After 'The White Ribbon'

I went to see The White Ribbon today. Went to the early showing, really early, 11.40am. Only time it was on down at the Ritzy.

It was about the right time to see a film like that. Going to the early showing gives you the rest of the day to get over it.

The film, lauded at Cannes, follows a cycle of violence and cruelty in a village in Germany about a hundred years ago. It shows the village leaders (a baron, a priest) using their authority mixed with Christian morality as a weapon with which to control and subdue the villagers. This unbending intolerance is repeated down the lines of authority, from the strongest to the weakest.

One scene of perfectly wrought unpleasantness follows another for two claustrophobic hours.

At the end of the film, the last image fades very slowly to black, and the credits roll in silence. No-one in the audience speaks. It is hard to know what to say. Everyone is agog, traumatised, hushed.

The audience pushes out of the auditorium, heads down mostly. It's not nice to look into someone else's eyes after that. You can't help thinking you might see something you had not previously noticed. Something unpleasant.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the News of the World and watching football as a sedative against the dark, Ibsen-like vision of Michael Haneke.