Patriarchy, husbandry, divine right. This is a film that exposes, criticizes, and contains hidden worries about the extreme power structure. Without writing a single ink on the war, he reflects on the war from the root.
"White Ribbon" excavates the profound social crisis (or the modernity crisis of Western civilization) contained in the European continent at the beginning of the 20th century through the collapse of a village with a scalpel-like calm method. Social crises must also spread to the cellular structure of society - the family. Those who have penetrated into the family are also trying to penetrate into the minds of the next generation. Through real violence, nihilistic sense of sublime, moral restraint, and even intimidation, they are trying to make a last-ditch attempt at authoritarianism, insinuating the instinctual or deep evil of human nature. Exhibited.
And this infiltration is undoubtedly successful, we see the next generation in the film resist by killing the weak (killing birds), and by hurting the minorities (minority) to resist (the damage to the landlord's son and the inherently retarded Karli in the film) .
From the perspective of the enlargement of the family to the nation, this crisis will inevitably lead to the rise of totalitarianism. The main mechanism of totalitarianism is to destroy human nature and replace it with a certain idealism (the "pure" white ribbon in the film is the embodiment of idealism), and make full use of the grace of power to make people domesticate and even conspire. The story ends with the Sarajevo incident in 1914. What makes people terrified is that more than 20 years later, around 40 years later, it was the climax of the Nazi persecution of Jews, and the children in the film had become the backbone of society at that time. (Need to read Hannah-Arendt again as further homework.)
The germination of totalitarianism begins with the unawareness of the absolute binary power and the failure of the equal and rational dialogue between the two. Everything has given way to a certain "historical teleology" (purification) and strict "logical deduction". (The logical derivation of the two brothers and sisters of the priest's family being reprimanded and punished by the priest). This is well highlighted in the film's layered rendering of a depressing domestic environment. Most of the scenes in the movie are indoor spaces, and the shots focus on expressing the sense of closure of the space. And inside the houses that are calm on the surface, crime, violence, and harm are being staged. This is obviously symbolic, and near the end, the narration sounds: "The earliest mention of the word war is vigorously refuted". People are still ignorant and ignorant as in the trains heading for the cliff. And the first train that hit the bottom of the valley was just a prelude, and there was a second, and maybe a third, crash that followed rapidly.
Extremely restrained and sophisticated camera language. The empty shots of the bright wheat fields and snow fields dotted between the overall lowkey images create a sense of breathing and ambiguity in the strong contextual contrast of the shots. The casting is expressive, especially the butcher-faced doctor and the bitter-faced neurotic midwife. In the scene where the two are alone, the lines burst out like a knife.
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