Guilty and lies are wrapped so calmly and evenly that in the pristine black and white tones, it is all the more embarrassing and shocking. I can't help but think that after Lu Xun denounced the horrific history of cannibalism, he still couldn't help calling for "save the children". The special background and social atmosphere have shaped the next generation into an appearance that this generation is unwilling to admit. In the process of growing up, children have been infected with the hypocrisy and despicability of too many adults. The funny thing is that adults always want children to be blind. A pair of eyes, like an actor, shows the appearance that adults love.
There is also a film about children's evil - "Lord of the Flies", which shows us the dark course of human development driven by the evil interests of human nature. The difference in "White Ribbon" is that the wicked children who grew up in this village were forced by disgusting adults. And the two said in the same bloody tone: Doing evil has nothing to do with age.
On the eve of the outbreak of the First World War, several unbelievable things happened in a peaceful German village: a doctor tripped over a power line on horseback, a duke's son was beaten, then a farm was burned, a mentally handicapped child was beaten... All kinds of unimaginable strange things This peach blossom-like village was disturbed, and the teacher who witnessed all the incidents explained his conjecture to the audience in a first-person tone. With the outbreak of the war, people had no time to pay attention to those pranks. Silence, waiting for the children who committed evil deeds with impunity to grow up and rule the country...
In this film, the dominant males are dukes, priests, stewards, doctors, and farmers in order. They also uphold the unbreakable class consciousness and religious consciousness, show people with friendly and mutual assistance, and treat problems with "violence to solve everything". Adults as role models for children, mainstays of Germany's contemporary era, they appear in an almost pathetic rage:
The duke is busy making money, neglecting his son's two life-threatening atrocities, and in the face of his wife's change of heart, he only cares if she has sex with his lover. The man in the most powerful position in the whole village seems to be reconciled only by returning to this dangerous village to be the first bird. His glory and dignity are based on the praise of the farmers once a year to celebrate the harvest. Even if only half of the people in the village of this generation are free from conflict because they work for his family, and the next generation has put a small flame of hatred in his backyard, all these can be invisible. As long as he is in the village, he is a high-ranking duke who can scold his wife, children and servants loudly.
The butler comes on the scene as a guy who is trying to conspire against the young nanny (the teacher's fiancée), who holds the power of the duke's property, and if anyone wants to go from the village to the town, they have to borrow the duke's carriage or bicycle, and these require With the butler's consent, the small power allowed his snobbery and selfishness to grow like weeds. The dismissal of the young nanny, we can easily guess that he was unable to retaliate. Treating his son wrong, his only means of education is to beat him like a beast. And the result of this painful education is that the son of the housekeeper can abuse others unscrupulously (the duke's son was thrown into the river to grab the flute and almost drowned), the class close to the upper but always in the middle class and the wrong education method doomed him The son would be a good Nazi.
The pastor can be said to be the second male protagonist. His beliefs doom him to be incapable of contraception. Many children make his education the most sinful. He threatens the teacher knowing that the children are committing evil deeds. He is an accomplice instead of a pastor who spreads love. Here comes the white ribbon: a symbol of purity and innocence, the white ribbon has become a weapon for punishing children. Only children who make mistakes will wear white ribbons, as if tattooing on the face of a prisoner. The so-called innocence becomes the resentment of children. shackles. The collapse and reconstruction of the faith also begins here: the children of the priest's family are like leaders leading other children to establish new rules, and they have the right to deal with anyone who violates the rules. The pastor's virtuous sermons gave the children eloquence and calm minds, and their growth just took time. The reason why the devil is scarier than the preacher is largely due to the indulgence of the preacher turning a blind eye.
The doctor should bear most of the infamy in the whole film: after having committed adultery with the maid for a long time, he abandoned her because she was old, forced his wife to death, and raped his daughter indecently. This walking genitalia should be a typical representative of straight male cancer. In the confusing truth, I tend to be the daughter of the doctor who colluded with the priest to take revenge. The most heartbreaking scene in the whole film is when the doctor's son wakes up in the middle of the night to find his crying sister and silent father, who tells him that he was crying because his father pierced her ears. When dealing with evil deeds, evil should be used to defeat evil, but there are not so many beautiful circumstances and opportunities for good people to correctly guide a wounded heart.
The peasant is the representative of all ordinary people at the bottom, and his cowardice comes from the despair of the insurmountable class. After his wife died in an accident at the Duke's sawmill, he dared not complain, for fear of losing his job. When his son took revenge on the Duke one after another, he had to die. When dealing with death, the director's camera does not distinguish between you and me: watching the arrival of death from a long-term perspective, as if rejoicing for relief.
When it comes to sex, they have strange pleasures, filth and hidden consciousness: because masturbation is discovered, the priest's son is punished to sleep with his hands tied every night; doctors can have sex with old women they don't like, or rape their own daughters; The duke didn't care about his wife and children, but only worried that his wife would have sex with other men; the housekeeper wanted to seduce young women whenever he had the chance; the peasant's wife died, but even crying had to be carefully suppressed. The contradictory behavior of adults exposes the ugliest faces in front of innocent children. Although the film is black and white, the world is not only black and white, and most of the time, it is surrounded by a thick and inextricable mist.
In the era of men, women assumed the role of sexual tools and babysitters. The director chose an older girl to be the leader of such a villainous child, perhaps with the intention of being suppressed for too long and resisting. The beauty of the farmland reflects the surging of people's hearts, and Taoyuan will disappear one day. In a plot without a soundtrack, the occasional piano music can't help but surprise people, and the more they yearn for peace, the more unexpected things happen. When the long shot of the teacher and the sweetheart dancing appears, it seems to have been a blow to the ordinary happiness of grabbing the life-saving straw. Then came, only a group of innocent people who grew up under the absurd social background. We have seen their fear and pain after doing evil, and we will eventually meet their unscrupulous atrocities. Judgment, let's judge together the dark age before.
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