MovieChat Forums > Das weiße Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2010) Discussion > What most veiwers of this movie are not ...

What most veiwers of this movie are not getting...

posted 12 years ago by belladonna99
31 replies | jump to latest

This is not a Whodunit. It is not a mystery. It's not about the Nazis (though the German film maker obviously pins his narrative tightly into one historical perspective, the social aspect could have been anywhere. More on this later.)

This movie is an examination of guilty versus innocent actions and how the meaning of both changes within one generation.

Most of the adult men in this movie are guilty of terrible abuse, seen from the modern perspective. Though the men are monsters (to our thinking) they are innocent in terms of their own society and culture. They are absolute authorities tendering their flock, following an ancient prescription for benevolent dictatorship or condemning godhead over their subjects.

The minister might be a terrible father, in our view, but he loves his children and raises them according to the mores of the time. In the end, he fears them...or at least Klara...but still defends them jealously to the school master even against the evidence of his own senses. I love the complexity of this man, how real it seems, how he is following exactly the dogma of Christ's relationship to The Church in both punishment and protection. The minister stands out as a very sad figure, completely hamstrung by a dying cosmology into creating little monsters. He is innocent. He knows no better. The minister, in fact, is the most childlike figure of this whole movie and will destroy anything (the teacher potentially) to keep "his heart pure".

Notice that the worst thing the minister can imagine his son Martin doing is pleasuring himself sexually (when the son is clearly guilty of worse.) That shows the Minster's facile, childlike, understanding of morality. This also allows his son to consider his greater crimes less important and consequential than self stimulation. The Minister creates a monster morality in the son through his own purity obsession.

The Doctor's treatment of women, including his daughter, is also based on a male authoritarian model that wouldn't be subject to any discipline or censure at the time. Even if the Doctor is repulsive, he innocently believes that he is within the rights of his societal role. He doesn't shirk when the midwife mentions his crime of incest. He doesn't even respond with a "so?" or shrug. It's a given. It is his power. The midwife looks like a hysterical idiot for even mentioning it. Women were to submit to men and all of mens' desires. One has only to read Freud's private notebooks (which he refused to publish) on the overwhelming number of his female patients who were abused by their fathers as young girls at the turn of the century. Freud couldn't even bring himself to write up clinical studies of these cases because it broke into such a secret societal taboo that a man's home is his castle.

Given this perspective, who cares if the Midwife voices emotional truths. The man's authority and power trumps any truth. The Midwife cannot even bare to hurt the doctor, on any substantial level, while he is basically telling her to die already.

The Steward, like most of the other men, is producing too many children. Almost every home in this movie is bursting with children who cannot sustain the life of their fathers. Farms cannot be cut up into 6 different pieces to support them all. What are all these children going to do? There is no future for them. They can barely eat as is (mentioned in the film by several fathers.) How do we deal with this rampant fecundity? The Steward's older sons aren't as innocent as their father. They don't have a Lord that provides. They have "knowing" that their lives become more unsustainable with every child. Their morality of knowledge is completely different from their father's morality of trusting authority and being fruitful (and horny as with Eva.)

I find it very interesting that all the adult men in this movie are not given names (except Felder?) but identified by their professions. This fits with German language assumption where 99% of professions are identified with the masculine gender (with a feminine variant for women that is often not used.) On the other hand, all the children are represented by their names. The children are expected to grow and assume the names of professions as well...except not this generation. There are too many of them. There are not enough professions for them, and therefore, not enough authority to go around.

It's the older generation who is desperately holding onto the White Ribbon of purity and innocence. The two transitional figures are the School Master and the Midwife whose accusations or suspicions are squashed by the ruling powers - in fact, the Rulers can't even sustain the ideas of the School Master and Midwife. The Rulers will violently protect their own innocence and authority. They will not be informed of their own sins or the monstrosities of their own children.

Lastly, there is the Kids. One can say they are not guilty either. The world is pushing them into a totally new role they are little prepared to handle given the dominance and abuses of their parents. The Kids KNOW. Klara is eating the apple of knowledge. They aren't willing to suffer any longer to protect their fathers' innocent world view. They want participation.

