The White Ribbon

Or "Das Weisse Band," as the poster above announces. This is a movie that just got nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar and I was intrigued by the trailer which featured a church choir singing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Any film that includes some Martin Luther tunes on the playlist is going to get my money at the box office.

Okay, I liked the movie.

And didn't understand it.

Is that possible? Apparently. I can't explain it. Because I can't really explain what I saw. Does that make any sense? If it doesn't, don't sweat it. It's just one more link in the chain of confusion provoked by "The White Ribbon."

The film is set in some dreary German farming town sometime just before the onset of World War One. It reminded me a bit of the village where my grandparents grew up. Or, at least, what they told me about. In retrospect, Grandma and Grandpa were as buttoned up and closeted as some of the villagers depicted in the movie. Maybe it's a German thing.

Right from the getgo, in the midst of all this stoicism, weird and unexplained stuff starts to happen. Someone secretly strings up a thin wire that trips up the town doctor riding his horse. A lowly female worker falls through some rotten floorboards of a saw mill and dies. The son of the town's baron is abducted and beaten with a stick. The same happens to the village's resident retarded kid. Who is behind this? The narrator of the story is an older version of the town schoolteacher who we meet as a young man. He offers no answers in either incarnation. Thanks for the non-help, Professor.

There are lots of suspects. Most of the kids are creepy and remind me of the Von Trapp kids on some sort of Ritalin. The adults are no tall lager at the beer garden either. The church pastor is some strict dirtbag who believes in daily spanking and also ties down the arms of his youngest son at night so the kid won't jerk off. Pastor Shithead gets it thrown back at him when somebody kills his parakeet with a pair of scissors. Was it one of his kids rebelling? Was it a member of his congregation? Could George Bush have been responsible? We never know or find out.

Or maybe it's the town midwife? Or the young nanny? Or maybe it's the vandal who singlehandedly took a sickle to the village's entire cabbage crop? There were moments when I thought I knew what was going on. There were other moments where I had as much comprehension as I did when I took Calculus in the twelfth grade. P.S., I had virtually no comprehension when I took Calculus in the twelfth grade.

At one point midway through the film, there is a static long shot of a slow funeral procession. It stops so that someone can greet the grieving family. Who? We have no clue. Then the somber march resumes. This scene drags on for about four minutes. You can't tell who any of the people are or where they fit into the story. I could feel the befuddlement around me. One woman two rows behind me yelled out, "Who died?" No one shushed her. And, more importantly, no one answered her. They couldn't. Because nobody knew. I was so addled that, upon my return home, I e-mailed Roger Ebert's website to see if he knew. He hasn't answered me yet. Probably because he's still thinking about it. Eventually, my friend Dennis explained to me who was in the coffin. Maybe he was right. Maybe he's not. He's usually smart about these things. So am I. Usually. Except with this film.

"The White Ribbon" is 2 and a half hours in length and, while I didn't know what the fuck was going on, I don't think there was a single wasted shot. By the end, I was speculating on who had done what to whom. In my own mind, I had completed the plot the way I imagined it. I had chosen my own culprit. From what I could see from the silent reaction around me, so had most of the audience. Except for the one woman who kept asking, "Who died?" I will circle back to her at some point and tell her to call Dennis.

When you get right down to it, we all got the last laugh over the characters in this gritty little slice of life. Because, in their own petty outlooks on their village, we all know they were just days away from the war to end all wars. And, oh yeah, down the road, what do we see? A bad haircut and a funky moustache. Maybe that's what the point was. This is all a dandy recipe for creating the Third Reich. Take several blond kids with nasty attitudes, whip vigorously, and then slip them into some knee high boots.

I realized that the director was Michael Haneke who made another foreign mystery named "Cache" a few years back. I remember that I didn't understand the ending of that flick either. So, this must be Haneke's modus operandi for cinematic success. Total confusion of his audience. And complete engagement at the same time. Because, despite it all, I still liked the movie.

Or did I?

Please go see it. And then tell me what you saw. Or tell me what you think you saw. And then tell me what you think I saw. And I will tell you what I think you saw.

Let's face it. Several days later, I'm still thinking about "The White Ribbon." Two hours after I saw "Avatar," I probably couldn't remember the name of a single character.

So there you are. But, then again, maybe there you're not. The only thing that I can say with any confirmation is that the movie is shot in glorious black and white. Do you need any other reason to see it?

Dinner last night: Stirfry vegetables and rice.