Just back from seeing The White Ribbon. Excellent, truly excellent. Very powerful and political, beautifully shot in monochrome which emphasises the horrors and traumas. I am too tired to write a fuller review but it is an absorbing film that deserves further analysis.
It is film that intertwines social class and gender, hierarchy of power dynamics with a veneer of respectability yet scratch the surface exposes the under belly of brutality, isolation, powerlessness, abuse and violence. It highlights the strict vicious patriarchal order of the family, women knowing their place while children are seen and not heard (’spare the rod spoil the child’). And the children are villains/victims, though it is not as simple and straightforward it is much more complex.
It is a study in early 20th century cruelty.
