In fact, the first half of the film did not make me feel impatient. In addition to the good black and white texture, the story started with a premeditated "accident". This setting somewhat aroused my interest. In fact, as far as the whole film is concerned, it can also be regarded as a "psychological suspense film" to a certain extent (Hitchcock is talking about the boring X100).
The title is called the white ribbon, which means "purity" according to the pastor's explanation. Just when his father re-tied the ribbons to Karla and Martin, the murderer behind the scenes was already very clear. The remaining question was just "why?" Why is a doctor, why is Sigi? What caused the "pure" children to be violent, and what tarnished the white ribbon?
It's the father's generation. But where did the stain of the father's generation come from? After all, it may just be human nature.
And Karla and Martin-Karla to be precise-dominate the children's group: the narration at the beginning of the film makes it clear that "that day, the children around Karla walked towards the exit of the village", in a group Only Karla was wearing an all-black dress like an adult. This is not a suggestion, but an explicit statement, indicating the collapse of this long-closed inherent value system and the violence that this society will face. In this closed environment, the parents are used to using violence to show love-the way the priest loves the children is to beat them; the doctor keeps saying that he loves his ex-wife, but he abuses her mentally before she is alive; even the baroness It is also threatening and intimidating to Sigi. Women become Stockholm patients in this environment, and children inherit and carry forward this violence in the confrontation with their parents, forming a new value standard in the next generation (first of all, the leader is a woman).
When the dust settled and then looking back at the first accident, Anna was obviously the cause of the doctor's injury-she could not have seen the rope stumbling with Karla and the others all the time, and this was the only one in the whole story for adults. The crime, or what happened later, was actually the aftermath of the accident. Anna told, or at least hinted, what her father had done to her, and she was living with her father and his mistress, unable to resist, so Karla and Martin did the first "big thing that disturbed the village" . The children used stones to call Anna to show up. Maybe they couldn't see it at the beginning of the film, but after the film ended, it seemed to have a kind of "agreement reached". Anna and Karla wore adult-style all-black dresses. They were the only two girls in the film who dressed like this. Anna was deprived of her innocence by her biological father. Karla entered the adult world in another way-this seemingly gentle and respectful child will later show step by step his sophistication and cruelty that does not match his age.
The incident directly related to the abuse of Sigi seems to be the death of the peasant woman. Like other fathers, the farmer Lao Tzu pointed the finger directly at the son. On the surface, this was an open confrontation between the father and the son, but this was only a symbolic expression of the confrontation between Karla and Martin and his father—Sigi was injured by a cane. Yes, and Karla and Martin had just been beaten by a cane before, and of course, they were wearing their white ribbons. The two children passed on the pain to the object that could symbolize their father-the baron is like the patriarch of a certain village, the authority of the big family. In contrast, the farmer’s son destroys the baroness’s cabbage field. Even though an adult man is dissatisfied with authority, he only vents by hurting the woman’s vegetable field, even though he seems to dare to declare war on his father and is reckless and rude. But in fact it is still in this closed circle of value-the most obvious evidence is that after his father died, he went back to attend the funeral and was just in time to come out of the coffin. He first stood next to the coffin and confronted everyone, but After a few handshake (only two people escaped, but did not push him away), he returned to the crowd, and occupied the front and middle position, and put his arms over the shoulders of the little brother, as if a new generation of parents was born. (Well, I might have misunderstood this paragraph. If you have read German history, it will probably be clearer).
And it is Martin's masturbation that is connected with the fire in the warehouse. It is well known that arson is an expression of sexual venting. The priest tied up his son’s hands because he was masturbating. It was the cross on the wall behind Martin that I knew I was discussing this~~~), and the fire in the warehouse meant the superficial success and the actual failure of the parents, and it also made it clear that this was not just Karla and Martin. The rebellion of the two children is related to almost all of Murakami's children-including Sigi, he dangled in front of his mother after the doctor's accident. His mother cared more about Schubert than him, and the matter was gone. This was the direct cause of Sigi's subsequent beating, so the later little girl only dared to say that she had a dream, and would not tell the truth after being beaten to death. So why Martin was the first to discover the fire, and why he kept asking his brother to untie himself when the fire started. The symbolic meaning is very clear. It can be said that although the parents were overthrown, a new model of controller and controlled has also formed. Later, it was a kind of irony to film the children singing hymns collectively in the church, especially the dazzling white ribbons on Karla and Martin.
