---Mike Haneke
in a small town in Germany in 1913.
Everything unfolded in that cold, mysterious, bloody smell that was thick and invisible...
First, the local doctor tripped over a rope on his way home on horseback and was seriously injured, and then the landowner's son was bound. Get up and beat with a whip.
The title of the film "White Ribbon" appeared at this time. It means purity and innocence, but it is also a symbol of humiliation. Those children who are suspected of being inseparable from these two things must wear it to always remind them that they are Carrying a deep sin, need to purify the soul. Naturally, retaliatory violence ensued. Infidelity, adultery, betrayal, exploitation, and harsh corporal discipline have sown unpredictable scourges in this peaceful village, among dukes, tenant farmers, doctors, widows, priests, and a group of German children.
Thus, bloodshed began, hatred began, and the values that blurred good and evil turned into a neat row of iron crosses after a few years, trampling on the civilization of Europe and the world...
Let's take a look at how these would-be Nazi demon children came to be. There are more than a dozen children and three or four families of different backgrounds in "White Ribbon", and their relationship is intricate. Priests, nobles, doctors, maids, peasants, these adults who represent social strata superficially rule the small mountain village, but do nothing when the female punt is accidentally killed and the disabled child is abused. The dialogue between children has become the key to decryption. They may know the truth but dare not tell it, or they may be the murderer. Haneke carefully arranged a maze, in a closed environment, everyone on the stage cringed, and the audience was a guesser. The mystery is the quiet farm, the dead birds, the strange fire, the deformed boy with gouged eyes, and the cry of the children. Only from those details can we imagine what they are doing behind the scenes and give logic. explanation above. The film maintains tension until the end, and there's a sort of crime-solving reasoning and climax. Many calm, apparently not terrifying scenes are full of violence, and the calmer they are, the more terrifying they are.
The core of the film is the children's resistance to patriarchy. Almost all families in the film have an extremely violent father. The extreme patriarchy led to the birth of juvenile groups to resist patriarchy and even develop into a resistance to the entire social level. . When the First World War broke out, these ruthless and well-planned youth groups symbolized the imminent arrival of a nascent group in German society. However, it is even more remarkable that 20 years later, when these children became mature citizens , when the Nazis came to power and brought the world into World War II. The rise of the Nazis can be seen as a product of the disintegration of the original national political power.
Calm restraint is the keynote of the whole film. On this level, Haneke uses a lot of empty shots to make the picture look like a stage play, but it is different from Lars Von Trier in "Dogtown" as deliberately. Empty rural vistas are like blank spaces in sketches. The reason why Haneke paints like this is to highlight the complexity and coldness of details and maintain a sense of distance. The repeated use of empty shots and voice-overs often buried a "trigger point" in the dull plot. The truth is up to the audience to find out by themselves. Haneke will never let people understand his films easily. Who is the mastermind behind the scenes, the village teacher left with doubts, and so did the audience. Similarly, Haneke did not find a final outlet for the surging violence, but kept it under the surface of life, waiting for it to erupt in World War II 20 years later.
The historical events interspersed at the end of the film and the subsequent distortions of the whole of Europe under the cloud of Nazism. The harsh punishment of children reflects the strength and weakness of the so-called ruler's ideological and behavioral power under religious extremism. Children are taught to "unconditionally accept" within this unified ideological structure. But they are also suspicious, just as the boy in the film walks on the single-plank bridge to give God a chance to kill himself, but he does not die, indicating that God does not want to punish him for his fault. He then began to wonder whether the rule-makers themselves honored moral and behavioral constraints. When they find that adults have a form of value that goes against tradition, their behavior is not simply rebellion, but violent resistance.
Whether our world should have a unified norm, and how should the normative value standards be formulated. In fact, the film does not specifically refer to Germany in 1913. It needs to trigger our discussion of the constraints of human development. Perhaps a unified ideology needs to be established in a special period, but the free development of pluralism is the dredging channel for maintaining social progress. Otherwise, the thoughts and behaviors under the highly centralized power will become stinky and deteriorated due to the blockage, and finally spread to the whole body like cancer. Suddenly remembered that our country, a harmonious society, needs harmony and disharmony? Still need discord?
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