The White Ribbon (2009) User Reviews

A careful and ambiguous analysis of evil

[rolls_chris · 8/10 · 18 October 2009]

Fans of Michael Haneke's more morally shocking films such as 'Funny Games', 'Benny's Video' or the draining 'Time of the Wolf' might find themselves surprised by the quieter and slower analysis of evil in his latest work 'Das Weisse Band'.

The action takes place in a North German village shortly before the outbreak of the First World War and in structure presents a number of subtly drawn individual characters as they are caught up in a mysterious series of violent events.

In the hands of a mere moralist this could be an unbearable few hours. But it's credit to Haneke's skill as a film-maker that we are utterly caught up and absorbed by a large cast of children and adults.

One of the on-going arguments in Haneke's films appears to be the origins of human evil, or perhaps more precisely put, individual acts of evil behaviour. Are such acts an individual's responsibility or do they spring from a climate in which particular energies are at work? This is the question Haneke appears to be exploring here (just as was a central question relating to French society in 'Cache').

One of the most disturbing things at the heart of the film is the fact that we do not know why particular acts of evil take place (including the maiming of a disabled child and the beating of a nobleman's son), or even who commits them. However, this is no 'whodunnit', although with its retrospective voice-over from the School Teacher's p.o.v. we are let to believe for a long time that were in a crime/thriller genre.

Throughout his body of work so far, Haneke has suggested that looking for the sort of easy answers films and TV all too readily supply is partly responsible for our misunderstanding how violence in society occurs. (Funny Games).

'The White Ribbon' bypasses the usual dramatical devices of motivation and blame and instead softly focuses on an environment (in this case Germany in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century) in which certain unhealthy energies are at work.

These energies include an emotionally repressed and joyless Protestantism, the mistreatment and oppression of women, the familial abuse of children, the fetishism of strong masculine and patriarchal values, and the un-breachable divide between the rich and the poor. Set over all this, like an umbrella, is the fact that the small provincial society depicted in the film is all but completely isolated from wider society.

Another poster here has pointed out that Haneke is using his village as a microcosm to reflect Germany as a whole, and I would agree with that. Haneke's Dorf, whilst having an individual character, is a relative of Von Trier's Dogville in the sense that it stands for a larger set of national values. In this respect Haneke seems to be diagnosing German society in the run up to the 'Great' War as one of authoritarianism, religious doubt, intolerance, and fear.

What is remarkable in such a film is how little human joy or love is to be found in such a seemingly idyllic rural landscape. The love strand (between the narrator Teacher and the dismissed 17 yr old children's nurse) has a rather strained aspect. It is as though the film maker is suggesting that affection might also be down to available opportunity.

One of the most moving scenes in The White Ribbon is when a young child brings his father, a Priest, a caged bird he has nursed back to health. The father's beloved pet canary was killed (by his daughter as a protest against the bleak, loveless household she's been reared in - a home in which a father shows more affection to a small bird than his own children.

Thus the scene symbolically depicts a child demonstrating the love that the parent himself is unable of showing. Tears fill the priest's eyes. It is a tiny moment of love and hope in an otherwise emotionally barren wasteland. It is also a symbol of how a new generations of Germans have dealt with, and healed, previous decades of pain.

Haunting Prequel to the Third Reich

[anjru · 8/10 · 17 January 2010]

Filmed beautifully in black and white with subtitles, The White Ribbon is a movie that will leave viewers with a lasting residue long after it ends. The film portrays the residents of a northern German village, dominated by a baron, sometime before World War I.

Inhabitants of this village, young and old, are sliding down the slippery slope of moral decline. The men in leadership positions - a doctor and clergyman, for example - are detestable, especially in their treatment of women and children. The most brutal scene in the movie, perhaps, was not one that portrayed physical violence, but verbal abuse towards a woman that served faithfully as caretaker, and more, for the town's widowed physician. As for the some of the children, although it is only suggested, it appears that they are budding sociopaths that perpetrate despicable acts against others.

Weeks after seeing this film, I started thinking more deeply about the children in this town. I realized that they would become young adults during the time Hitler would rise in power. They live an incubator in which the cruelty that they experience they, in turn, perpetrate against unsuspecting victims. Their circumstances are such that they are being unwittingly primed for carrying out the atrocities that will come to characterize their future in Nazi Germany. The White Ribbon is a prequel for the rise of the Third Reich.

Seeing this film led me to wonder about what present times are a prequel for.

This is a movie against all extremisms

[molecule18 · 9/10 · 6 January 2010]

In an interview with the French newspaper "Le Monde" on 10/20/09, published on 10/21/09, Michael Haneke has explicitly and unequivocally declared his intentions in making the movie "The White Ribbon":

He intended to make a movie about the roots of evil. He said that he believed that the environment of extreme, punitive and sexually repressive protestantism in Germany, has laid the groundwork for Fascism and Nazism. He also said that he saw the same patterns developing in fundamentalist Muslim societies today, and that it is those societies that today were spawning terrorists and suicide bombers. Finally, he expressed the sentiment that "The White Ribbon" is a movie against ALL extremisms.

Michael Haneke has directed his vision in a very masterful and artful way: the cinematography, the acting, and the script are all superb.

The only problem I have is with the vision itself: The environment certainly plays a role, but to explain evil exclusively as the product of one's environment is simplistic and goes against common sense observation: The majority of people on this earth have grown up under repressive regimes and yet have NOT turned out to become murderers, mass murderers, terrorists or suicide bombers. Something is missing in the equation.

I gave God a chance to kill me Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon)

[jaredmobarak · 10/10 · 18 September 2009]

Admittedly, I was underwhelmed at its conclusion. I knew it was something great, especially in construction and visual prowess, yet I couldn't shake that feeling of clouded mediocrity. And then, after talking about it with my friend for an hour or two afterwards, it hit me. Haneke has intentionally filled our minds with detail upon detail, setting up conspiracies and unsolved mysterious, leading us to believe things only to plant clues that refute them. Looking back, I found that each second stuck in my head; I couldn't shake even the minutest detail because it might hold the key to solving this puzzle. Deaths, tragedies, and accidents are happening every day, possibly connected, but how? Our narrator, the town's schoolteacher played by Christian Friedel, is relaying the events that occurred before being sent off to fight once the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated. He believes the strange attitude and mysterious activities all began with a freak accident of the doctor. Riding his horse back home, he is thrown off when its legs trip on a wire spanning two trees, causing a lengthy hospital stay to recover. Next come a death, a kidnapping, and a beating, all unsolved despite hunches and hypotheses going through the town. Something is in the air, but what it is and what will come of it is unknown.

