The film "White Ribbon" created by the famous Austrian director and screenwriter Michael Haneke in 2009 won the Palme d'Or at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, arousing great attention in the industry. "White Ribbon" sets the starting point in an allegorical German town, and digs deep into the root cause of German national suffering through chain events. The film uses no soundtrack and Bergman-style black and white tones to select a sample of an unknown town in Germany, restraining and forbearance to explore the origins of human nature and evil, known as "Satan Tango in the new century".
one. Violence nurtured by extreme patriarchy
According to Hannah Arendt's research: "For a long time, although violence has played an important role in human history, it has only been regarded as a marginal phenomenon for granted, and the thinking about its essence has not received enough attention."
Violence is often at the core of Haneke's films, such as the nasty and deformed violence in "Fun Game", the twisted and perverted personality violence in "Piano Teacher", and the hypocritical violence of the middle class in "Hidden Camera". In Haneke's film "White Ribbon", it tries to downplay the implementation of violence, but focuses on violence itself from a theoretical level. The most intuitive and profound conflict is patriarchal violence and resistance to patriarchal violence.
The original meaning of "White Ribbon" was originally the "White Ribbon Movement", a movement of Canadian men to end men's violence against women. The white ribbon was originally a symbol of purity, but in the film it is divorced from purity and becomes a symbol of violence and order, as well as a concrete manifestation of patriarchal oppression.
The pastor's family in the film, as the patriarchal core of the family, is endowed with the dual nature of divine right on the basis of religion, and explicit repression is adopted in the implementation of patriarchal violence. As a leader of power, he emphasizes orderliness. When children come home late, they will tie white ribbons on their arms and beat them. Son Martin will have his hands tied before going to bed because of masturbation. Daughter Clara will be punished for speaking loudly in class. Public humiliation of corporal punishment, wearing an all-black dress that is also required to mature and abstain;
As for the doctor's family, the doctor's way of showing patriarchal violence is by mentally abusing his ex-wife, sexually assaulting his daughter Anna after his ex-wife's death, and even resorting to a series of verbal violence against his mistress and midwife. Insults, whose violent nature lies in the objectification and oppression of women;
The Baron, who exists as a regime controller, belongs to the ultra-conservative Junker landlords, and often adopts implicit repression in the implementation of patriarchal violence. The baron used patriarchal violence to fire the nanny Eva, who had nothing to do with the beating of his son Sigi, and the imprisonment of his wife after learning that his wife was cheating. The essence of violence also lies in the suppression and control of his ownership.
These three, as the upper class and the spokesperson of the patriarchy, put the family and the lower class under their own dominion, and naturally they are governed by representatives of the patriarchal power such as priests, doctors, and barons, and the children and women in the film. Suppressing the binary opposition of groups. The French philosopher Georges Sorel believes: "Violence also refers to an uncompromising attitude, an act of rebelling against a given authority." The modes of shock and reflection naturally form in this state of binary opposition. As a result, the film gave birth to a series of counterattacks and comprehensive sieges against the spokespersons of patriarchal violence by "small groups" represented by children.
The pastor's children, Martin and Clara, were to some extent the leaders of the "little group" that rebelled against the patriarchy. On the same day after the farmer's wife's death, Martin risked his life to walk on the single-plank bridge, in his own words "give me a first chance to kill me", and finally concluded that "God didn't do that, It shows God's satisfaction with me." Here, Martin's identity as a Christian casts a question on God, which also means questioning the theocracy and patriarchy represented by the father.
The resistance to patriarchy is even more pronounced from Clara's perspective. After the priest humiliated Clara in public, Clara took the form of pretending to be dizzy and took the first resistance to the patriarchy, and then stabbed the priest's love bird to death with scissors and placed it in the shape of a cross. The strong irony metaphor is a fierce challenge to the patriarchy. During the baptism ceremony in the church, the pastor made Clara drink the holy water. At this moment, the fatherhood represented by the pastor had collapsed, and "God" had already existed in name only. In the end, the pastor questioned the teachers, but still insisted that the children were pure and innocent, and making a gaffe indicated that the struggle against patriarchal violence and anti-patriarchy ended in a complete failure of the patriarchy.
In the film, the image of the horse whip appears many times. The horsewhip is closely related to the violent machine, and belongs to the common imagery related to war and fighting. The horse whip is the tool used by pastors to use violence against their children and housekeepers to use violence against their children. When the fathers used horse whips to beat and ravage the children and were tied with white ribbons, they did not become pure and innocent, but instead inherited violence in the violence, and the inheritance of patriarchal violence to the children will escalate and expand, becoming more and more Lack of ethics, order and empathy.
