Bizarre events, including a kidnapping, disappearances, at least one certain death, break out in a small German village already marked by child and spousal abuse. Is there a causal connection? Does the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, which triggers the Great War, somehow reflect what has happened in the village, or vice versa?
Connections are indeed elusive in writer-director Michael Haneke’s black-and-white Das weisse Band, whose title refers to one girl’s confirmation ribbon, or perhaps the strips of cloth with which a boy’s hands are strapped down at night so he cannot masturbate. We do not know how many villagers, and in all cases which ones, are involved in the weird things that are happening. To add to the complexity, there is a filter through which we receive our sometimes ambiguous, sometimes at least seemingly clear information: a young teacher, who narrates as an older man. He fought in the war. How clear or distorted is his memory, view or understanding as a result of his participation in so much wrenching violence?
Haneke’s film won both the Palme d’Or and the International Critics Prize at Cannes, and the best film, direction and screenplay prizes at the European Film Awards. To me, however, it is yet another odious work by Haneke, who repeatedly plays the same game of chicken with his own humanity and our sensibilities by presenting in graphic detail inhuman behavior while insisting he is doing so to disinfect with sunlight. In this film, there are simply too many slaps and swings of a switch to render convincing Haneke’s self-defense. Another atrocity: the clever way that Haneke works into his mise-en-scène a multitude of Christian crosses, including one comprising a pet bird and the scissors used to butcher it.
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Dennis Grunes 