Nearly a hundred years after World War I passed, Austrian director Haneke restarted the film "White Ribbon" on black and white film. The shots that are not good at jumping tell the story of accidental and bizarre events, while the sound of the film that does not rely on the soundtrack to render the atmosphere calmly tells the inevitable; the abstinence and breaking free in the long shot "window frame" fill the aesthetics of the film took on a new meaning.
The movie "White Ribbon" tells about many bizarre events that happened in a small German village before "World War I", and is "a story about German children". A difficult investigation begins when the doctor trips over a mysteriously tied string as he rides home; the harsh priest ties his son Martin and daughter Clana with a white ribbon as a warning after they return late; Ribbons on trees mysteriously disappear; farmer’s wife dies on the same day as farmer’s wife, village teacher finds Martin walking on a narrow railing in mid-air just to prove God’s forgiveness; widowed farmer’s son destroys baron’s farm to vent his anger , Some people set the manor on fire, kidnapped and whipped the baron's son; some people brutally injured the eyes of the mentally retarded boy Cary, and finally the doctor and the midwife disappeared together with Cary...
A series of unexplainable and even brutal and bloody incidents, intertwined with the pure love between the village teacher and the baron's nanny Eva, let the audience go to a more horrifying truth under the teacher's narration and exploration - those seemingly ignorant and innocent teenagers, Perhaps it is the initiator of "green face and fangs".
The long-shot aesthetic runs through the whole film of "White Ribbon", even if there is still a switch between different camera positions in the same scene, it is very slow and soft.
In the film, a long shot is boldly placed in the long and narrow corridor of the pastor's house, showing the process of the severe pastor whipping his children. When Martin closed the door for the first time, the camera "calmly" aimed at the closed door, leaving the audience in stillness and silence, extremely nervous; Martin lowered his head to open the door and approached the camera, but only went out to pick up his father's The belt; he closed the door again, and the sound of the belt and the scream burst out when the audience was unsuspecting.
The door leading to the "execution ground" becomes a "window to reveal a part of reality" - when it is opened, it opens up the depth, and when it is closed, it opens up the audience's associations. The door is tightly closed, as the majesty of patriarchy constrains the child's nature, but also violently releases depression and tension, making the audience shudder. Imprisonment and release appear at the same time in one picture, and they fight fiercely in the same family. The corporal punishment and the humiliating white ribbon caused the children to further break free and resist, eventually leading to a series of murders in the village.
In the moving long shot, the contradictions within the shot are reflected through the ambiguity of the picture.
At the beginning of the film, the camera uses a top-down perspective to focus on the crying child who lost his mother and was seriously injured by his father for a long time. Sister Anna tried her best to comfort her brother. After getting up, she went through another "jump cut" to the door, and replied "greetings" from the children at the door.
This long shot maintains the continuity of time and emotion, that is, from the low to the high point of receiving the care of others; it shows the depth change of the space, that is, from the claustrophobic stairs to the distant doors and windows. The long shot also makes the objective reality presented by it have ambiguity and ambiguity of characters that can be re-examined.
When watching this clip for the first time, the audience will not think too much; but at the end of the film, I heard the teacher say, "Just last year when the doctor had an accident, they (the children) were in the garden and said they were helping Anna." Looking back on this long shot later, I feel horrified - the "warmth" that Anna felt after sobbing came from the children who were most suspected of tripping over the doctor on purpose. The two ends of this long shot are not friends and friends, but lambs and criminals. The long shot gently and brutally exposes the voyeuristic desires of human nature and the hypocrisy in the pursuit of superiority.
This long shot and other long shots in the film all hide the film's narrative of "accidental and inevitable". Why did the children call Anna by smashing small stones to greet Anna when her sister and brother were in mourning? Why did the Baron's son happen to be with the children before he was abused? Why did the peasant's son think the baron killed his mother? Why did the village chief's daughter foresee Kari being beaten? Those seemingly magical events were as inexplicable as when Anna confronted her brother with questions about death.
Regarding death, the only thing Anna can be sure of is the inevitability of death and the accidents that lead to death; regarding bizarre events, seemingly accidental events are actually inevitable. Fathers who never set themselves up to understand their children, but only blindly defend the rules, and women who have lost the right to speak and freedom of personality, children who grow up in such families will inevitably find their missing existence through bullying or mutilation in extreme low self-esteem. even a sense of superiority. This kind of bad root may be the deeply buried fuse that will rise to racial discrimination and national war in the future.
In the priest's mouth, white symbolizes purity, but in the eyes of the children bound by white ribbons, they see white that includes all colors. This is probably also the director's intention to show the colorful world with black and white tape. A pastor who preaches atonement, forgiveness, and love really only loves himself at heart. Well-dressed, formidable men, women with tied hair and tight wraps, ostensibly defending the "norm," pure and innocent, in dark corners indulge in lust and betrayal. The white ribbon that tightly binds everyone is actually a black magic box that stimulates inner desires, causing innocent and free people to die for the "belief" they advertise.
With the passage of time, the bizarre stories in the village slowly fade away, but the old and trembling teacher at the beginning of the film still tells those events that lacked details through a tone that gradually became stronger, hoping to evoke the stillness of human beings a hundred years later. Confinement and struggle, contingency and inevitability to think about.
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