I write after reading A.O. Scott’s ambivalent review of the film. Scott notices that an unfortunate schism proves evident in the film between the poverty of Haneke’s ideas and his wealth of technical craft. Well, I insist that the supposed schism need not be interpreted only as such. The formal language can point to ways of interpreting the supposed poverty of ideas quite differently. I don’t see why technique or form and narrative or content must work in apparent synchrony, or simply so that one compensate for the other, as Scott seems to believe it’s Haneke’s case. I resist the notion that it is the filmmaker’s burden to resolve the “whodunit” of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust, especially when the aim of the film does not aspire to be solely an investigative exploration, as the reviewer nonetheless tags it to be. Scott says “’The White Ribbon’ does the opposite, mystifying the historical phenomenon it purports to investigate. Forget about Weimar inflation and the Treaty of Versailles and whatever else you may have learned in school: Nazism was caused by child abuse. Or maybe by the intrinsic sinfulness of human beings.” Really?! I suggest that Scott read Arendt’s The Banality of Evil. I think that staging the banality (rather than the radicalness) of evil can be argued to be one of the movie’s central aims.
The movie does not advance the thesis that evil lies in all of us or that we are intrinsically evil, but rather that evil, in extreme forms even (as portrayed by some characters in the film), coexists with radical ordinariness. In fact, it does not necessarily argue for that position. It does not offer a logical case as to persuade the viewers. It stages it, which is what intelligent and emotionally complex films usually do. The closing scene in the movie points to this notion rather than what Scott proposes: “The White Ribbon” is offered to its grateful, masochistic audience in a similarly punitive and yet oddly forgiving spirit, as a reminder of just how awful we are and how much worse we used to be.” A bit of a sentimental interpretation, don’t you think? I think that the last shot remains as a still yet gripping index of how evil exists and operates amid mundane order.
I do agree with his view that the film mystifies historical and fictional elements that perhaps ought to have been treated with a severity and distance less tendentious than Haneke’s. I see the “something” that pervades in the film that creates this un-natural or over-natural feeling. I think that part of the blame lies in the fact that the director perhaps stylizes his films too much rather than too little–overexposed asceticism can overwhelm, too. The insistence on a particular form could have created quite the opposite effect from what two or three shots alone may have: that of mystifying everyday, reality, and history…. I think that Haneke has a very invasive camera, which is ironic because you would think that his staying out of focus or choosing against showing you the actual horror is an effective way for the eye of the camera to exercise restraint, some shade of respect…but I think that the aggregate creates something entirely different. It creates secrecy, mystery,and finally, mysticism. Thus, in conclusion, the film canvasses the village to capture evil amid the mundane and ordinary, but does it in a style that is nothing short of extraordinary.
Realism 