The children are the key to everything. They are the easiest to blame, as it seems they are always there by the tragedies. Definitely hiding something, the kids begin to stare authority in the eye and practice what has been preached. Haneke mentions in an interview attached to the press notes that he wanted to show the sort of "black" education going on at the time, breeding Fascism and terror. Good and evil fall to strict black and white, every action has a reaction, a punishment to set things right. The children are of an age that they are beginning to understand that life is not eternal, there are consequences in their actions and the adults are not afraid to tell them so. When you don't follow the rules, you will be caned, (a brilliant scene showing the young siblings enter the room, but allowing the audience to only see the closed door during the abuse), and you will have to wear the white ribbon in order to show the world your transgressions and need to earn back the right to be free, (the precursor to the Jewish stars perhaps?).

What about the adults? What about those practicing adultery, or abuse of power, or destruction of property, or sexual abuse with a child? Who has the right to punish them? When, after the second kidnapping and beating of a young boy, a note is found stating intentions, that the children of transgressors will be discipline for four to five generations, you start to see the severity of the actions—as well as allusions to the Holocaust and the mass genocide of an entire people, rooting out the "evils" of the world by excising the entire population, killing the bloodline at the source. But it can't be the children, right? They are too young and innocent, unknowing of the world set before them. Yet with the upbringing in this town, treated as adults with responsibilities and accountability, anyone would grow up fast. Cause a raucous in class and be chastised; be the leader and stand in the corner. Forgiveness is a liability. When the oldest girl, and leader of the wolves if you believe the children are the monsters, Klara, (wonderfully portrayed by Maria-Victoria Dargus), is ready to accept Communion, her own father, the pastor, (a menacing man of authority realized by Burghart Klaussner), pauses, contemplating whether she deserves it. You know he doesn't want to give in, family bond means nothing.

Haneke has woven a tapestry of intrigue that will keep you on edge throughout. The anticipation of a solution is palpable, and the fact it is never released makes this film so riveting and unforgettable. The payoff is that these children will grow up into the generation that becomes the Nazi party, making this sleepy rural town a breeding ground for young Fascists that will change the world. Retribution is being taught, atoning for ones sins practiced. World War II is after all an answer to the punishment inflicted on Germany after the first, isn't it? It's a cycle of getting back, proving one's pride, and seeking revenge upon the children of the enemy if the enemy itself is unavailable. God's will has to be upheld and that intrinsic fact is ingrained in the minds of the youth. When Martin, an effective Leonard Proxauf, is discovered walking along the railing of a high bridge, he responds to the yelling of the man that finds him with the line used to title this review. If what he was doing was wrong—we can only infer on his role in the incidents occurring around him—then God would have let him fall, paying for his sins. But the fact that he gets to the other side unscathed only proves his work is that of the creator of man. Haneke says he had another name for the film, God's Right Hand, and I think it would have been just as appropriate a title. A powerful film, sharing so much information without any answers; it takes our mind into overdrive, trying so hard to find a reason for it all. But sometimes there are none; sometimes bad things just happen. You can only speculate and hope to prevent them from ever happening again.

Creates an impeccable sense of time and place

[howard.schumann · 10/10 · 19 October 2009]

Strange things happen in a small rural village in pre-World War I Germany. The local doctor is thrown from his horse and seriously injured because of a trip wire stretched between two trees; the wife of a farm worker is killed when she falls through a rotted barn door; a young boy is beaten and tied upside down; the son of the Doctor's mistress, a boy with Down syndrome, is blinded in a fierce assault; and the Baron's barn is set on fire. These incidents and others create a climate of fear and suspicion in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, winner of the coveted Palme D'Or Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It is the kind of climate in which a hornet's nest of guilt, repression, and abusive behavior that have been festering in the community for years begins to surface.

Created and written by the director with an assist from award-winning screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, the film is shot in high contrast black and white and narrated by the village schoolteacher (Christian Freidel), the film's most sympathetic character, many years after the events have taken place. Though the film is dark, the courtship between the young teacher and the Baron's nanny, a shy 17-year-old Eva (Leonie Benesch) lightens the mood considerably, almost a necessity in a film that stretches to almost two and a half hours and can be a grim experience.

Although the children are named, the adults are referred to only in terms of the role they play in the village: the Baron, the Pastor, the Farmer, and the Doctor. The most powerful person in the village is the wealthy Baron (Ulrich Tukur) who employs most of the farmers and laborers. His wife (Ursina Lardi) is a woman of culture who looks upon the uneducated people in the village with disdain. It is a patriarchal society in which repressive and puritanical rules are rigidly enforced, everyone knows their place and, if they forget, the club of religion is used to make sure that they remember. In the meantime, acts of cruelty toward women and children are kept secret.

The worst hypocrite is the pastor (Burghart Klaussner) who preaches about God's love but physically punishes his two oldest children Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) and Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and humiliates them by tying a white ribbon on them as a symbol of the purity and innocence they should strive for. He even has the boy's hands tied to the side of his bed at night so he won't masturbate. The doctor (Rainer Block) who cares for the villagers by day shames his mistress (Susanne Lothar) at night by means of cruel verbal assaults. As the bizarre incidents pile up, the mystery deepens as to the identity of the perpetrator(s) and even the police are called in but all they can do is to browbeat a young girl who claims to have predicted one of the beatings in a dream.

The White Ribbon stirs up images of the Germany that would emerge years later under Hitler and there is a strong suggestion that the way the children are constantly punished for minor infractions played a role in that development, creating a vicious circle in which the distorted values of the parents are internalized by the children. Reminiscent of the austerity of Carl Dreyer's Ordet, The White Ribbon creates an impeccable sense of time and place, succeeding as an engrossing mystery, an insightful character study, and a cautionary tale that suggests that the roots of war and hatred lie not in ideology but in the corruption of our values and the emptiness in our souls. It is not difficult to see how the Jews in that setting could become scapegoats for that emptiness.

