Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
James Martin, S.J.February 11, 2010

Tim Reidy, our online editor, is also an inveterate moviegoer and savvy critic.  Here's his take on "The White Ribbon," as part of our online Culture section.  The critically acclaimed film, which has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is a mediation on guilt, sin and evil in Germany--but not during the period that you might think.  Here's Reidy's lede:

Can a film be an exercise in theodicy? Of course few films wrestle with the question of evil in ways that are genuinely satisfying. The Hollywood imperative to portray villains as perverted and inhuman leaves little room for psychological exploration. And the obligation to hunt down wrongdoers by film’s end often gives the false impression that evil is easily contained.

David Fincher’s “Zodiac” is one film that successfully delves into the mysteries of evil without offering easy consolation at the end. (The Zodiac killer, after all, is never caught.) “The White Ribbon,” the new film from writer/director Michael Haneke, is another. But whereas Fincher’s work takes place in 1970s San Francisco, Haneke sets his story in a small German village on the eve of World War I. And he is less interested in the evil in one man’s soul than an evil that can engulf a nation.

Read the rest here.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024
Easter will not be postponed this year. It will not wait until the war is over. It is precisely now, in our darkest hour, that resurrection finds us.
Stephanie SaldañaMarch 28, 2024