The White Ribbon

Some reviews from Wednesday at PIFF, my last day at the festival:

THE WHITE RIBBON (Michael Haneke, 2009)

This year’s Palme d’Or winner is indeed the masterpiece most are proclaiming, a quietly disturbing study of a small village on the eve of World War I. It is both consistent in theme with other works of director Haneke while also a departure of sorts. For the first time, Haneke’s story and screenwriting are as impressive as his directing. In fact, it is a very plot driven film, which includes the device of a first person narrator, who tells us from the opening that not everything we are about to see is likely to be true. We end up being shown much more than this narrator could possibly know, which brings up the question of who is telling us this tale. Is it this character and his imaginings, or is it Haneke? And even if it is Haneke himself, should that give us a firm hold of the truth? By the end of the plot, we can choose at least two if not more explanations as to what occurred in the town over the year leading up to the war. And we can try to connect everything we see to the history that would become, as the narrator suggests at the very opening. But none of this is given to us, and as a result this is a much subtler work than what Haneke is known for. It is also his most accessible piece thus far, and it is a very encouraging sign that Haneke can turn towards more conventional storytelling while remaining as probing as ever. The work this most evokes is the European director who had the most crossover with mainstream audiences, Ingmar Bergman, and I think it surpasses most of Bergman’s dramas in terms of social commentary and audience engagement. A must see.

DUST (Max Jacoby, 2009)

Not unlike mainstream cinema, the art cinema tends to have its own type of genres, and one of the most popular is the closed situation drama, derived from the theatrical chamber play and perfected by Ingmar Bergman. These films tend to have a few characters in a very isolated setting in which the characters are laid bare. DUST has a plot that fits this description: it is set in a future where there are few survivors. A pair of twins live alone until they one day find a stranger on the street. The plot flows predictably from this. Nothing about DUST works; it is easily the worst film I’ve seen at the festival, and one of the worst period. It is completely unconvincing in creating this world. It calls upon a very simple “Garden of Eden” style tale, but the style completely lacks expression and urgency, instead presenting this tale in long shots that lack any intensity. Even worse, the characters and acting are as flat and uninteresting as the filmmaking. Nothing even remotely redeeming here.

THE DUST OF TIME (Theo Angelopoulos, 2008)

A very dense, slow moving historical drama by Angelopoulos which mixes together a filmmaker on the eve of the 21st century with the past of his parents and their close friend. Fittingly, the end of the 20th century is Berlin, in which most of the drama of this century played out. Angelopoulos creates some very imaginative long take shots in which the past and present collide, and as a piece of fimmaking this is fine work. But as drama, it is very heavy-handed, and the self-reflexive use of the filmmaker seemed unnecessary and a too familiar modernist trope. The characters of the past are much more interesting than those of the present, although a viewer who did not live through this history will get lost. An admirable film, and a needed perspective from a director late in his career, continuing to question the past and the so-called “end of history” that the end of the Cold War was supposed to bring. Clearly Angelopoulos is now something of a relic of the cinematic past, much like his characters, but it is a point of view that is worth remembering.

View Pusan International Film Festival in a larger map

Related posts:

1. Wednesday’s Best Pics for PIFF For Wednesday at PIFF, I am planning on seeing three...
2. PIFF Day Four : In Review TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, 1976) So much has been written...
3. PIFF Day Three: In Review PERSECUTION (Patrice Chereau, 2009) The latest from director Chereau, a...
4. PIFF Day Two: In Review WHERE ARE YOU? (Kobayashi Masahiro, 2009) If one ever needed...
5. The Most Anticipated Screenings at the 2009 PIFF This year’s Pusan International Film Festival, still scheduled to go...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.