Exquisite and brooding mood-piece

[mensch-2 · 10/10 · 21 May 2009]

Few film auteurs can match the consistency of Michael Haneke, and once again the Austrian filmmaker has come up trumps with an exquisite and brooding mediation on repression, tradition and the sins of the father.

Shot in stunning black and white, the film chronicles a series of mysterious events in a town leading up to the outbreak of WWI. The pace is slow and thoughtful, and the film is reference to August Sander while being a respectful throwback to the German expressionists whose work would come out of the horrors the film's narrative seems to foreshadow.

The hallmarks of Haneke's body of work are all there – elegiac tone, clinical editing, wincingly frank dialogue – but in many ways The White Ribbon stands alone in the canon. It is a challenging work that will polarise audiences but represents a breathtaking new wave not just in the director's career but in European cinema.

Some might say the film's inherent flaw is that there is no-one to root for, but this is perhaps its key strength. It's certainly plausible that this is Haneke's intention: he wants to position us as mute outsiders to a slowly creeping menace, unable to have a say in the invisible horrors that await us. The result is a deadening and thoroughly rewarding experience - a combination few filmmakers could hope to achieve.

Nurturing Fascism Somewhere in Black and White Germany

[mehmet_kurtkaya · 9/10 · 23 October 2009]

During the course of the year before WWI, a series of tragic and suspicious looking incidents take place in a small farming village somewhere in black and white Germany. The culprit or the culprits behind the crime wave will not be too easy to find.

The doctor, the priest, the baron and the teacher who also narrates the film form the elite of the village. We get to know each one of them and a few other villagers along with children of this village, calm on the surface but deeply tormented by an undercurrent of brutality, envy, malice and apathy.

The children's natural path to maturity is blocked by strict religious morality, cruelly enforced by the priest, thereby inhibiting their personal observation of the world around them. The priest feeds children with guilt and sexual repression instead of love and punishes even their most innocent mistakes. Certainly this environment will make it easy for them to not only accept but seek ruthless authority later in life.

As might be expected, love in this town is restrained and uneasy, while incest and affairs are overlooked by villagers. The Baron employs half of the village in his farm, yet almost no one seems to be against feudalism, nor rise up against the accidents that happen in the workplace. Social justice is a stranger to town, yet villagers are entrenched in apathy.

If adults do not face up the truth, however this truth might be against their convictions, rise up and take charge, then who will? And according to whose morality? Isn't fascism with racism, in short Nazism, misdirected popular anger and an easy response to deep injustices within a society ? Haneke observes mostly psychological, educational and religious roots of Nazism while leaving economic aspects mostly in the background.

Visuals of the film are very solid. The symmetry in the shots and the tidiness of the houses, even of those belonging to the poor farmers hint at the discipline and rigor Germans are well known for. Acting is top notch by the whole cast, especially children's faces beam just like in Bergman films. Directing was superb.

Haneke uses a village and a narrator similar in essence to Lars Von Trier's Dogville, still these two movies are clearly different.

Das Weisse Band has also some similarities to Cache, but just one notch less satisfying than his masterpiece which had a slightly more intriguing and fulfilling story. This movie is made more accessible by Haneke with his choice of more obvious tips, where sometimes characters talk directly about the situation. But in a time and age when people are battling too many problems and drug themselves with TV and easy payoffs who could blame Haneke?

Given the current global economic conditions and the fanaticism running high across all three major religions, this is a must-see movie for anyone caring about the future of our global village to avoid a Le Temps du Loup type of ending!

The Inevitability Of Blowback

[tieman64 · 17 November 2009]

Another excellent film by Haneke. Some points...

1. Haneke's "Cache" used a mystery plot as a scaffold to examine the 1961 police massacre of Algerian protesters, an event which he then used as a symbol for the growing unease between France and Arabic minorities, and by extension, the West's mounting paranoia towards Arabs and Islam.

2. Haneke claims that "The White Ribbon" is about "the origins of every type of terrorism, be it of political or religious nature." This is an important statement, as it provides a guide as to how Haneke intends this film to be viewed.

3. The film takes place in an agricultural village in pre-World War 1 Germany, in which most of the locals work for an aristocratic land baron. Other characters include the local doctor, pastor, teacher, farmers and their respective women/wives/lovers/children.

4. The film is structured around a string of horrific crimes that befall the citizens of the village. But this is not a "whodunit mystery film". Instead, like Antonioni's "Blow Up" and "The Adventure", Haneke's mystery is never resolved, the crimes being used to make a series of far larger statements.

5. This film will appeal to a very limited audience. Like Tarr, Kubrick, Antonioni, Jancso, Wajda and Egoyan, Haneke is a cold, sometimes intellectual, director, who voids his films of narrative crutches and forces his audience to study every minute detail on screen. Like these directors, he uses a variety of distancing techniques, designed to instill an air of quiet contemplation.

6. In true Haneke fashion, the film begins with a confession of artifice, the narrator plainly stating that he is not quite sure whether his story is true or false. Of course the film is far less self-reflexive than "Cache", "Funny Games" and "Benny's Video", mostly because of its period setting.

7. With its stark black and white cinematography, the film works as a counterpoint to Dreyer's "Ordet" and Spielberg's "Schindler's List", a film which Haneke regards as "exploitative".

8. Haneke's Brechtian distancing effects at times feel gimmicky. Consider two scenes, one in which a boy is whipped by his father and another in which a man sits over a bed, his face obscured by a wall. These feel less like genuine attempts at alienation than impotent "copies of distancing effects".

9. All the crimes which take place in this film form an intricate web of "causes" and "effects". The village is a very morbid place, every relationship and interaction poisoned and perverse. Haneke takes aim at the way religion represses people sexually and emotionally, the way it bolsters a social hierarchy in which women are oppressed and mistreated and in which children lay prostrate to an abusive patriarchy which fetishizes masculinity and patriarchal values. He portrays an authoritarian world in which the divide between the rich and the poor is impenetrable, everyone subservient to someone else. This is a dark world in which values become evil the moment there are applied as a social rule, in which jealousies lead to violence and injustices and inequalities lead to various terrorist actions.

10. Haneke has made German, French and English language films. Has any other director so effortlessly hopped from one language to the next?

11. Haneke says his film is not about fascism, but we see clues in "The White Ribbon" as to how these German children of 1911 will later become either Nazis, Nazi supporters or men and women violently opposed to fascism. The seeds of a macabre future are being sown here.

