Be warned that I write this as a WWII historian who has also (obviously) studied WWI so I can see the stupidity of this 'film' on so many, many levels that it was truly excruciating for me. Let's just say that this oh-so-deep analysis of what led Germany to WWI (and WWII for that matter) is......... wait for it......... Germans are inherently evil (canned applause here). My God. So simple. So stupid. And might I add that the subtlety that other writers refer to does not exist. The evil of Germans is rammed down your throat with all the "subtlety" of a machete and a foghorn including some of the grossest acts known to humans performed by just your common village-folk. By presenting racism as an explanation so that we don't have to bother ourselves with anything so complicated as, well, history, it is best to shoot the film in black and white to give it a bit of style, since there really isn't any substance. When the 'moral' lesson is that a ethnic group is just inferior and evil and that's that, you better lean on Style. Stop. Please.

The White Ribbon (German: Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) (2009) Haneke shows us, with effective black and white, how iniquitous everyday life can be, the children perhaps the worst. (Tanka (tan-kah) poems are short poems that are five lines long, with the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable format. #Tanka #PoemReview

What is it about this film that is so good? It's not easy to place my finger on it. But what I can say is that while watching it, I feel like I'm watching a flawless film. I'm not sure if there's many other films I've seen like that, perhaps a few by Stanley Kubrick or some of the old masters. And, this is the company that Haneke is now in.After all, he's now one of the rare winners of two best film awards at Cannes. I thought Haneke was brilliant in many of his other films, but I always found something questionable in them. Not so with White Ribbon. It has some of the trademarks of his other films, but this time they're rare and when placed between the rest, they stand out. In the other extreme Haneke also made Amour, a film that's even more different from his others, besides perhaps the end. Anyway, we're talking about White Ribbon so I will stick to that here. With all the problems with the youth in this film, the movie wins with the budding relationship that we are introduced to. It just offers something wonderful between the usual combination of weird sexual behaviour, murder and sin lurking beneath the surface. Yet, what for? I know why Haneke's made this film but being in Germany, I don't have to spell it out. Haneke didn't find the need to and it's best left unsaid as an allegory.

It's quite different from what is usually seen on screens. It's one of the films unique, original in everything. From the point of view of the subject, it's almost hermetically - everyone will understand as much as you can; the aesthetic, the film enchants you with poetic black and white, photography; directing: a masterpiece. And there's also the possible meanings that even if you can not catch on entirely, all you felt you mustiind in this film worthy of the Palme d'Or and learned that last year (2009) . The key to the logic of this film seems to be the film Das Weisse Band that also a parable be taken to refer to dark period of German history the two world wars. Ethics fanatical, extreme guilt and masochistic degeneration odious faces appear in this film. There are scenes of horrific abuse and outrageous verbal and physical cruelty here: but that without proper insist on showing their actual ... bloody images: everything is settled and finesse but also strongly represented in these respects intellectual . White Ribbon movie title, had to gauger children's innocence Germany. But it appears innocence lost and lead to atrocities and disasters of historic proportions. By demonetizing children and young people, due to slippages fatal mentality and morality of parents, this movie is in lineage ideation and Demons famous novel, Dostoevsky's. Michael Haneke maybe wanted to capture in this film as a parable, hideous psychology of fascism, or fanaticism in general, then the decay of a culture reached a point of self-sufficiency and superficiality seriously dehumanizing. Very interesting is the anthropological vision of the film, with rural customs and mentality specific prewar Germany.