Michael Haneke makes non-traditional thrillers. He loves to play mental mind games with his audience. He doesn't always give clear answers in the end. He hints at resolutions without spelling things out. It makes his work haunting and memorable, because he engages the audience more and drives us to return to piece things together again and again. His films are for adults who love the challenge of making up their own minds about what a film means or exactly what has transpired. In the end, different audience members could have wildly different theories. That's what makes it so exciting.
Set in Northern Germany right before the start of World War I, the story takes place in a farming village. The town doctor (Rainer Bock, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) is badly injured when his horse trips over a hidden wire placed across the path into his property. The police come to investigate asking his daughter Anna (Roxane Duran) if she saw anything, but she saw nothing. She was looking after her younger brother Rudi (Miljan Chatelain). The midwife (Susanne Lothar, THE READER), who works with the doctor, and has helped out at his home since the death of his wife, saw nothing as well.
Then another tragedy strikes. An accident at the mill kills a farmer's wife. The farmer (Branko Samarovski, TIME OF THE WOLF) is distraught and worried about how he will support his family with one less salary. His son Max (Sebastian Hulk) blames the mill owner, the Baron (Ulrich Tukur, THE LIVES OF OTHERS), who holds great power over all the villagers because he is the only real employer in town. Soon after the Baron's son Sigi (Fion Mutert) is fond hung by his feet and beaten. The Baroness (Ursina Lardi) is appalled and fires her children's caretakers.
This includes the sixteen-year-old nanny Eva (Leone Benesch). She has been developing a sweet romance with the schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), who is the narrator of the story, as well as its moral compass. He and Eva are good people and the evil that surrounds their village affects them in surprising ways.
The Pastor (Burghart Klaussner, THE READER) is a taskmaster over his children. He is toughest on his oldest children Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) and Martin (Leonard Proxauf). He makes them wear white ribbons to remind them of their purity. When Martin is caught doing things natural for a boy his age, his father's punishment is extreme. The town steward (Josef Bierbichler, WOYZECK) is paranoid of crossing the Baron. His sons George and Ferdinand (Enno and Theo Trebs) are bullies and his daughter Erna (Janina Fautz) claims to have dreams that predict the future.
The beatings and deaths expose ugly truths about the town. Secrets are exposed that some would do about anything to keep secret. The crimes seem to stem from retributions. In some cases the motivations seem obvious, but the more clues that are revealed the more complex the tapestry becomes. The schoolteacher will get caught in the middle and tries to discover the culprits. What he discovers will touch all aspects of power in the community.
Haneke has a specific agenda with the setting of his film. The children in the film will be the adults that became followers of German fascism. His crime mystery attempts to delve into the psychological background of why people would look the other way and follow mass murderers. Why good people would remain quiet. He deals with a vicious, ugly side of humanity. Parenting becomes an important issue. He exposes how power and the lack of power twist people. Privilege provides the privilege to be blind. Hopelessness creates desperateness. Desperateness is the birthplace of all sorts of bad things.
The story doesn't resolve itself perfectly, but the ending couldn't be more perfect. There are a lot of crimes that go unsolved. People have their ideas about what really happened. You'll have your ideas about what happened too. The schoolteacher has his ideas as well. But not all evils can be solved.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
