Theatre
of Cruelty
by
Howard Schumann
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
has 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, 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), humiliating 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 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.
*
Infused with
a sumptuous elegance, Catherine Breillat’s eerie retelling of
the Charles Perrault fairytale Bluebeard is
very sensual and highly stylized while adhering to an almost literal
interpretation of the story. The film operates on parallel levels, both
involving two sisters. In the first story, two young sisters play in
the attic of their home in France in the present time. Catherine, who
according to Breillat’s autobiographical material, represents
the director, plays power games with her older but more withdrawn sister
Marie-Anne by tormenting her with readings of the classic horror story
“Bluebeard.”
While young
Catherine is reading the story, the drama plays out on the screen in
a setting that looks like the 16th century. Another pair of sisters,
Anne (Daphne Baiwir) and Marie-Catherine (Lola Créton), (note
the similarity in names) receive sad news at a convent from a coldly
unfeeling Mother Superior that their father was killed while trying
to save a little girl. Without means to continue at their private school,
the girls are unceremoniously thrown out. On the way home, they pass
Bluebeard’s castle and comment on the local aristocrat who, rumor
has it, married many wives that strangely disappeared.
It is not
long until the corpulent Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) begins to court
the young and attractive Marie-Catherine. Without money for a dowry,
Marie-Catherine, undaunted by the whispers, agrees to marry the wealthy
Bluebeard. The film then moves back and forth between the two stories,
with the younger girls’ reading and commenting on the fairy tale
providing comic relief for the heavy drama of male power and female
sexual awareness unfolding at the castle. Marie-Catherine seems to have
charmed Bluebeard, who appears loving but whose intimidating frame towers
over the slender virgin.
Marie has,
however, cannily set things up in her favor. She has chosen for herself
a room so small that the hefty Bluebeard cannot enter, but she can tiptoe
down the hall and peek into the room where he is getting undressed.
When he goes away on an unspecified trip, Marie-Catherine invites her
sister Anne to the house and they have much fun, but Marie is sad until
her new husband returns home one month later. Before leaving on his
second trip, however, he gives his wife a key to a mysterious room in
the cellar with the impossible instruction not to open the door. Frightened
of disobeying her husband but tantalized by the secret, Marie-Catherine
unlocks the mystery chamber only to be confronted by her worst fears,
and the story plays out in Breillat’s provocative and unpredictable
fashion.
Bluebeard’s
setting immerses the audience in a world that is far removed from today’s
realities, yet the teenage newcomer Créton gives Marie-Catherine
a playful confidence and pride to go along with her natural purity and
innocence in a way that speaks to today’s feminist sensibilities.
Going backwards and forwards in time also highlights the universal qualities
inherent in the gothic fairy tales that, even when they are decidedly
dark as in this case, have a lot to teach us about confronting our fears,
lessons often hidden by the pandering of Walt Disney animation. Resonant
with wit and sexual tension, Bluebeard reestablishes the reality
of the world of children, both full of terror and untold beauty. Breillat
has created a minor masterpiece.
©2009 Howard Schumann
CineScene
