LITERAL REMAINS

The German village of Eichwald isn’t the best place to call home.  It’s picturesque, and in the early 1900′s, just before World War I, it’s the kind ofhamlet which everybody works together, everyone knows everyone else, and the world is large outside its borders, and so far, far away.  But their is a corruption in the village, and someone, or maybe it’s a group of people, are working against the peacefulness of Eichwald.

Or maybe it’s no one at all.  Maybe everything that happens in The White Ribbon is a lie, and none of it never happened.  As the narrator, the schoolteacher grown old, says at the beginning, not everything in the story he is about to tell may be entirely true, some events based on hearsay.  Maybe the scenes and situations that unfold are just how his, then, young mind perceived them.  Whatever the reality, it makes for a striking and intriguing film.

The White Ribbon is a character study of the village of Eichwald.  There is the schoolteacher, who reliably or unreliably tells the story; the town pastor who rules his family with an iron grip on the Bible; the baron who all but owns the village and provides for it; the steward, loyal to the baron and a monster to his family; the widower doctor, father of two grieving children; the midwife, mother of a mentally handicapped son, she also suffers through a secretive, and abusive, relationship with the doctor; and a farmer who owes his livelihood to the baron, as does nearly everyone else.

Troubling events descend on the town, and the doctor is the first victim.  Upon returning home from a visit one morning, the doctor’s horse trips over a wire that has been tied to two trees and stretched across the road.  The doctor is badly injured and sent away to the hospital.  Then the farmer’s wife is killed in an accident at the sawmill.  The baron’s son goes missing and is later found tied up in a barn, having been beaten with a cane.  The midwife’s son is found tied to a tree and badly beaten and all but blinded.

Who is the culprit?  If you are looking for answers, The White Ribbon only supplies speculation.  Sometimes there are no answers, I guess.  Good and evil just exist.  It’s how they exist side by side in this movie that is so fascinating, how righteousness and a desire to live properly can lead to cruelty, how loneliness can lead to abuse, and how pride can lead to destruction.  Anyone in the village could have committed the crimes, and that is the movie’s point, for me at least:  we all have it in us to be good or evil.  Once the public masks are stripped away, how would another person view our private lives?

The White Ribbon is more intriguing and interesting than likable or accessible.  Although I felt cheated by the ending, the story kept me riveted to the screen.  I never knew what would happen, or where exactly the film was going.  This is a beautifully made film about the ugly nature of mankind.

4.5 out of 5
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