Unlike the patriarchal violence inflicted on the children by the fathers, the violence inherited by the children is more devoid of morality and nature. The children used indiscriminate violence against the weaker, the baron's son Sigi, the mentally handicapped Cali, and animals. The piles of horrific incidents were shocking, and the violence was bred and spread in the intergenerational inheritance.
Not only the "small groups" of the younger generation, the baroness got angry with her youngest son Sigi when she was practicing the piano, showed her dissatisfaction and provocation with the baron by being unfaithful to the baron, and the midwife vented her anger by fanning the housekeeper's son. Violent incidents such as these occurred one after another. Invisibly changed the psychology and personality of the whole town.
The film ends with a ceremony in a church with adults in the lower position and children with white ribbons above them, narrating news of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, implying that they will dominate the future of Germany. So far, Haneke has completed an allegory of the social operation model expressed by this tiny sample of German society, and fully deduced a relay of patriarchal violence.
two. Personality Dislocation in the Haze of Times
As one of the few films by Haneke that does not focus on middle-class families, "White Ribbon" uses a group-like narrative technique to shape a small and complete social structure, involving multiple class identities and the dislocation and dislocation of characters and their identities. Alienation explores the distinction between good and evil in human nature by restraining repressed audio-visual language.
Shortly after the film begins, the important image of the white ribbon appears in the film. To punish the children who come home too late, the pastor ties white ribbons around their arms to remind them of their sins and moral flaws. The role of the pastor can be said to represent the ideology of the entire society. He uses the morality of myths, and even hypocrisy to whitewash his patriarchal violence, turning the square inch of his family into a small space that imprisons the mind and body of children. space.
The pastor himself should be a symbol of the church and theocracy, but on the screen it presents an image of totalitarian oppression. To a large extent, the pastor's oppression has caused the distortion of the two children's personalities, forcing the children to abide by the hell they created. The rules in the book completely deviate from the image of priests in the traditional sense - to achieve the deconstruction of the "respect" of the father.
In the early twentieth century in which the story takes place, remnants of feudalism are still scattered throughout German towns and villages, and the problem of serfs is still serious. The character image of the baron in the film is a typical German Junker landlord class. As the incarnation of power, he even has the right to life and death for the residents of the small town. He can undertake a harvest festival where the whole village gathers, running Most of the town's capital.
He remained indifferently vigilant after his hired farmer's son died in business until the farmer's son destroyed his vegetable field at a harvest celebration. Then, after the baron's son Sigi was severely beaten and became a terrorist incident in the town, the baron chose to flee the town and his family to Italy to avoid the limelight. After his return, the situation of the Baron's family did not develop in the direction he imagined. His son Sigi was still robbed of the flute and framed by the housekeeper's son. Even the Baroness, who had always been under the Baron's protection, confessed to the Baron that she had betrayed the Baron. So far, the authoritative image created by the baron in the town has completely collapsed, and his role as a ruler has only ended in the end of leaving the town - achieving the subversion of the father's "right".
The doctor involved in the first terrorist incident can be said to be a respected representative of the town, and his identity is naturally linked to qualities such as holiness and charity. However, behind his back, he was doing activities such as molesting his own daughter and cheating with a midwife. In the film, the doctor's son Rudy was initially an admirer of the doctor. After the doctor fell from the horse, he expressed concern and sadness until Anna, the victim of the doctor's assault, had a discussion with him about life and death, breaking the The image of the myth of the doctor in Rudy's heart, after the doctor recovered, he chose to close the door and refuse to communicate with him. Not long after, one night, Rudy directly encountered the scene of the doctor molesting Anna. At this moment, the tall image of the doctor in Rudy's heart was completely disenchanted.
Religion and the authority of fathers form a ridiculous contrast in children: fathers emphasize the purity of religion, on the one hand suppressing their children's desires, on the other hand imposing their own desires on their children, cheating and molesting their daughters The deeds - even the sluggishness of the father's "love".
The group portrait of the children can be said to be the first protagonist of the film. Haneke never directly exposes the children's atrocities throughout the film, creating a suspenseful effect. The direct performance of the children in the film is always kind and pure, but at the end of the film, the teacher's reasoning found that the initiators of a series of terrifying incidents were these children who were not yet adults, revealing the ferocity and cunning that did not belong to their age. , silently created all the tragedies but never made a sound. After the "small group" designed a plot against the doctor, they were still able to greet the midwife in a decent manner, and faced the doctor's questioning at the end, they were able to calmly deal with the prevarication.
This group of organized, disciplined children who can skillfully use various violent means to take revenge and even vent their anger, constantly reshape and construct their own moral standards through terrifying experiments again and again, design adults, and suppress the weak - leading to children" heart" error.
