5th
Why?
Aside from ill-advised prequels, few films try to examine the roots of evil, the circumstances that lead to the horrible atrocities filling middle school textbooks. Director Michael Haneke has never shied away from a challenge.
While The White Ribbon may not have the same jolt of Caché or the in-your-face ideological antics of Funny Games, it offers a more chilling and textured look at what leads people en masse to participate in evil acts. The repression of WWI rural Germany - socioeconomic, class, religious - boils a small town until anger starts seeping out. Seemingly senseless violence overcomes the town, undermining the econo-political power of the Baron and the self-righteousness of the cross.
Haneke offers no answers, but not in a Van Sant Elephant way. Instead, The White Ribbon ignores the supposedly more important questions of plot to offer insight into the real question: how does inhuman brutality become socially acceptable and supported? When madness like that sets in, reason and science has no recourse but to flee.
In the last shot, the whole town (minus the narrator) sits down in its little chapel staring right at us - the people who have allowed and implicitly participated in these horrible acts. But then, the preacher sits down in the audience too, amongst the people. Are we now leading the service/film? Or is there no God left to preach about?
