Release: Now showing
Duration: 144 minutes
Rating: M (mature themes and sexual references)

In the latter part of his career, Michael Haneke has become a frustrating, polarizing presence in modern cinema. This trend continues with his latest film, the period film The White Ribbon. While his earlier films (like Funny Games) are brilliant cinematic puzzles, it is doubtful that The White Ribbon will find similar immortality among audiences despite its accolades (it scooped this year’s Palm D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, no less).

In 1913, a range of sinister attacks befalls a small German village. Haneke initially weaves a brooding, intense atmosphere in the first half, but his convoluted and pretentious plot eventually shatters The White Ribbon’s initial power. Haneke introduces too many characters too quickly, which results in each figure rendered as two-dimensional and boring. Whilst The White Ribbon begins as a genuinely fascinating and compelling study of terrorism, it eventually falls into a pit of standard storytelling and some shoddy twists, robbing the ending of genuine power and dramatic resolution.

I also found some of Haneke’s stylistic decisions to be problematic. Like the setting and costume design, Haneke’s intelligent, layered camerawork is superb (heightening the film’s mystery and ambiguity), but his black and white photography proves to be a hindrance to The White Ribbon, casting the screen into perpetual darkness. Most obviously, the daylight sequences looked considerably glary, reeking of some obvious last-minute digital interference.

Like Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, Haneke’s film has proved controversial in film festivals across Europe. Lavish praise and unabashed hatred pour out in equal measure to the film and its director. Frankly, The White Ribbon deserves neither. The intense atmosphere may not save it, but the undeveloped storytelling and technical difficulties will not condemn it either. Combined, these elements contribute to something that could have been much, much more from this interesting, but often maddening European filmmaker.

Timothy Clark