12. The last scene of the film is a simple shot in which all the villagers gather and sit down within a church. The image then very slowly fades to black. This shot is intended to mirror a cinema audience, the seated villagers being a carefully composed reflection of the film's audience members. Haneke's point: recognise yourself.

13. Note that the 2 child victims in the film (the Baron's boy and the handicapped child) are not subjected to the harsh social structures which affect everyone else in the village. In some ways, they are jealously punished for the very freedoms they possess. Note too that whilst all the adult women are subservient and dutiful, trapped in an abusive system, the female children possess an outsiders view which allows them to question and rebel against the very system that entraps their mothers.

14. Many have complained that none of the crimes are resolved, but with a little detective work the diligent viewer can make educated guesses as to who performed each of the crimes and needle out their various motivations.

15. Late in the film a caged bird is killed, symbolising the refusal of the "terrorists" to become "domesticated" or "subservient". The owner of the bird then replaces it with another bird which he initially promised to set free. The point: man has abandoned his true parental responsibilities (to nurture and guide that which was born wild) in favour for possession and control. The captive will not be set free, lest he violently breaks away or the captor willingly lets him go.

16. Note the characters whispering in the final shot. Dark futures are being planned here. Note too the final conversation between the pastor and the teacher. This is a battle between "truth" and "curiosity" vs "willful delusion" and "false beliefs". The pastor lies to himself in the service up upholding the status quo.

17. Will time be kind to Haneke? He's a great director, but he needs to marry his intellect to stronger visuals.

8.9/10 – A bit too joyless, misanthropic and heavy-handed, but what else should we expect from a director nicknamed "The Ice King"? Nevertheless, the film has a powerful message, and the relationship between its narrator (a teacher) and a young girl is beautiful, respectful and optimistic. Of course, their age difference and her vulnerability suggests that even their romance is borne of dark opportunity.

"A horror drama, free from horror images"

[Galina_movie_fan · 10/10 · 4 September 2010]

Stunningly beautiful, shot in the exquisite black and white, with the faces of the characters looking like the old pictures from the beginning of the 20th century, The White Ribbon has the longer title in German, Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte -The White Ribbon - A German Children's Tale. The longer title gives quite a good idea behind the mystery of the troubling, disturbing, and shocking events in the film that did not have an explanation by the end of the film and left some viewers confused and unsatisfied. I think that the film is very clear and if approached with the open mind and readiness to accept the subtle details in the storytelling and implication, the open end will not disappoint. Anybody who is familiar with the work of Michael Haneke knows very well that he does not make pure mystery/thrillers even though his movies have a lot of mysteries and often very dark secrets By his own admissions, he uses the mystery in the White Ribbon to show the origins of the extremism of all epochs, and what could have been the beginning of the darkest times in the history of the country. Looking at the life of one small picturesque village in the northern Germany just on the brink of the World War 1, Haneke explores the malice, envy, apathy, hatred, and brutality that envelop the village like a web, and lead to the outbursts of evil that goes unpunished and will bring the larger evil in the future. While watching the film, I kept thinking how much it brings to mind the films of another master of grim and sad yet compelling and thought provoking pictures, Ingmar Bergman. Two of his films remind The White Ribbon especially. One, The Winter Light, a tragic and thought-provoking film about a village priest (Gunnar Bjornstrand) who can't give much comfort and hope to those who need them as he feels none for himself. Another - Fanny and Alexander, the story told from the point of view of two children, a brother and a sister whose lives changed tragically after their widowed mother married a local bishop, seemingly a charming and caring man. What would have happened to Fanny and Alexander, what kind of persons would they have become or would they have survived had they not had a big dysfunctional but loving family who saved them from the abusive, cruel hypocritical stepfather, Bishop Edvard Vergerus?

Like Bergman, Michael Haneke does not make the horror films but the computer generated monsters are simply a joke comparing to the real monsters of hatred and evil that found a place to hide and grow in the souls and minds of the characters in his latest film. It is a serious, disturbing, and thought-provoking film. With all its darkness and pessimism, the film has sweet, touching and even humorous moments. They have to do with the only love story in the film and come to think of it, the only love story in all Haneke's films I've seen, between the film's narrator, the local school teacher and the 17 years old Eva, the nanny for the children of the baron, the most powerful man in village.

One of the critics said that The White Ribbon is the film that will haunt the viewers for days and will be seen, discussed and thought of for the decades to come. I completely agree with that, and I feel I can watch it again and again. Yes, it is that good.

Movie known for it's speculation

[jordondave-28085 · 6/10 · 11 May 2023]

(2009) The White Ribbon/ Das weisse Band (In German with English subtitles) PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA

Written and directed by Michael Haneke which the setting is fictional taking place before the first world war which was in 1914. Anyone who are aware about German history won't appreciate this film as much since they were just a fighting empire at that time meaning that Germany was not ruled by Adolf Hitler so for the director to imply that Germany became fascist even before the first world war is incorrect. I mean if that was the case critically acclaim German directors such as Fritz Lang and Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Ernst Lubitsch and F. W. Murnau would not be allowed to make the movies that they made and were made during the time of World War 1. But even by watching it, the experience overall is still very talky without much action which many or most of the key events are implied rather than shown. The story centers on a small remote little village with one church. We see a doctor riding into the village while on a horse. The horse then trips over a wire throwing the doctor to the ground. This is the only action sequence anyone is going to see throughout the entire film. Once the judicial officer is there he's then asks around to know the culprit or culprits who placed that wire and then remove it once coming over there. No one says anything evoking just brain dead speculations, even when this officer asks on front of the church. Two weeks later the wife of a famer gets killed while going into a barn. Viewers are shown a hole and some personal blame is being placed toward the baron of the village since it's being said that he intended for that to happen. Then we also see children being punished by their father for not coming home right away for going to another village provoking the mother to frantically looking for them. And it is during at that time we get to know why the film is called "White Ribbon" for it's what this particular father does whenever some of his kids does bad things. He ties some of them a white ribbon either to the boys arm or to each of their daughters long hair so that it could remind them not to commit any practice any bad things, which as we watch the movie further does absolutely nothing. And that all of that narration that is being done by a young ambitious school teacher can't seem to do anything either for he can just be as dense everyone else in the village. The director Michael Haneke only suggested that German fascism can evolve from this little village without having to say that it can mean much more than such as poverty and economic structure. We don't even get to see how children are even taught in this school since discipline comes in all shapes and sizes including from education. From looking at the big picture kids can never be smarter than adults but that seems to be the case in this film. From a running time of more than two hours, we don't even get to see how they celebrate birthdays nor any sincerity which I'm sure even during Hitler's regime of WWII, there were many Germans who didn't agree with Hitler's ideals but have to go along with it anyway since people were too poor to move nor did they never get a chance to do so, for to join in his army was a requirement by Hitler himself to fight on his cause. This is not really a revelation, only another speculation he may have heard or told about before. "The White Ribbon" gained and Oscar nomination is still an interesting film but at the same time can also be very boring.

