The White Ribbon Film
From:November 2, 2010 20:00 to: November 2, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
The White Ribbon
(Dir: Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany, 2009
Michael Haneke’s latest work is set in a small farming village in northern Germany on the eve of the First World War. Shot in sparkling, iridescent black and white, The White Ribbon is a film of shimmering surfaces that conceal a much darker reality.
Beneath the sun-dappled fields lurks a series of disturbing events recounted by the local schoolteacher: a horseman has a strange accident, a worker is killed in the nearby sawmill, a young boy is kidnapped and beaten, a man savagely takes his scythe to a crop in a field, a barn is torched. This provides the backdrop to Haneke's brilliant and ruthless examination of a society that admits to nothing and hides everything.
As the young schoolteacher begins to court a shy governess, the brutalizing reality of village life is slowly laid bare. The local children play a key role; as they gravitate toward every violent incident, it soon becomes apparent that they are members of a society that prizes discipline as a virtue, even if it borders on abuse. Their elders are committed to a value system based on obedience and punishment. When the schoolteacher attempts to assert his principles, he finds that they inevitably collide with the strict, harsh rules of the village.
Both provocative and elegantly executed, this is essential viewing – an examination of how violence can perhaps unwittingly take root in a society that ostensibly believes in other values.
Adm: €7 (seasonal membership rates available).
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