CRIME!

So WHY DIDN'T IT WIN?! This was the general consensus after I, in my usual bluster, persuaded everyone that not only would Avatar win best picture (comes down to finances, see) but that the only candidate for grabbing the Best Foreign Film Oscar was a Mr. Michael Haneke. Yes, that's how accurate my prognosticating tends to be. Nevertheless, albeit an attempt to cover my (flat up) incorrect guessing, I still maintain that we wuz robbed.

The White Ribbon (2009, Artificial Eye)

So much has been said about The White Ribbon that it is incredibly hard to know where to begin. Is it an allegory of the conditions that led to WW2? Haneke has gone on record as saying it surely is. The problem with Mr. H is that it is hard to know where to begin and where to end with him. He has never, in his filmic career, given his audiences the whole truth. And he revels in this. To Haneke, the camera's gaze is his license to lie, manipulate and distort the truth. Once the audience is one step removed from the truth, they should be lied to, or at least have to work for their reward. And Haneke makes his audiences WORK.

In The Piano Teacher, we never quite know what leads Erika to her sadomasochistic desires. Something to do with her father, we gather, but are never truly told. Funny Games causes us to question what is actually going on. Are Beavis and Butthead in charge of the movie? Is Haneke? Are we? And then, in his most interesting film, Hidden (Cache), Haneke causes us to question what it is that we've actually seen. Was it the film? Was it another film? Is it real? What in hell is going on with that final shot? 

So, Haneke is a bit of a cad.

Where does that leave us then? How to approach The White Ribbon, knowing that this a director who plays not only with what we see, but how we see it, and how we should interpret it?

The first step must be literal, surely. The first problem must be that our main characters are not given names. GOD THERE HE GOES AGAIN. So - the school teacher perhaps represents the hop of Germany saving itself, the naivety of youth and such. 

Why then, is it that the children are named? Is it to make their importance more important? Or the opposite - are they simply one offs, not symbolic in any sense. It's clear at this point that Haneke isn't going to offer any answers, so it is up to you, dear reader. (wizard) #reference

Who commited these acts? At first glance it may seem obvious - that it is the children. Then one must rememeber that it is possibly Haneke himself who left the videotapes on the doorstep in Hidden. Does this then mean that he is manipulating the past to explain the rise of Naziism? Does this film have anything at all to do with that?

To top it all off, he makes the audience sit through two and a half hours of black and white film, with performances that are deliberately made to seem as though they are from the early twentieth century. Why make them work for your movie, Michael? Surely the source material, the message or both, are enough. 

No, is the solid answer. This is a film about the rise of Facism. This is a film that explains how the most horrific events in human history came to be. The black and white, the performances, the subject matter - they all set in stone the truth. This event was inevitable - that humanity's worst elements would one day be unearthed and displayed for all. 

By creating his film in the way he has, Haneke is putting his hands up - the capacity for evil is in all of us. We simply need to choose to do right. He has chosen not to in his film, and the consequences are clear. Characters are written out, endings are not resolved. It is similar to the fate of many from 1939-45, and a sober reminder that we are not that removed from the past.