Intense and very rewarding

[markgorman · 9/10 · 15 November 2009]

Michael Haneke; infant terrible of the art cinema world is not to everyone's taste. He doesn't exactly make action movies.

But the movie did win the Palme d'or at Cannes this year so certainly the critics liked it.

It's long and it moves at a slow but steady pace. It's black and white (often dimly lit) but beautifully realised. In fact at times the cinematography is so beautiful that it's like a moving Ansell Adams. It is variously graded throughout with the merest hint of a cream or a brown creeping in from time to time that creates some variety. It's mesmerising.

And it's weird. Really weird.

Apparently, and this is not blindingly obvious, it is an allegorical take on the birth of fascism.

It's yet another movie where the heavy hand of religion gets the blame for most evil. The pastor of the remote German village that it is set in, in the lead up to the First World War, is a central character and is the sort we've seen many times before (The Magdalene Sisters being a good example). Outwardly pious; inwardly, and to his family, a callous and vicious bastard. Quick to blame, shame and moralise. His presence throughout is powerful and visceral.

The dawning of fascism is subtly portrayed because no politics enter the film overtly at any point. Class wars and sexual politics do though in what is clearly a male dominated culture and one where sexual transgression is rife (child abuse, domestic abuse, illicit masturbation and secret affairs are all featured).

But it's the children (spookily played by one and all in a sort of village of the damned way) that steal the film. They appear to be forces of evil and if not (the plot is never explained and the strange occurrences left to hang - it is Haneke after all) they are certainly victims of it.

Haneke seems to be saying that the rise of fascism came out of this age of suppression and a sense of revenge - after all the destruction of the Jews is often taken as a form of revenge for their post WWI success.

Haneke makes films like only Haneke makes films. Some people find them slow and boring. I think he follows in the style of that French New Wave of the 60's but with a better grip on audience manipulation. He makes thought provoking masterpieces and this is another one.

Simply wonderful.

the very definition of an "art film"

[Buddy-51 · 6/10 · 9 July 2010]

Movies don't come much more austere or art-house friendly than "The White Ribbon," a German film written and directed by Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke. With its stark black-and-white cinematography and deliberate pacing, the film has the look and feel of an old Ingmar Bergman picture - Ingmar Bergman crossed with M Night Shyamalan, that is, since its story centers around a village in pre-World War I Germany where strange and inexplicable things begin to happen. The town doctor is injured in a mysterious horseback riding mishap; the baron's son is found hanging upside down in a barn; a worker dies in a freak factory accident. All of this is narrated by the town's schoolteacher (Christian Friedel) who falls for a sweet, shy girl who works as a nanny at the manor house.

The children - most of whom look like they just stepped out of "Village of the Damned" - struggle with thoughts of death and the guilt caused by a repressive society, while the adults - an emotionally rigid and unyielding pastor, a cruel, incestuous doctor - contend with their own inner demons, as they groan under the burdens of a class-conscious feudal system and the weight of their own conflicted desires. The theme seems to be that when people bury their natural urges under a crushing mountain of rules and regulations - whether societal or religious in nature - those sublimated urges will manifest themselves in other, demonstrably harmful ways (killing birds, destroying property, kidnapping and torturing children, etc.). The conclusion we're supposed to come to, I guess, is that it was from just such seeds that the war that was to come would eventually spring. I guess.

I wish I could say that I liked "The White Ribbon" better than I do. It's certainly wonderful to look at, and there is something haunting and hypnotic about Haneke's vision of life in a small German village at that particular moment in time. But the plotting is so obscure, the pacing so funereal, and the overall demeanor so heavy-handed and pretentious that, I'm afraid, it takes quite a bit of forbearance and patience just to get through it all.

Still, the mood and the visuals make it worth the effort.

The unexplainable desire for purity

[FrenchEddieFelson · 8/10 · 29 June 2019]

Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009) is a desperately dark story unfolding in a Protestant village of northern Germany just before the First World War. This microcosm is composed of a baron, a pastor, a doctor, ... and the plebs. Strange accidents will succeed one after the other, some worthy of a despicable barbarism, and will gradually pertain to a punitive ritual. The film is based on a few abject characters and Michael Haneke masterfully films the darkness that ineluctably infiltrates the hearts of the fellow citizens from this German provincial environment, thanks to an aesthetic apotheosis and a cinematic sobriety. As a synthesis: Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009) is a masterpiece. 8/9 of 10.

A Masterly Tale on the Circulation of Violence

[nurika · 8/10 · 19 November 2009]

White Ribbon focuses on a pre World War I German town and surveys the evolution of violent, wild incidents resembling punishments indicted on certain individuals. We are provided access to the story from the point of view of the town teacher, whose recollective voice-over interposes throughout the film. The narration competently obscures the culprits, thereby attributing the responsibility for the rage, and its (hypocritical) social incorporation to the whole society rather than certain "abnormal" characters.

In movie circles,White Ribbon is widely regarded as depicting the evolution of a microcosm of a proto-fascist society (which is to a certain extent viable by the way). However, the movie is a less Germany-specific and more universal parable on the socialization of rage and violence, on the evolution of the social circulation of rage and violence. The film follows a route from local (Germany) to universal, coming up with far reaching arguments, just as Foucault focuses on 18-19th century France and presents arguments on the evolution of prison and punishment systems.

Considering Haneke's entire filmography, it is evident that the director has always been interested in philosophical takes on pschology and human interaction, without historicizing his filmic arguments strictly, i.e., without attributing time spans/societies to them. If we leave the mediocrity of the enterprise aside, Haneke's recent remake of Funny Games shot-for-shot, yet in a different society (USA rather than Germany) fittingly illustrates the point.

