In the past two years, Cannes seems to be in full bloom with the "flower of evil", and the interpretation and performance of the abstract concept of "sin" has become the favorite theme of the judges. In this sense, in "White Ribbon", the shadow of the work "Three Monkeys" by Turkish director Nuri Big Ceylan, who was only one step away from the Palme d'Or last year, can still be seen more or less: They are all typical "conceptual films" - rejecting a narrative that is acceptable to everyone, rejecting the expression and creation of a certain emotion, and throughout the film is a kind of allegory that turns the film into a philosophical elaboration. Shooting concept. The difference is that, in pursuit of a universal effect, Ceylon chose the most common perspective in life and narrated it in a way that was not new--assume, overthrow, assume, overthrow... sin. In the indulgence of people, it goes deeper and deeper vertically, and finally forms a desperate sin cycle. In "White Ribbon" a year later, Haneke's film has obviously relaxed a lot in terms of perspective - the film has a clear era and social background, but the obsession with sin does not follow the specific information. influence and disappear. In a sense, "The White Ribbon" is more like Haneke's static display of various evils in the world, and the clear enough time and place provide him with enough space for display. Therefore, it can be said that the sin in "The White Ribbon" develops horizontally. And about the permanence of sin itself, Haneke puts forward a different view from Ceylon--sin is not eternal because of indulgence, but because people are obsessed with sin as a sacred religious tradition passed down from generation to generation , which led to the "proliferation" of sin.
This kind of transmission is very obvious in the film. In the two groups of people who are clearly divided in the film, the adults who are authoritative makers and defenders use their identities to commit crimes, and at the same time use their identities to commit crimes. The influence of the children has been subtly transferred to the spirit of the next generation. Even if they try to use religious traditions to get rid of sins (such as the priest's family), it will not help, and even this ascetic tradition will only breed more sins in the hearts of children. . Not only did children become victims of evil and were subjected to all kinds of cruel retribution (disfigurement, sodomy), but, most horribly, over time, because of the circumstances in which they lived as children, they received information about evil. Baptism, they will eventually repeat the path of their fathers, and continue to pass on the deep-rooted concept of sin to their descendants. In "The Scarlet Letter", the scarlet letter on Bai Lan's body did not become a humiliation, but became a symbol of virtue, and "White Ribbon" is just a betrayal of this symbol, tied on the child's arm, a white ribbon used to indicate pure morality , but finally alienated into the shackles of human nature that bind people for life. Generation after generation, the continuation of this evil will never end, and the tragedy of the village will never end.
In the film, a question that runs through the whole film is who is the murderer behind a series of tragedies? Haneke did not make the answer to this question the focus of the film, but this suspense also continued to the end with the flow of time in the film. During the viewing process, this answer may change more than once- -The son of the peasant woman, the housekeeper, the teacher...so much so that in the end, the narrator "I" pointed the object of suspicion at the child again, and then turned to the doctor and his mistress as the murderer in the narrative...until In the end, the war broke out, the film came to an end, the answer remained unsolved, and Haneke left a seemingly open ending. However, in the assumptions made by the viewer time and time again, the answer to this question has already emerged. Or the core of the film to explore - sin. The influence of this kind of sin is amazing. It can penetrate deep into the hearts of everyone in the village and completely devour people. That is to say, although it is not clearly stated in the film, perhaps the answer is that cruel-- Everyone is a brutal murderer and demon, psychological or physical, conceptual or practical.
The role of religion may be a place that cannot be ignored in this film. Relevant materials have also pointed out the influence of the strong Protestant tradition in some parts of Germany and Austria on the eve of World War I on people's spirit and behavior. But on the whole, the influence of religion on people can only be regarded as one aspect of it. The specific sin manifested in each family is different. For example, the main manifestation of the doctor's family should be incest, the farmer's family is hatred, the pastor's family is strict, the baron's family is abstinence... The commonality of all sins is the suppression of human nature, as well as the normal desires in human instinct. forced prohibition. In the home of a strict priest, the priest's education of his two children, Clara and Martin, is terrifying, and the doctor cuts off his daughter Anne's labia (abstinence) while committing adultery with the housekeeper Mrs. Wagner. The power of sin has been brought to an extreme. Regarding this state of repression, the baroness had a fierce resistance, "I don't want to live in this environment anymore, I can't let my son grow up in this environment." However, this kind of It is futile to resist, because in the film, people have deeply seen the powerful and destructive power of sin on human nature, and this power is despairing.
The film ends with the sound of rumbling cannons. There is finally a message from the outside world in the closed village. However, it is war, the ultimate manifestation of this human evil. Such an ending can't help but make people dumbfounded, and the narrator "I" chose to be isolated from this world and become a deaf person. Isn't this a bitter and helpless choice? However, even so, the tragedy still cannot be stopped. Beneath this iceberg where people feel no hope at all, there is a more destructive force lurking. 1913... Twenty years later, when the youths who grew up in the baptism of sin in the past were engraved with another brand new code that allowed them to release their suppressed emotions to the fullest, when When they finally took it for granted that black and white would no longer be their lifelong nightmare, black and white had spread from a small remote village yesterday to the whole of Germany, causing the whole of Europe to fall into blood. From these villages, from these children who hide their mad hearts behind innocent smiles, came the later Goerings, the later Goebbels, the later Ribbentrop, the conspirators , executioners, fraudsters... When they released the hatred in their hearts unscrupulously, what people heard was the cry in Auschwitz, the wailing of the Jews who lost their loved ones, and what they saw was on the Ukrainian Grange. Bodies lay all over the place, the ruins of a London Underground station. To this day, when people are still puzzled about the cause of the catastrophe, Haneke's description makes everything seem so reasonable. There is nothing new under the sun, and the bitter fruit of today's calamity is just the sprouting of the seeds planted yesterday.
From the perspective of the whole film, Haneke chose black and white tones throughout in order to highlight the theme of sin and the depressing atmosphere. At the same time, silence has also become another key word in the film. The soundtrack was completely abandoned in the film, and only in a few places The music within the narrative is used, and there is a longer, restless silence after the deafening chants of the church at the end. Compared with Haneke's previous works (especially "The Piano Teacher"), "White Ribbon" does not make an excessive fuss about the visual cruelty and topicality. Those tragic events in the film are all written in narrative language or character language. The form is indirectly explained, although the bloody scenes cannot be seen, but such as the broken bone inserted into the neck, the girl with her labia cut off, the little boy who was sodomized and abused, and the disfigured fool, these sound like In this depressing and suffocating black and white world, the already creepy words still have the effect of making people shudder all the time.
In May 2009, when Isabelle Huppert, the leading actress of "Piano Teacher" and the chairman of the jury at Cannes this year, personally awarded the Palme d'Or to Haneke, some people questioned that this might be a public repayment, but a few A month later, when people really experienced the coldness and gloom in the black and white world of "White Ribbon", all the doubts at the beginning must be dissipated. In ten years, Haneke almost completed the Grand Slam of the Cannes Film Festival, which marked the highest achievement of literary films. This achievement is enough to make him and his motherland remembered again because of the film. Just like Mozart's music, Rilke of poetry and, of course, Kafka's novels.
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