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Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon feels and looks like a return to an earlier era of European cinema. From a visual and narrative standpoint, the film recalls the work of Bergman and Tarkovsky in the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its power comes from its recourse techniques of these masters.

The use of black and white,  the juxtaposition of claustrophobic interiors against the vast open plains of northern Europe and the fine-grained focus on characters faces are a  hommage to Sven Nykvist, the cinematographer for many of Bergman’s films and for the last act of Tarkovsky’s career (The Sacrifice, 1986). Indeed, Haneke’s cameraman Christian Berger studied Nykvist’s work in preparation for filming The White Ribbon.

While it could be argued that Tarkovsky and Bergman used film to explore psychological or spiritual themes, The White Ribbon is by contrast a tale of sociology and politics.

To take just one example, the severe Protestant pastors in Bergman’s works serve to lay bare the impossibility of belief in God, whereas in The White Ribbon, the pastor (alongside the village baron and the doctor) is portrayed as the agent of a sick society where absolute truths are used to dominate through fear.

Haneke has been quite explicit about the message of his film. He claims it as an exploration of the origins of terrorism in all its forms. Haneke’s village of Eichwald is haunted by repression, abuse and violence of all imaginable varieties. It’s matrix of sadism, deliberate and unintentional, in which children and adults alike are victims and participants.

Ostensibly The White Ribbon is a film about Germany. By setting this story in 1913 and 1914, the viewer knows that the children in this film are the generation who will, as adults, oversee the rise of Nazism twenty years later. Just as the feudalism of Eichwald dissolves in paroxysms of fear and recrimination, so the seeds are sown for new forms of control and repression that will follow.

Hannah Arendt invented the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe how easily violence and tyranny can become a commonplace among men. With The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke has provided us a sharply-focused (and, yes, beautiful) vision of Arendt’s words come to life.

When I found this on YouTube, I knew I had to post it… it’s the opening sequence of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. I’ve never seen a film quite like it before or since, and the first 7 minutes set the mood perfectly – mysterious, subtle and playful, drawing you into Alexander’s world.

Alexander is played by Bertil Guve, and Grandma Ekdahl by Gunn Wållgren (who was suffering terminal cancer throughout the filming). The music at the start is the 2nd movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44.

You’d have to be either intensely stupid or immensely ambitous to decide on impulse to rent and watch 5 hours of Ingmar Bergman, having never seen a Bergman film before in your life. But it looks like it’s going to rain all weekend. Work has drained you of the desire to worship at the Turnaround with Manuel Bundy at Rising Sun, or check out Senor Cesar at Galatos, or Isaac and Kelly K blowing at Khuja. (Hell, even Scribes of Ra and the united forces of Wellington and Auckland Batucada couldn’t get me out last Saturday night. I’m such a slacker). So. You rent Fanny and Alexander, and get blown away.

F&A is a moving and expansive film. Although set almost exclusively within the confines of two bourgeois families in Sweden in the early 20th Century, F&A is impressive in its sweep, conflating issues of power in marriage, family politics, faith, the nature of theatre, death, childhood and immorality into an epic that drew me in completely. Who cares that it takes 5 hours and two DVDs to get there?

Bergman’s experience in live theatre is evdient throughout in the timing and rhythm of the scenes, the balance of dialogue, and the deliberate placement (blocking?) of actors within the camera frame. This film contains depiction of some of the most complex emotion I’ve ever seen in cinema. (I would have to see some more of his films to confirm whether this is a Bergman trademark). Perhaps the best example is the laughable to-ing and fro-ing between the childrens’ uncle Carl and Helena, his wife from Munich. Their interactions swing within the space of seconds from physical revulsion to pathetic mutual fawning. Utterly extraordinary to watch two actors grapple with this incredibly difficult material, and make it convincing.

The children’s stepfather, the austere protestant Bishop Vergerus, dominates the action of the second half of the film. What motivates him to treat his new wife and stepchildren with such chilling and cruel indifference? Is it a firm conviction in the righteousness of his particular interpretation of Christianity? Does Vergerus truly act out of “love”, as he tells Alexander as he beats him and locks him in the attic? Is it a desire for power and order in his household? Is it some kind of sadistic psychosis? Is he genuinely in love with Emilie? I’m not sure if any of this is truly elaborated, nevertheless the portrayal of the Bishop by Jan Malmsjö.

Special mention must be made of the kids playing the titular roles of Fanny and Alexander. The character of Fanny remains something of a hollow shell, since most of the key action is viewed from Alexander’s perspective (Alexander operates in this film as an analog for Bergman himself.) But her apparent strength and impassivity in the face of death, imprisonment and abuse provides a foil to the often emotional Alexander. Here’s a ten year old who goes to pieces as he approaches his father on his deathbed, speaks to ghosts (no it’s not a European T6S) and is beaten by his stepfather for failing to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Apparently there’s a 5 disc F&A box set coming out in November, including the original cinematic release, the 5 hour edited-for-Swedish-TV version and the making-of doco Dokument Fanny och Alexander. Yoiks. I may have to clear the decks on my credit card.

I think I’ll have to rent some more Bergman sometime, and hope that it lives up to my assessment of F&A….