After a span of work disappointing for many Haneke fans, the auteur returns with an influential and aptly argumentative film.

Gripping, exciting, focused

[d-apergis · 9/10 · 15 December 2009]

Das Weisse Band represents the kind of cinema that is cerebral, cognitive and dialectic without deviating from the conventions of classic storytelling. In examining the origins and nature of terrorism in human societies and psychology, the film quickly resigns from a simple depiction of country rural life in 1913 and transforms into a sadistic 'whodunnit' thriller with the main protagonists being two conflicting generations: the elderly and the youth. Das Weisse Band takes the risk of setting off too many narratives in accordance to the individual stories that occur, but the utterly terrifying aspect and power-point of the film is what we do not see happening in front of our eyes. Gripping, exciting, focused cinema.

Haneke produces his most timeless classic

[Chris_Docker · 10/10 · 14 December 2009]

What do you do when you 'know' there is a very tangible threat but cannot point the finger? Recall, if you will, Jean. Julianne Moore's character in Crash: " . . . and it was my fault because I knew it was gonna happen. But if a white person sees two black men walking towards her and she turns and walks in the other direction, she's a racist, right?" Or the dilemma of Islam in Europe. On the one hand, we are impelled to protect the rights of the vulnerable minority. Protect their beliefs. Their innocence. Everything decent within ourselves that we wish to respect and preserve in others. But on the other, we are terrified of the prospect creeping Islamic militancy. We teeter on the brink of racism. Islamophobia. If we risk the sacred humanity in others we attack it in ourselves. And what if all the indications are wrong? What if all our beliefs are wrong? What if all the words led us astray? Too late, we know we have to talk about paedophile priests. Too late, we know we should have talked about Hitler (in the days before, yes before, he was the Bad Guy). Or even World War One before it happened. There are times when we cannot accuse. Times when it will do no good. But still, as Lionel Shiver might say, there are times when we know, 'We need to talk about Kevin.' Haneke confronts the paradox of confronting the unimaginable. Not in the Hollywood sense of 'too scary to think about.' Just confronting something that is outside the ability of the imagination to foreshadow. In Hidden, the format was an intricate art house film that appealed more to the cinema geek. The cult viewer. A brilliant film – but one you would probably need to watch at least twice before you could 'get it.' The White Ribbon is an altogether different genre. The mystery is laid out as carefully as any Hitchcock classic, albeit with the more restrained tones and iconography of Luis Buñuel. There is not the surrealism of his Exterminating Angel, but the clearly delineated social restraints that refuse to acknowledge anything that does not fit, they are all there. A small village on the eve of World War One. A fierce Lutheran Protestantism that will admit no way of thinking unless it is true to the cornerstones of its faith. Ignorance poses as innocence. And the horrors that can spring from deeply ingrained discipline.

Somehow, within a community where everyone knows and trusts each other, a series of very unpleasant incidents occur. A wire is strung to trip the doctor's horse. A disabled boy is brutally attacked. A woman commits suicide. Unexplained arson. The seeds of deadliest emotions are there in a society that allows for nothing except goodness.

Haneke carefully details various forms of patriarchal enforcement of this goodness. It might be righteous anger or compassionate punishment. I recall my philosophy teacher at university saying how some things can be learnt but not taught. Then another professor's dismissal of Aristotle's virtue theory on the basis that it cannot be 'taught.' In this Haneke world of black-and-white moral righteousness, those characters who seek no more than a least worst option seem to come, quite logically, to an untriumphant end. A boy who wants to save a wounded bird. A schoolteacher who wants to reveal with gentleness that which force cannot uncover.

With Funny Games, Haneke shocked with intruders. With Hidden, he forced us to confront a barely solvable mystery. With The White Ribbon, his greatest work yet, a simple story takes on universal proportions. No intruders. No outsiders. We can no longer take refuge in any system of 'universal truth.' Whether it be the science of our sense or the dictates of religion. We must learn as we grow. This White Ribbon is no fairy tale story. It has no fairy tale ending. All is logical. Just that you might never, ever, be able to prove it.

Prolix, Overrated and Disappointing

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 5 March 2011]

A couple of years before the outbreak of the First World War, in a feudal German village, mysterious events happen. First, the local doctor has an accident when his horse stumbles on a hidden wire. Then a woman falls in a hole below the rotten floor of a barn and dies. The young son of the local baron is found hung upside-down and tortured. The retarded son of the midwife is found tied to a tree and brutally battered. In an environment of cruelty and abuses, the local teacher suspects that the repressed daughter and the son of the pastor are the responsible for the crimes.

I was anxious to see "Das Weiße Band - Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte" and today I have finally watched this awarded film. Unfortunately I found it prolix, overrated and very disappointing and gives the sensation that the ending is missing.

The black and white cinematography is top-notch and one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The performances are awesome and I was particularly impressed with the beauty and acting of the unknown Leonie Benesch. The screenplay is intriguing and engrosses the attention of the viewer from the very beginning. Unfortunately the story that has the obvious intention of showing the birth of the serpent egg of the Nazism and Fascism does not have a conclusion.

Claude Chabrol, just to give an example, was specialist in films with intelligent open ends that forced the interpretation and the discussion of the viewers. Michael Haneke, on the contrary, leaves many questions without answers, even very simple points, like for example whether the teacher has married Eva or not; or the fate of the doctor and his family and the midwife. There are so many abusive and wicked characters that almost everyone would be capable of the evilness against the children. But I believe that the two adolescents with the white ribbon may be the responsible for the cruelties. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Fita Branca" ("The White Ribbon")

Unforgettable

[matthewkilbane · 8/10 · 17 January 2022]

The White Ribbon is a film that only Haneke could make. It's bleak, upsetting, perverse, and so true to the human condition that it's hard to watch, yet you won't want to look away. It forces you to think about how a society treats its children, and what those children will do when they've grown up and run the society. The cinematography alone is enough reason to watch this film.

Do things just happen?

[radeherb · 6/10 · 24 November 2009]

I watched this movie yesterday. As soon as I left the theater, something quite unusual happened. Its content lost all of its grip on me, while its artistic brilliance stood out almost the more. How could that be? I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the story was not convincing enough to hold itself up, at least not for me.

