The Thousands

I once endured a Michael Haneke retrospective at ACMI with double bills by the master-director playing over four weeks. Each and every title gave me a chronic case of the heebie-jeebies. Watching them back-to-back left me punch drunk.

Haneke’s Palme d’Or winning The White Ribbon is no different. Unnerving events unravel in a German Protestant village just prior to WW1: the town Doctor is injured when his horse is legged by a trip-wire, a farmer’s wife is torn apart by an ‘accident’ at the mill, the Baron’s son is almost lynched, and lastly a Down Syndrome boy’s eyes are gouged out. Haneke (seemingly channelling Bergman in rich B+W) lets this play out austerely, building ambiguity and paranoia before using his staple trick of cutting to black providing no catharsis.

The title itself stems from the puritanical pastor forcing his children to wear white ribbons as reminder of the innocence from which they’ve ‘strayed’. Michael Haneke ought to be mummified in white ribbon.