The White Ribbon (Das Weiße Band: Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte) (2009)

White Ribbon is Sweet Land or Babette's Feast meets The Army of Shadows. It is a stark but beautiful film with child actors that are flawless gems set amidst the rank stonewall that is their isolated Austrian village's adult society -- and what an adulterated society it is esp. owing to its feudalistic baron and the repressive disciplines of the minister. (The film's title comes from the white ribbon the latter publicly ordains his children to wear as a sign of the purity they both lack and require -- but he doesn't know half of the children's sins.) Do his ministrations amount to authoritarianism or Calvinism gone awry? Do they engender an entrenched and passive-aggressive subversion against authority? White Ribbon frames its coroner's real-time study of a town's morality in black-and-white and examines every development with a vibrant, microscopic exactitude (that those who prefer action to intellect will unfortunately consider to be numbingly glacial). White Ribbon slowly unravels a mystery that will confound many a crime connoisseur because the clues are supremely subtle. Furthermore, the film ends on an inconclusive tangent just before the start of World War I because the director's aim is not to provide a resolution but to paint an open-ended story that elucidates how Aryan (or any) citizens could allow their Fatherland to become a totalitarian state. How evil is tolerated and ultimately nurtured in the core of an adult or a child -- individually as well as corporately -- is not an easy process to pin down or portray. However, if you watch carefully and follow the story closely, I think you will find White Ribbon is as detailed, riveting, beautiful, and fearsome a narrative as there is on the subject. Don't miss it if you enjoy movies that really make you think and re-evaluate what you know. 5 stars.