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White Ribbon
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Universal acclaim
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 20 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Crime | Drama | Mystery
Written by: Michael Haneke
Directed by: Michael Haneke
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 30, 2009
Running Time: 144 minutes, B/W
Origin: Austria | Germany | France | Italy
Language(s): German | Italian | Polish | Latin
Summary
RATING: R for some disturbing content involving violence and sexuality
Starring Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur, Theo Trebs, and Michael Schenk
A village in Protestant northern Germany. 1913-1914. On the eve of World War I. The story of the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families: the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, the tenant farmers. Strange accidents occur and gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Who is behind it all? The village schoolteacher observes, investigates and little by little discovers the incredible truth. Are we being asked to consider whether these events heralded something that would explode years later with the rise of Nazi Germany? Did these events contain the germs of the tragedies that followed? (Sony Classics)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The Hollywood Reporter Peter Brunette
It's a superb cinematic work and an appropriately serious one, given its subject matter and its intentions.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
A kind of mashup of "Our Town" and "Village of the Damned," the film is both draining and enthralling.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Detailed yet oblique, leisurely but compelling, perfectly cast and irreproachably acted, the movie has a seductively novelistic texture complete with a less-than-omniscient narrator.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Haneke’s latest is essentially an inquiry into the roots of a certain kind of evil.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Shot in spectacular black-and-white by cinematographer Christian Berger, and marvelously acted by a first-rate German ensemble, The White Ribbon captures a mood of thickening tension and mounting violence.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The film is visually masterful. It's in black and white, of course.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The ends remain loose in The White Ribbon.’ But that lack of closure is thrilling. Haneke lays his movie and its mysteries at our feet, leaving us to ask, “What in tarnation?’’
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
What makes The White Ribbon a big movie, an important movie, is that Haneke's point extends beyond pre-Nazi Germany.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Calvin Wilson
A stark, contemplative and hauntingly brilliant film.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey
We don't go to Michael Haneke films for comfort, but to gaze through a glass darkly. That vision -- tense, provocative and unnerving -- is on full display in The White Ribbon, which could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon nonetheless proves a difficult film to entirely embrace.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.
Read Full Review >Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
Haneke tells this tale a bit too patiently for my taste. But the metaphors are unmistakable, as is the power of the film’s message.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
As in all powerful films, the content unfolds onion-like, with each level being peeled back to show something fascinating beneath.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Haneke’s vision is gripping. The craftsmanship, classically shaped narrative and icy visual beauty cannot be denied.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
The White Ribbon is one of the finest films that ever repelled me, a holiday in the abyss.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
This haunting film never pushes itself on you. It trusts you to suss out the horror that lies beneath the veneer of innocence. You'll be knocked for a loop.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The tension between the comely and comforting manner of the film and its undecided and beguiling content is, arguably, Haneke’s signature touch.
Read Full Review >Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz
Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
There’s no denying this is a coldly commanding tale in which Haneke’s signature obsessions--bourgeois control, sexual repression, emotional cruelty, cathartic violence--simmer quietly as subtext before bursting into the open in the final reels.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf
The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.
Read Full Review >Empire Damon Wise
A hard film to love, but a hypnotic meditation on all the elements -- gossip, religion, bullying -- that can turn a parish and country bad.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
A severe and eerily beautiful German-language drama.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Smarting like hell, the artist and his art are at it again. Consequently, like most of Michael Haneke's films, The White Ribbon is profoundly disturbing, impeccably shot, superbly cast, allegorically ambitious and, yet, slightly disappointing – just enough to make you wonder if that salt-in-the-wounds theory is as dogmatic as the dogma he likes to condemn.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
An unnerving but unsatisfying chronicle of a German village filled with hidden cruelty, set on the eve of World War I.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Shot in vivid black and white, the movie is like "Village of the Damned" directed by Ingmar Bergman, only without Bergman's intensity.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
An artful examination of a small town and small-mindedness and the potential for full-blown, large-scale evil. But it's strangely bloodless.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Unlike "Caché" and "Code: Unknown," where Haneke's investigations into societal and spiritual despair resonated with poetic force, The White Ribbon doesn't resonate at all.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a PhD. Or maybe an MA.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Chill to the core, Haneke presents human cruelty not to make us empathize with the victims or understand the oppressors but to rub our noses in the crimes of our species. He thinks he’s held on to the subversive ideals of punk, but all I smell is skunk.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Andrew gave it an8:
It's unfortunate that the director appears to intend this as some sort of explanation of the roots of National Socialism. That's too facile. Instead, it's a wonderful examination of human nature and tyranny. And it's a terrific reminder of how terrible living conditions were for Westerners less than a century ago. Don't ever let anyone tell you that rural life was idyllic back then. I enjoyed all 2-1/2 hours of it, though I needed to watch about four hours of "Wonderpets" videos afterward to lift my spirits. Grim, if gripping, stuff. Submit to it.
Tom D gave it a10:
Amazing movie. Should be nominated for Best Picture. The movie is powerful and intense. The cinematography was perfect. Overall one of the best films of the year.
Smooth Jacobs gave it a9:
Stunning film from relentless provocateur Michael Haneke. The premise is scintillating, and it's slow-burn method of denying the audience any explicit truth is remarkable. One of the best films I've seen in a while.
BLAIR D gave it a9:
stunning, original movie. I am still thinking about it which is more than i can say about many of the big Holliwood movies I have seen lately.
Unicorn Man gave it a10:
Haneke has proven, once again, that he is one of the most challenging directors around. I have never seen anything remotely similar to the White Ribbon, it is a film that only skims the surface of the material presented to us. As it is up to the audience, for the most part, to figure out the on-goings in this not so humble village.
Michael B. gave it a5:
Beautifully photographed and very well-acted, "The White Ribbon", Haneke's latest film, was simply too cold and remote for my taste. Despite some of the most beautiful B&W cinematography you'll ever see, the film comes across like half-baked Bergman. Surprised that "The White Ribbon" won the Palme d'Or at Cannes over "Un Prophete", which to me is a vastly superior film. Haneke fans won't be disappointed, though everyone else might find that "The White Ribbon" overstays its welcome.
