THE WHITE RIBBON

NOMINATED FOR 2 ACADEMY AWARDS! BEST FOREIGN FILM, BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

 WINNER! PALME D’OR –Cannes Film Festival WINNER! BEST FOREIGN FILM –Golden Globes The small north German hamlet in The White Ribbon looks like a pristine paradise of rural community. The buildings are handsome structures, photographed in nostalgic black-and-white. It’s very much a dollhouse village, where the family lives are intertwined: But - and here is where things get vague and eerie - there exists the distinct possibility that the children are raising hell. The dollhouse, you see, belongs to the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke. And a few of the dolls have a monstrous side. They must. How else to explain the events that befall the village in the year before World War I? Fires, an impaled house pet, abductions, gouged eyes. We don’t know who is behind what, and Haneke leaves us to pick over the particulars much as he did with his great, equally unknowable Caché, whose final shot remains a hotly debated matter. The ends remain loose in White Ribbon. But that lack of closure is thrilling. Haneke writes and directs with ominous majesty. –Boston Globe