Kick-Back Friday: #126
The White Ribbon (2009): Oh those Germans. Or Austrians. Whatever. And their frivolity. Not.
In austere and exquisitely still frames of retrofitted black and white, director Michael Haneke unfolds his story of anonymous evil deeds in a farm village on the cusp of World War I. Cryptically narrated in retrospect by the town's sympathetic, if ineffectual, schoolteacher (who's not even sure he's remembering correctly), the story reveals the stark brutality of paternal figures, suggesting that the perpetrator is an adult. But the innocence of the town's oppressed children cannot be assumed. Brutal adults can bear brutal children.