How is the world going to deal with the huge number of children who can inherit no professions or authority? Start a war that kills a lot of them? What happens to the remainder when they reach 35 with all that blood and destruction behind them?

Did this lead the Kids to commit acts of violence? Maybe. The fact that the Kids could have done all or any of those acts, and hold even one secret, is enough to upset societal balance. That's all that matters here. Also, these are events remembered by an old man long after the fact. He is often mis-remembering details. The ominous world change on the horizon informs his memory. his horror of what the world became might have influenced his vision of these children.

So, why did the Kids choose these victims? All my answers are mere suppositions and don't really matter for the narrative of this movie. As stated before, only one criminal act by one child is necessary for the narrative definitions of this film. All the rest could be accidents or even done by adults.

The injuring of the doctor - most probably done by his daughter with the other children cleaning up the evidence. Anni was hoping to escape abuse in the form of her male authority. She has a casual relationship to death, do to her father's profession and her own mother's dying. That it just "happens" makes it easier for her to remain "pure" while committing this crime.

Sigi - this is the most puzzling since Sigi could likely identify his assailants but doesn't. Why not? Were they the Steward's children anyway and did Sigi hide the fact? He might still have missed them, liked them, wanted to be their friend. The envy of the flute playing Sigi is very significant, given that Sigi has a flute tutor, Sigi has money for a penny flute, Sigi is an aristocrat. Since Karl Marx consolidated the envy of money by the working classes (which was NOT Marx's intention), the tensions between Sigi and The Steward's children was becoming politicized Fact by 1913.

Felder's wife - clearly an accident though in our modern age we would see the culpability of the employer. Felder represents the old way. Who can we blame? The whole system and do away with our livelihood? Well, yes, says the younger generation - a novel idea in 1913.

The maiming of Karli - this is the most diabolical and ideological of the crimes. I'm not sure who did it, and it really doesn't matter. Probably Klara or another of the ministers kids. BUT, the significance of it is enormous. Karli's eyes are damaged, his ability to see. The Kids hate his innocence and his unsullied world view. They are NOT innocent, given their fathers. Karli has no abusive father, only a devoted mother who protects him from abuse. Karli is unable to be "knowing" given his defect. The other kids have to eliminate him. He does not figure into their new ethos of eliminating the untainted, anyone who doesn't fit into their need for change, anyone who was protected from the rage of authority. When The Kids become the authority, no one weak or innocent will receive any protection. The Kids were not protected. Why should anyone else be?

Finally, Piepsie - Klara's little murder. Little? She was killing the captive bird, not raised for the wild. She killed the only thing her father protected from his or god's ultimate authority and from Nature itself. She killed it on a cross, too, in a way (look how she left it for her father.) What a statement! The only beings one can keep pure, like Jesus, are those raised in a cage (of righteous male authority?)

What I conclude from this movie is that every society breeds it's own monsters. Sure, this was specifically (and beautifully) about 1913 Germany in a small village. But despite our best intentions, the best rules of our societies, the monsters are growing under our noses and slipping through the cracks, abusing and twisting our rules to create the poison that kills it.

As the world in 1913 goes, the children outnumber adults. Their roles are unsustainable. Their elders expect utter compliance by a group that way overpopulates the environment. The destruction of the old system is imminent. What the Kids will create to replace it will be ugly, if only for the fact that their parents will ignore all the warning signals or blatant portents for fear of losing their own grasp on reality.

Yes, I see a big red cautionary tale here. We should all be very careful we don't let ideals and dogma interfere with reality. Future generations will use that habit to create abominations, even in a tiny village.

[–] ulf-635-523367 10 years ago

This is wonderful to read. It's one of a few distinctive and clever comments I have ever come across on the IMDB. I'll keep a lookout for the rest of your words.
Ulf K

[–] Nemesis42 10 years ago

Great Essay, thanks for your dedication.

[–] Jill-McBain 9 years ago

What you don't seem to get is the connection of all the evils you listed (and btw, sexually abusing your daughter was considered evil even then. Why do you think Freud dismissed his theory about that and instead invented hysteria??) with the final scene: The beginning of WW1.

There are two other things that you don't seem to know: This is also a tale about Ingmar Bergman and his childhood.

