Michael Haneke isn’t all that well know to American audiences, and its a shame as I would argue that he is the best director currently working in film. He manipulates the screen in a way few directors can, not by bending audiences to his will but by actually engaging them. That he uses themes and genres that are often considered mindless entertainment is even more impressive, and has lead to many people not really understanding his actual purpose.

When Haneke remade his film Funny Games, about a family whose house is overrun and terrorized by two sociopathic teens it was assumed that Haneke made the film because he hates violence and was preaching against violence in film. But Haneke has no issue with violence in films, for most of his films as disturbingly violent, but rather how violence is fetishized. He uses violence to engage the audience, or if need be, shake them out of their stupor. Which is why the true victim in Funny Games is the audience, as Haneke slowly shifts the events of the film from the screen directly into the auditorium. He didn’t want to make yet another slasher film where the audience giggles with glee at the fool onscreen, but rather drags the audience unwittingly into the terror they would typically dismiss and scoff at.

Which brings us to his latest film, The White Ribbon, which won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and has been receiving huge acclaim as being yet another masterpiece from a director who seems to churn them out with relative ease. It is a film about a small town in Germany in 1913. An authoritarian town, where the children are subjected to rigid rules and even harsher punishments. But something even more sinister might be occurring. And could the children possibly be behind it?

Official Site

Film: The White Ribbon

Director: Michael Haneke

Starring: Christian Friedel, Leonie Benesch, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaußner

Release Date: December 30, 2009 (limited)