As the narrator and witness of the whole story, the teacher can be regarded as the only positive image of the whole film. The final outcome is to marry the nanny Eva and leave this suffocating town. When he proposed to Eva's father, he was pointed out that "you can be her father at your age." It can be seen that the teacher's identity in the film can be defined as a special bond between children and adults.
As the only child who took the initiative to care about his father and asked Eva to bring fish to his father in the neighboring town, the teacher could show that he did not enter the value system in which violence between parents and children suppresses generations. He is also the only person in the whole film who does not use any form of violence, doing his duty of teaching and educating people. When he took Eva out for a picnic, Eva was full of vigilance against teachers because of her violent experience. The teachers were still gentle and accommodating, which was very different from the adults in the small town's violent system. But even so, as the only person in the town who knew the truth behind the violent incident, he was unable to make the truth public, and was deprived of the right to speak by the more powerful and totalitarian pastor, powerless and speechless-the embarrassment of being a teacher "Hope".
Haneke completed a large-scale deconstruction and subversion in the expression of calm but turbulent, simple but terrifying presentation, and deduced this thought-provoking social background in which the country is in flames, the society is selfish, and the people are ignorant and disqualified. Terrible tragedy of the times.
three. Ethnic crime in a totalitarian state
Haneke once stated that the core purpose of his creation of the film was: "To explore how a group of children whose values are induced are brainwashed. If people are led to absolute principles, any idealism to extremes may lead to terrorism. . " Although the film's subtitle is "A German Child's Tale," it's all about guilt and pain. Haneke uncovers the evil side of children based on the theory of sexual evil to explore the origin of a collective national crime, and uses a micro-narrative to interpret the root of Nazi Germany's national pain.
Religion in the film exists as an important narrative element. What religion emphasizes is to use the power of probation to alleviate the existence and occurrence of violence and hatred, but in the film religion has become a ridiculous irony. There are many church scenes in the film, and everyone sings hymns in unison. But the people who sing the hymns have their own ghosts, and larger-scale violent plans and social conflicts are quietly brewing. The sense of morality and ethics endowed by these religions is gradually lost in the social structure of this nation. When they are no longer governed by their moral restraints, religion also gradually becomes an excuse for sin, and in practice after practice it evolves into a violent cult.
The "small group" in the film is composed of disadvantaged groups of children. In essence, the violence and hatred of the individual members of the "small group" are difficult to be detected and vigilant by the entire group. And this kind of personal violence and hatred cannot be liberated, it will be blurred and abstracted in the group, and then it will rise to the whole group. In groups, individual violence and hatred can easily be distorted and amplified. When such an idea is elevated into the ideological realm, danger occurs.
As the weakest group in society, children are most likely to feel profound uneasiness in a repressive social environment. This unease will continue to be distorted and amplified in the group to a social sense of helplessness and humiliation. Explaining and enduring this intense unease will do whatever it takes to grab the life-saving straw around you, usually ideology. Children continue to shape their own ideology in the confrontation and violent conflict with patriarchy. This single, absolute, scientific ideology is gradually perfected and formed in the group, and then the individuals in the group have the right to speak. It was exploited, and terrorism was born.
The background of the story of "White Ribbon" took place in 1913-1914 on the eve of the First World War. 20 years later, when the children in the story became mature citizens, it was the Nazis who came to power and involved the world in the second during the world war. Wilhelm Reich, a famous Austrian psychologist, believes that: "The authoritarian society is reproduced in the individual structure of the masses with the help of authoritarian families" This sentence confirms the birth of the "small group" in this film, and also indicates that The birth of the Nazi Party.
Taking this as an analytical point of view to look at the origin of Nazi terrorism and German national suffering, extending from the upcoming stop to World War II when the protagonist of the story entered the historical stage, the power structure of the society originally dominated by patriarchal violence was gradually replaced. disintegrated and reconstructed into a social order dominated by violence and terrorism. The youth group in the film was eager to cling to a more powerful image of the patriarchy, and made a full and reasonable explanation for Hitler's rise to power, thus causing this tragedy of the times that spread all over the world.
Violence, as the wheel and lubricant of historical era and society, can always crush various problems the fastest. The incomprehensible nature of sin has always been a consistent feature in Haneke's films. Although "White Ribbon" is also an "open ending" like his previous films, the audience can also understand the final direction of the story through historical research. Haneke's open ending can often penetrate deeply into the ideological core of the film, so as to gain insight into its inner nature from the spiritual level. It is true that Haneke used his extremely calm and restrained lens to write the history that was diluted by the dust of history, and this human tragedy shrouded in haze can still be sung endlessly.
View more about The White Ribbon reviews