And this is a tale about black pedagogy. It was a book advising parents on how to raise their children. It was very popular in Germany. Ingmar Bergman and many Germans (does Prussian discipline ring a bell?) were raised by this book. And what is special about Germans and their history? Holocaust. Haneke draws a direct connection between the black pedagogy (have you read Alice Miller's analysis on Hitler's childhood? The beating that he had to take from his father?) and the Nazi crimes.

These seem to be the things that you don't get. This story belongs to protestant Germany. The morale is that when people learn to endure such cruelty at such an early age and cruelty becomes so much a part of their every day life they will commit such autracious crimes. Even countries with such a culture as Germany.

[–] gss2 9 years ago

I agree with a lot of what you have said. Considering the opening sentences about the troubles that Germany would face in the years to come, it is always important to remember that these children are the very people who became the Nazis and their supporters.

However, I do disagree with the idea that old school, strict Protestant culture spawned Fascism. In the Era of Fascism, the large majority of Protestant countries remained monarchist or (for the time) relatively liberal democracies. The old Protestant Nobility, especially those with ties to the German military hierarchy, remained largely monarchist throughout Hitler's reign.

Fascism actually came largely out of Catholic areas and countries, and it was created to preserve something of the existing social order by harnessing nationalist feeling in order to protect the country from Communist revolution. With the possible exception of France which had global interests and something of a democratic tradition, the Catholic countries generalły lagged behind the Protestant ones in terms of industrialization, global trade, and political development. The economic and social structures (were not always but tended to be) much more rigid, resulting in a greater gap between rich and poor. This fueled the popular appeal of communism, which resulted in a strong movement against it. Austria had a large socialist movement after the First World War, then it got Dolfuss. Hungary had a particularly nasty communist government under Bela Kuhn, afterward it got the authoritarian (if not exactly fascist) Miklos Horthy and later the very fascist Arrow Cross party. Spain teetered on the brink of radical socialist revolution, and in came Franco and the Falangists. Mussolini was created out of economic troubles resulting from a war that failed to gain much for Italy. He coopted the left and created a way for the aristocracy to join him in common cause with the suffering of the Italian people. Hitler fed on anti-communist resentment from the failed revolutions of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Eisner. His initial stomping ground was the very Catholic and nationalistic province of Bavaria, where Eisner had failed to establish a communist state and where Archbishop Eugenio Paccioli was nearly assasinated by communist radicals. As Pope during World War II, he would be reluctant to oppose fascism largely (it is widely speculated) for this experience.

Fascism would never have existed without Communism, it's unthinkable to imagine otherwise. Again, this film shows where vindictive and resentful social attitudes existed before the wars in a society that had problems. I think that these feelings exist in a lot of societies for different reasons. However, the starving people of Weimar Germany, continuous Communist threats both foreign and domestic, the collapse of the German middle class, and the occupation of the Rhineland by French and Belgian forces in 1923 to enforce ruinous, impossible reparation payments did much to make people and angry, resentful, fearful, and vindictive.

[–] preIe 8 years ago

I really liked this movie and I like your analysis. IMO this movie is more about WW2 than it is about WW1. All these kids will grow up to be adults in Nazi Germany.

The kids dealt with the priest, who represents religion (also in context of Nazi Germany). He didn't agree with their wrongdoings, but he also didn't intervene. He even defended them. He is guilty by turning a blind eye, I think the dead bird represented the death of the principles of the church. You can also understand it as a warning by the kids/nazis toward him/the church.

The baron and his wife, maybe they represent the jews, jewish artistocrats? They are rich and the Germans are envy of their stuff (flute), they even managed to force some of them out of the country. Remember the wife said she is tired of all the terror etc. On a funny sidenote: the Italian said it's ok for the boy to play with the kids / nazis after the mother told him to stay away from them.

The way the kids / nazis handled the retarded boy probably doesn't need much interpretation.

I don't know, maybe it's just coincidence, but the way they snoop around houses and the 'children of the corn' vibe they gave off they felt like a menace with a strong leader and the others cowardly following behind her. Maybe it's just 3:15 am and I'm a bit tired.