Michael Haneke has been directing films and causing audiences to squirm for years. His most famous works being Cache, The Piano Teacher and Funny Games (the original and the remake).
*Note: If you could handle Funny Games, checkout his other earlier film Bennys Video
His movies are not for the faint and are often slow moving and hard to watch, but if you can stick with them you have the opportunity to see boundaries pushed and human nature displayed in ways unseen before. His newest film, "The White Ribbon" recently won the 2009 Palm D'Or at Cannes and is also an official entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2010 Academy Awards. I have been waiting to see it for quite some time so I am glad to see that it will finally be arriving to select theaters December 30th.
10 years in the making, The White Ribbon is shot entirely in black and white, reminiscent of "Schindlers List" in some ways and the look of the characters reminds me of other holocaust films as well. Set in a small Protestant village in Germany right on the heels of WWI in 1913-1914. The story is narrated and follows children apart of the church choir that is ran by the local schoolteacher, Pastor and their families. "Strange" occurrences start to happen and startle the village, the question is who is behind it all. From what I have read the last few months, the film seems to be about repression mostly, if you raise children and people of a town to be strict and obedient, there is bound to be consequences of such strict upbringing. The film clearly serves as foreshadowing to the breakout of WWI and eventually the rise of the Third Reich and WWII.
"In a climate of everyday repression and parental brutality, passed from generation to generation, any political evil is possible," writes Richard Corliss for Time. "Nazism can bloom in Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the slaughtering armies in Rwanda and Sudan. Is man's humanity to man inherent? Or does it just have to be carefully taught? That is the central question of this fascinating film, which demands much of viewers and offers ample rewards for their involvement.... Haneke is not a perpetrator of cruelty but a prosecutor of it; and 'The White Ribbon,' constructed step by meticulous step, scene by forbidding, foreboding scene, is his grandest indictment of intolerance."
