beginning of an end of an era, which would not, could not survive the trauma of coming the ‘Great War’.

Review

The first incident is a wire stretched across a gateway.  It brings the doctor’s horse down heavily and fractures the doctor’s collar bone.  This incident is disturbing as no one in such a small community seems to know who put it there.

Life goes on.  The scythes are cutting down the hay.  The cycle of the farming world goes on.  Then, just before the annual harvest feast, a woman dies, falling through rotten floor boards in the mill.  The tension builds and the workers are cowed, as the count makes his formal speech, thanking the workers.  The tension eases as the drink and food is given out until the son of the dead woman destroys one of the baron’s field of cabbages.

A farmer kills himself.  A window is opened to kill a baby?  We don’t know.  A girl dreams of a threat to a handicapped child and a couple of days later he disappears and is found tortured and tied to a tree.  Can it be the children?  They have an unhealthy interest in the troubles of the village.

The pastor is overbearing and the scenes in the church and his treatment of his children raise the forbidding atmosphere of the film. His forcing of two of his older children to wear, as a punishment, white ribbons to signify their purity.  However the closed society is being challenged.   The count’s wife is seeking, unthinkable,  a divorce.

But is this a sign of the coming Third Reich.  I think not.  It shows a period where things were beginning to change.  The appearance of a car, even the bicycle, lead to changing times.  Roles are beginning to be challenged though there is pressure to keep the old ways.

Summary

This film is good.  It examines the society in detail.  It suggests themes; changes and challenges that are happening in this rural location.   There are the violent incidents; there are the undercurrents.  A good film to see and to make you think.