The sins of the fathers

Yesterday I saw Das Weisse Band , Le Ruban Blanc, which got La Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. I usually don't like Haneke's films for I think that, since Funny Games, he has just made films for the shock-value, to hurt the audience, to punch them in the face with the unbearable violence showed on screen, as if the film and the actors were just a tool used to cause a reaction. I don't mind violence and shocking scenes in movies as long as they mean something, and make sense story-wise, even if what it means is that some time violence is meaningless and just happens in the most cruel, uggly and gratuitous way, but Haneke always made me think that he didn't care much about his work, or at least cared less about it than about the uneasiness it caused. I'm sure it did it with the best intentions, to educate the viewers, just like the parents showed in Das Weisse Band.  

So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.

However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).

In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.

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