When an idea is transformed into an ideology, opposition arises, and human relationships quickly become dehumanized. This is the theme of The White Ribbon. - Mike Haneke
Violence is a stunning response to the futility of value
Mike Haneke is a rare director in today's film industry who sees the world and shoots movies from a completely personal perspective. All of his works are deeply branded with this. When it comes to his films, it's hard to avoid the issue of violence, but I think violence is not just the content and style of his films for Haneke. "Violence" is the origin of his films and the beginning of all stories and thoughts. . How did the violence in his films happen?
Haneke Glacier trilogy ("The Seventh Continent", "Benny's Video", "71 Fragments of the Chronicle of Opportunity") runs through the "glaciers of emotion" and indifference, which is the beginning of a value disorder, As he himself said, these are all symbols of "valuelessness", and the constant experience in all the films that accompany his "valuelessness" is the presentation of different forms of violence. But Haneke hates and fears violence, not love! So why is he so obsessed with "violent" performance? In my opinion, this is an astonishing, and sometimes provocative, response to the "uselessness of value". The scenes that show violence are always shot from a distance, or simply move the violent scene out of the frame, just to give the viewers to imagine the violence. He firmly believes that "photographing suffering at close range is indecent", and it is also a matter of taste. . This extremely firm and seemingly contradictory obsession with "violence" is also the most distinctive temperament of Mike Haneke. His films are often compared to Pasolini's "120 Days of Sodom," which he believes is the only film that depicts real-life violence and what makes people understand what makes The truth about unbearable violence! He is confident that "Fun Game" can approach such intensity. Yes, intensity! The occurrence of violence in reality often brings shocking intensity to people, and the reflection caused by this is the beginning of Haneke's creation of the film, so Haneke has always emphasized that everything he does in the film is to bring about reflection.
reflective
A major feature of Haneke's films is the reflexivity of the film, which has a lot to do with German literature after World War II. When the Nazis showed their manipulation of the media (political propaganda, such as "Triumph of the Will"), German intellectuals As soon as they realized the power of literature or film, German-speaking writers developed reflective literature, and Haneke himself also recognized that he belonged to the school of reflection.
The movie "White Ribbon" sets the story time in 1913-1914, and in the film's subtitle is marked "A story about German children", we know that the children in the town grew up in the Nazi era of World War II. a generation. At the same time, the director deleted this title from the title of the film in non-German-speaking countries, because it would make foreign audiences think that the film just showed a special German problem. And it can happen in any society and country.
As someone from a German-speaking country, I would like to discuss childhood in the Nazi era. But at the same time, I insist on expanding the topic. Because I want you to see that building an ideal of absolute perfection and turning an idea into an ideology is always a dangerous thing. Of course, while the details of what is happening to Islamists today are different from those of the Nazis, the crux of the problem will always be the same. - Mike Haneke
never give an answer
Never giving an answer is one of Mike Haneke's film features. Taking "White Ribbon" as an example, there are many suspects in the occurrence of many murders, but there are many suspects in the murder; the peasant woman who fell into the barn may be an accidental incident, as is the fire, but it may also be man-made. In the interview, the director told that he deleted all the scenes where the children played together. Even though he spent a lot of time studying the games at that time, and those scenes were very well shot, it was too easy for the audience to understand the relationship between the children. , and eventually deleted the shots - "it's actually a good thing to remove these shots"! The director cultivates the audience's suspicion, deliberately gives the possibility of multiple explanations, and uses this to break the inevitable availability of the truth. Reappeared in The White Ribbon.
deep complexity
Even though Mike Haneke always opens up his cinematic world with sharp and scathing stances, the films he presents are never complex and, as his films build up over physical time, he has a deep understanding of The complexity is getting higher and higher, and he regrets the term "glaciation émotionnelle" ("g laciation émotionnelle "), which he coined in his early years, because it is a bit of a keyword, and keywords are dangerous!
