Pre-war trauma: Haneke's The White Ribbon

Abstract

The surgical rigor of Haneke's The White Ribbon lays bare the underlying brutality of family life in a German village, microcosm of a social order whose strictures and class resentments fester on the eve of WWI. Punishment, abuse, and humiliation tighten a mysterious web of spite and reprisal among the local children, with national history waiting ominously in the wings. © 2010 by the Regents of the University of California.