I often like stories even if they are unconvincing. Why not this one? If somebody tries to tell something, just as it happened and without explanation, what he tells has to be plausible to be of interest to me. It must be capable to bear some kind of logical explanation to keep my imagination. Otherwise my interest jumps from the story to the person who talks.

The schoolteacher's suggestion sounds too much like an intellectual construction, including the events leading up to it, and some grey eminence caught playing God by his own children would indeed look rather cheap. In fact, the whole story seems too much constructed for me to be taken in by it permanently, too constructed to even appear to be true. In consequence, all the breathtaking scenes of parental violence and abuse seem corrupted, damaged, invalidated, almost lost by their involvement into the context of an unbelievable story. How sad.

The movie had my interest in a firm grip until the very end and then lost it as an intrinsic provocation to be thought over. There seemed nothing more to it than the excellent artistic surface I had already witnessed.

Things happen, and in peculiar atmospheres peculiar things happen. Like gives birth to like, I knew that before. Everybody knows and maybe fears those suffocating circumstances where nothing really happens apart from a series of cruel events passing by, interrupted by bumping holes like being processed by a stuttering slaughter machine. So what all this brilliance for?

Under an intriguing surface, things happen in cruel innocence, mechanically interlinking two generations, devoid of even the possibility of anything like responsibility, not to speak soul, maybe with the exception of two little boys. Apart from those, every single beautiful puppet in this movie carries a white ribbon around his very clock-like heart which never gets soiled, never could be.

Which makes this movie exactly alike to what it depicts. That seems frightening, at least to me. What happens now, in 2009, is this movie, a work of art, ironically, like it's pre-WWI-content, imposing itself as the result of thousands of years of civilization. Too old compared to those two little boys?

I'm just a usual guy and not much of a critic or writer, that's true. But a nightmare of only analogically connected random events, even if it was history itself, I would not consider as true or for that matter real, what ever its aesthetics might be.

I searched the comments on this page for some controversy, thinking this movie deserves it.

Delicately filmed but pretentious

[Andy-296 · 3/10 · 8 August 2010]

A pretentious film from the haughty but occasionally interesting Austrian art filmmaker Michael Haneke (Hidden/Cache, for instance, was a fine if unsubtle movie about the profound guilt that westerners should feel for being successful, a common theme from the director). Filmed in a delicate black and white, The White Ribbon takes place in a small German town in the immediate period before World War I. Through a number of mysterious violent acts occurring in the village, Haneke wants to show the hypocrisy of a society rigidly stratified by class. Haneke refuses either to give a clear explanation of these acts (though they turn out to be carried out by children of the community) or to follow a clear narrative line. These make the movie more irritating than surprising (though there always will be snobs that will claim that we are in front of a masterpiece). Some reviewers have claimed the movie to be some sort of metaphor for the birth of National Socialism (with the children supposedly turning into Nazis 25 years later), but there is really nothing here about this. Boring and disappointing.

A portrait of collective evil

[Chris Knipp · 9/10 · 7 October 2009]

'In The White Ribbon,' the masterful film that won Michael Haneke the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year, the Bavarian-born, Austrian-raised writer-director turns to a period costume drama shot in black and white. He focuses on the year leading up to the outbreak of WWI in a fictitious village called Eichwald in the northern, Protestant part of Germany where the local baron (Ulrich Tukur) employs half the population. It's a time and place where people were unusually evil: Haneke has said something like that about his setting. The story is riveting and its presentation is brilliant -- performances that are memorable and vivid; settings that are authentic-feeling; images that linger in the mind. The effect is chilling and though-provoking.

There is a series of malicious and cruel acts. A trip-wire causes the town doctor's horse to be crippled and the doctor (Rainer Bock) is hospitalized. The baron's little boy Sigi is found tied upside down in a barn, beaten and terrorized; the Down's syndrome child of the midwife is attacked and blinded. There are efforts to chase down the culprit or culprits and at one point the schoolteacher, who narrates the film, speaking long afterward, thinks he has figured it out. But typically for Haneke, as in his widely seen 'Hidden'/'Caché' (2005), it all remains a mystery. If this is a police procedural -- and county police are called in finally to investigate -- it's one that fizzles out. The focus isn't just on criminal acts so much as meanness, such as the protestant minister's harshness toward his own children (whom he torments both physically and psychologically for minor misdeeds); or the farmer's grown son who ruins the baron's cabbage patch during the autumn celebration because he blames the baron for his mother's death in a barn accident, or the doctor's verbal abuse toward his secretary, assistant, and sometime lover. Or even what the baron's wife (Ursina Lardi) says to her husband: "I can't live in an atmosphere of malice, envy, cruelty and brutality." For the misfortunes and misdeeds there is much blame, and little forgiveness.

There is a slight sense that this is some kind of artful horror movie about evil children, like 'Village of the Damned.' Particularly in the verbal harshness between couples, the film sometimes seems to go a little too far. Haneke doesn't give you a good time. Whether he's speaking of a suicidal family ('The Seventh Continent'), marauding killer youths ('Funny Games'), modern disconnectedness ('Code Unknown'), a sado-masochistic music teacher ('La Pianiste'), a world of lawlessness and chaos ('The Hour of the Wolf'), a paranoid bourgeois couple ('Caché'), there's a kind of severity and grimness about Haneke's world that, if it works for you, becomes tonic, worth the discomfort. But can we bear the thought that there can be so much nastiness in one little village? Can the elders' (and particularly the minister's) relentless morality cause the children to be more than anything filled with malice? This is why the 'Variety' reviewer justifiably says 'The White Ribbon' "proves a difficult film to entirely embrace." But the way Haneke complexly weaves his spell and creates his village society out of dozens of little details is difficult not to admire. Reportedly, the German is full of flowery touches that evoke the period. Few films convey so vivid a sense of a late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century world-view and lifestyle.

The redeeming vision it that of the schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), a shy, plodding, decent fellow, and Eva (Leonie Benesch) the 17-year-old girl who comes from another town to mind the baron's young twins, who catches the teacher's eye and whom he wants to make his bride -- she too, disarmingly decent and sweet. Haneke is as good at making this couple endearing and touching as he is at making the other adults peevish or indifferent or cruel. And that helps quite a lot. As an older man the schoolteacher is the narrator (Ernst Jacobi), and his humane vision and decent voice provide a perspective on the collective evil that seems to dominate events in this unfortunate year.