Keywords always reduce the complexity of the idea you wish to express. Like labeling, it is always a simplified meaning. Once we give something a name, it loses its complexity, that's why I'm not happy
- Mike Haneke
The character setting in "White Ribbon" is very complicated and contradictory. The small town doctor is very responsible and competent for his patients, but his private life is shameless, insulting his lover and molesting his daughter; although the priest physically punishes the children, he is only in his Cognitive did what he was supposed to do, so he finally forgave his daughter when he confronted his daughter for killing his bird (putting it in a cross), so when he heard the accusation against the town's children from the primary school teacher It will show such excitement and anger... Every character in the film has its own complexity. It can be said that the complexity of the characters secretly points to the deep complexity that the film wants to show, and points to a wider range of complexity. Bring reflection.
Mike Haneke often talks about his encounter with Ulrike Meinhof, and the reflections that sparked his art over the years. Ulrike Meinhof is a German left-wing terrorist and journalist. In 1970, she founded the left-wing terrorist group Red Army Faction with Andreas Baader.
I know Meinhof, I met her in 1970 when I was working as a theatre consultant on TV. She grew up in a very religious environment and displayed a fairly strict moral character, the result of a Protestant education. To immerse myself in Protestant culture, I always associate them with strict discipline. After meeting Meinhof, however, I associated the strict morality of the Protestants with the danger of a certain fanaticism. From a certain perspective, this encounter may be regarded as the beginning of the "White Ribbon" movie script . - Mike Haneke
In Mike Haneke's film, the encounter sparks reflections on Christian civilization, the problems facing the middle class, European immigration, the decline of twentieth-century entrenched ideologies and the inability of the modern world to offer new ideas and many more. These complex and huge thinking and reflections all happen in his films, such as the Glacier trilogy, "Fun Game", "Love", "Paris Ukiyo-e", "Happy Ending" and so on. In this sense, Mike Haneke is a sober and concerned observer.
Elegant picture and perfect structure
The black and white retro visual style in "White Ribbon" well reflects Mike Haneke's slightly Austrian elegance, and inherits some of the essence of the European film tradition. From the picture effect, it is easy to think of Bresson, Bergman's classic black-and-white films, "Batsa the Donkey", "Silence", "Still in the Mirror" and so on.
Mike Haneke first made a visual reference to many photographs of that era in Germany, such as August Sander's photography. In order to achieve the "unparalleled clarity and brilliance" of Sander's photographs, the director's Great effort. "White Ribbon" was first shot on color film, and when completed, the negatives were converted into digital images and then into black-and-white images. At the same time, all the faces of the characters, including those in the panorama, were processed in post-production, so as to achieve the texture and temperament of classical photography. To this end, the director also gave priority to those who fit the contours of the photos of that era when selecting actors.
Mike Haneke attaches great importance to the structure of the film, he believes that the structure is the most important - "it is the question of who we represent", he also prioritizes the creation of the structure in the creation of the film, and then thinks about the dialogue in this framework Wait. His films are well-structured, well-structured, scrutinized, and the structure must be musical! In the interview, he talked about the way of writing the script, using a lot of structural methods of music: ellipsis, repetition, contrast and so on. If I describe the style of music, in "White Ribbon", I think it should be both a calm, rigorous structure of classicism and a melancholy, elegant mood of romanticism. As he himself said - 'As with any script, there has to be an aesthetically thought out structure that we can think of as music. Of all the art forms, the closest thing to cinema is definitely music'.
"White Ribbon" The primary and secondary school teachers played Bach's "Sicilian Dance" when they comforted Eva, and the baroness and the tutor played Schubert's "The Beautiful Mill Girl". These beautiful music paired with the nightmarish violence of the entire film has a bizarre vibe and Mike Haneke-esque harmony.
art is an exception
Mike Haneke's films reflect on many issues, and also raise many questions and phenomena sharply. I don't think he is a pessimist, but based on his interpretation of the world around him in his works is definitely not. optimistic. He has a disordered interpretation of the existing religion, love, freedom, etc. of human civilization, but only Haneke is optimistic about art. He believes that all the only fruits of decay and collapse are art.
It is through art that we gain a richness of expression that transcends life and that brings us closer to the heart of the storm. When we are in a storm, we can't see anything at all. However, once we get to the core, everything becomes calm and even clearer. - Mike Haneke
Source: Haneke on Haneke, World Book Publishing Company
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