Adults actually know more or less about children's resistance. Just as the peasant directly suspected his son, the pastor initially punished Karla and Martin for lying so severely, not just for their late return home. Later in the school, he grabbed Karla's ears and carried her alone to the last row with her back to everyone-so that when she said the prayers, it seemed as if she had betrayed God. At first, the fathers tried to use God's violence to scare the children, but first the peasant died, and then Karla used scissors to kill the priest's bird and frantically placed the shape of a cross on the table. The outcome of the battle was determined. After the bird's death, he once severely admonished his little son, "Let him go when he grows up. From now on you are his father and mother, and you must bear this heavy responsibility." (Interestingly, the next sentence is " Prepare a cage to receive your new patient.” It means that the responsibility of the father and mother for Pastor Yu is to use the cage to hold the children until they are "healed"—that is, they can wear a white ribbon forever— The father who set them free) has to accept the mercy of the younger son. This is proof that the previous generation has been overthrown by the next generation. In the church. If Martin was only testing the existence of God when he walked on the log bridge, when the priest fed Karla and drank the holy water, God was indeed dead.
This secret confrontation with his parents gradually entered a white-hot stage, until the whistle incident, the baroness finally broke the key. What she wants to leave is not the baron, but the closed environment and the outbreak of cold violence that led the next generation to pass on to the next generation in such an environment. Sigi, who came back from Italy, has an Italian maid who speaks Italian, and is no longer in this environment-not a whistle, but this kind of "escape" that pushed him into the water. And when the child's whistle sounded arrogantly in the room, and the father rushed up with the cane, it was not just the whistle, but the horn of challenge, a declaration that the new order would break through and overthrow the old order. Even though he knows what kind of horrible behavior his daughter can commit, but still insists that the children are pure and innocent, the pastor is afraid of admitting his failure and admitting the death of God.
The victory of the children was closely followed by the First World War, the first attempt of the violence of the German nation to reach the world.
The doctor-the first victim, and the main reason for all this-disappeared with his mistress and illegitimate child. This seems to be the last mystery left in the film. The father left the clinic and closed business while Anna was still at school and did not say anything, and the mother seemed not to leave her disabled son and run away on her own. Why didn't she dare to tell the teacher who was the culprit? Why do you have to lock the doors and windows so carefully before going out? Why did you report to the police station but didn't come back? If I really want to guess, the doctor, his mistress, and the disabled child are probably all dead—because just after the doctor’s accident, Anna had a conversation with her brother about death, and the final narration in the film is When telling the message about their disappearance, the camera just freezes on the church, pushing it away one by one. As for whether the disabled child represents the "inferior nation" that the Nazis would call in the future, I don't know. I only know that the so-called white ribbon that symbolizes "purity" is already tainted with sin. Those clear eyes and graceful demeanor are just It's just cheating.
The teacher who had always experienced the whole story as a bystander ended up getting married and left there. The teacher is another kind of father image in this film-when he went to propose marriage to Eva, Eva's father said "you can be her father", which pointed out that he and Eva are actually two generations. Relationship—Because it is an older youth who is not married, it can be said that he is between the child and the adult and becomes a special bond. The reason why he was able to stand idly by as a bystander is that he did not enter the value system passed down from generation to generation from the beginning. He can be said to be the only adult man in the film who does not use any form of violence. When Eva went out for a picnic, Eva’s scared reaction is enough to explain how her environment is full of violence-even if a naive girl like her is still unable to relax with her future husband, it’s no wonder that the teacher is just a gentleness that is normal to us. Accommodating to touch her so much, Eva also actively kissed the teacher. This is the only woman in the film who took the initiative to express love to the man, and behaved softly (when the doctor and the mistress of Iraq did it, she felt that she was only one-sided enjoyment of pleasure. ). This characteristic of the teacher makes there is no conflict and opposition between him and the children (the teacher has never been harmed by his own students).
As far as Haneke is concerned, the degree of boredom in this film is still within my tolerance. And it is really rare to be able to shoot black and white films with such a texture. I have always been very pf this classmate’s use of light and shadow-especially when Rundi smashed his father and his sister, Anna’s light was so beautiful (he has always shot Anna very beautifully, one scene is Anna ate with her younger brother and kept taking close-up shots from her profile. Every angle was shot like an oil painting. I don’t know if the director has love for this actor or has a special pity for this character). It's really rare to dare to hold the camera still for such a long time in modern movies-and still several times-to test the patience of the audience. When Martin and the others were beaten, first the door was closed, then Martin came out to take the cane, the door was closed again, the camera stared at the door, the audience also held their breath, and it took a few seconds to send a dull scream from the room. . Indeed, I also understand that such an effort to slap and beat is used to characterize the closed environment, which seems calm and solid on the surface, but in which the children who have been abused by their parents cried out. The moving camera means that Haneke is doing a "symbolic" action, but ~~~ it is always challenging my movie-watching habits. When I see this classmate’s name in the future, I'd better take a detour as much as possible.
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