'The White Ribbon' has an cumulative, episodic structure. One thing happens after another. Things reach a high pitch when the midwife borrows the bicycle the schoolteacher has borrowed, saying she's found out who hurt her son and is going to report it to the police, and then is never seen again. In the end, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand changes everything, and at the church the town community recognizes that. The narrator explains that he went to war and when he came back moved to another town and never saw the villagers again.

Haneke is extraordinarily good at making his little Eichwald come to life, showing its central square in snow and summer and autumn, planting the facades of the baron's mansion as firmly in our minds as the doctor's bourgeois brick pile, showing us rooms packed with children whom a harsh father can banish with a word. He brings the church to vivid life and every face in it seems right. The children stand naturally in their old-fashioned clothes and their homemade nightgowns and in their faces we feel their emotional pain. If the lines are drawn harshly, they're also drawn lovingly. And this is another redeeming feature.

Is this the world from which Nazism comes? Not exactly, but 'White Ribbon' shows the ugly element in the German character. But while Germans may read the film that way, it's meant to show fundamental human traits, and in particular -- the pastor is the dominant figure -- how an unrelentingly cruel and judgmental viewpoint can lead to radicalism and violence.

Shown at the New York Film Festival 2009. In an article about and appreciation of Haneke in 'The New Yorker,' Anthony Lane describes 'Das weiße Band' as the director's "most accessible," and "best" film; it's definitely his longest (145 minutes) and richest in incident.

Who is Michael Heneke?

[julianbarbieri · 8/10 · 4 September 2009]

I need to know! Not just who is Michael Heneke but also who does he think he is? The arrogance of his work is only comparable to its brilliance. Here he visits Bergman territory without telling us so but just the faces of the actors in glorious black and white scream of Bergman. What a delightful annoyance. As anybody who is familiar with the work of Michael Heneke will suspect, this new opus, will provoke you in so many different ways that you will want to leave theater many times but you won't be able to, I certainly couldn't. This man is a wizard of sorts. I can't think of no other director who could get away with this in the new millennium. I haven't even started to talk about the film yet and I'm not going to. I'm just going to say that it's a mystery in more ways than one and that you may hate it but won't be able to forget it.

Stunningly bleak and haunting

[sbaines-94744 · 9/10 · 21 September 2021]

The cinematography is captivating and the people, adults and children alike look and act so convincingly that this film is truly remarkable. The dawn of an even more chilling new era of two world wars which these children are about to enter gives the events yet more deprh. I grew up in protestant northern Germany and remember the very old people in our village, who would have matched the ages of the children in their old age. The women continued to wear similar fashions, with only shorter skirts, the hair worn exactly like the girls in the film. The language, the houses and even some of the interiors I witnessed as a small child are very accurately reflected in this film. The film strongly hints at a brutalised generation which is gradually driven to extremism. This might be simplistic, but is worth considering. Overall a memorable masterpiece.

The best film of 2009

[JaydenChua-93261 · 10/10 · 3 October 2021]

I find it incredibly difficult to rate a Haneke film, especially right after I watched it. His movies slowly grow on you and it takes a lot of time before you could fully appreciate them. When Michael Haneke makes movies he always has something to say, and he is truthful in every depiction he makes. Sometimes it's even hard to call some of his films entertainment. The White Ribbon is just another example of Michael Haneke's mastery in filmmaking. When it comes to the technical aspects there wasn't a single front that wasn't outstanding. The cinematography was so gorgeous that you could literally take any point in the film and make it the poster. This is probably the best looking Haneke film honestly. The pacing is slow but incredibly effective showing a very subtle growth of evil. The acting from everybody in this huge cast is outstanding, every kid actor in this movie is better than 99% of actors working today. Everyone was giving it their all and if you look at any person in any of Haneke's films you wouldn't spot a single actor that isn't doing a great performance.

This movie is about evil and how it grows into something awful to come. It's super super subtle and kind of hard to catch. Michael Haneke is distracting us with the obvious evil so that we don't realize the subtle evil in front of us. So even though when I finished the film I was slightly underwhelmed when it ended, thinking back it was really harrowing. This is the closest Michael Haneke will ever come to making a Holocaust movie, and instead of giving you satisfying answers like Stephen Spielberg's Schindler's list it does something much more powerful and harrowing.

Stiffed Lessening

[tedg · 13 September 2010]

This is truly beautiful, not in the way that Bergman's Sven Nykvist made beautiful silver insertions into loneliness, but as pure, soulless visions of soulless people and their children being ripped. Haneke has famously "explained" this movie as depicting the oppressive fog on the land which generically produces twisted, homicidal societies. I wish he had kept his mouth shut because that much is obvious as a background.

What is more interesting is who Haneke has revealed himself to be, and what he thinks of us as viewers. I've always felt uncomfortable with his films, not because they have an intended unsettling effect (that makes you "examine" self), but because they make interestingly flawed assumptions about me and how to get to me. Those flaws are fascinating and far, far more engaging and disturbing than the events depicted.

In this case, as with many of Herzog's films, the very thing that is being revealed to be destructive is built into the fabric of the thing and the contract with the filmmaker we are forced into complying with. Simple, reductionist morality? Obsessively bleak vision? Condescending view of natural emotions and passions? Yes, yes, yes, both in what we have and how we have it. "Cache" was at least cleverly constructed, just as this is wonderfully framed. But the man is just too, well too Austrian.

There are several mysteries in this story, cleverly not closed. The loud implication is that the children were behind many of the events. This fits the film's intent, as the filmmaker has patiently told us in interviews that these children become the Nazis he is beholden to understand. But much more interesting is a different solution to the mysteries, surely subconsciously placed.

Our narrator is the village schoolmaster. He is in a unique position, the only institutionally allowed connection between the children and the adults. He alone has anything remotely like honest love. He uniquely is untouched by the disasters. He is also our narrator, a role we are reminded of throughout. He also tells us at the beginning that what he will tell us is partly lies, partly truth. No doubt, Haneke identifies with this storyteller and has hidden truths about himself just as our teacher has.

Look at this closely and you may interpret as I did the second time around. I think the teacher is a plausible culprit, wholly unintended by the filmmaker and hiding his worst tendencies just as the filmmaker has.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.