Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" is Now Playing in Limited Release in the USA (2009/Cannes&Toronto)
The White Ribbon
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke
Cast ... Characters:
Christian Friedel ... The School Teacher
Ernst Jacobi ... Voice of The School Teacher
Leonie Benesch ... Eva
Ulrich Tukur ... The Baron
Ursina Lardi ... The Baronin
Fion Mutert ... Sigi
Michael Kranz ... The Home Teacher
Burghart Klaußner ... The Pastor
[B&W/Das weiße Band/(2009)Austria-Germany-France-Italy/SPC/Rated R] - (2 hrs 24 min)
Synopsis (from IMDbPRo.com): The action takes place in a German village in the fifteen months that precede World War I. Among the people who live there are a baron, who is a large landowner and a local moral authority, his estate manager, a pastor with his many children, a widowed doctor and a schoolteacher who is thinking of getting married. It is he who, many years later, tells this story.
Though everything seems to be quiet and orderly, as it always has been, with the seasons following each other, and good harvests following bad ones, suddenly some strange events start to occur. If some appear to be quite ordinary, even accidental -- a farmer's wife dies falling through rotten floorboards -- others are inexplicable and may well be malevolent.
The village is worried, and at a loss as to what to do. The baron whose wife will soon leave the village to go to live in Italy makes a speech in the church, but it has no effect. The pastor, a particularly strict character, had since the beginning of the events, tied a white ribbon to the arm of his two eldest children, a boy and a girl: it is to remind them permanently of their duties to purity. We learn that the Archduke of Austria has been murdered by a Serbian in Sarajevo. An international crisis is brewing. The worries and the dramas of the village are soon lost in the strange excitement of the coming war.
"The White Ribbon" is Germany's official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010.
USA MOVIE website-http://www.sonyclassics.com/thewhiteribbon/?hs308=email
German-MOVIE website-http://dasweisseband.x-verleih.de/
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NOW PLAYING in select theaters!!!
... check local listings for a theater near you ...
APRIL 23, 2010
Paramount Center (Peekskill,NY)
Westhampton Beach Performing Arts (Westhampton Beach,NY)
Avon Cinema (Providence,RI)
Wilton Town Hall Theater (Wilton,NH)
Majestic Theater (Gettysburg,PA)
Ambler Theater (Ambler,PA)
Civic's 19th Street Theatre (Allentown,PA)
Satellite Beach Cinemas (Satellite Beach,FL)
Capri Theatre (Montgomery,AL)
Little Art Theatre (Yellow Springs,OH)
Peoria Theater (Peoria,IL)
Salina Art Center Cinemas (Salina,KS)
Zinema 2 (Duluth,MN)
HELD OVER:
Quad Cinema (New York,NY)
The Fleur Cinema and Cafe (Des Moines,IA)
ART Mission and Theater (Binghamton,NY)
Lake Twin Cinema (Lake Oswego,OR)
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UPCOMING screening dates/venues:Unconfirmed venues:
TBA
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Writer-Director Michael Haneke (Born in Germany in 1942)
The White Ribbon (2009)
Funny Games (2007/USA version)
CACHE (Hidden / 2005)
Time of the Wolf (Temps du loup, Le / 2003)
The Piano Teacher (2001)
Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys (2000)
Schloß, Das (1997)
Funny Games (1997)
Lumière and Company (1996 documentary) - (segment "Michael Haneke/Vienne")
71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (1994)
Rebellion, Die (1993 TV movie)
Benny's Video (1992)
Nachruf für einen Mörder (1991 TV movie)
Siebente Kontinent, Der (1989)
Fraulein (1986 TV movie)
Wer war Edgar Allan? (1984 TV movie)
Variation (1983 TV movie)
Lemminge, Teil 1 Arkadien (1979 TV movie)
Lemminge, Teil 2 Verletzungen (1979 TV movie)
Drei Wege zum See (1976 TV movie)
Sperrmüll (1976 TV movie)
After Liverpool (1974 TV movie)
Reviewed films in BOLD - All reviews by Gary Cabana
[ARCHIVE Review/2006 USA release]-Michael Haneke's CACHE (HIDDEN)
CACHE (HIDDEN)
Director Michael Haneke's most accessible work to date will still confound fans old and new with his trademark ambiguous ending (that he refuses to comment on in public)!
Written & directed by Michael Haneke
Lead characters ... Cast
Georges Laurent ... Daniel Auteuil
Anne Laurent ... Juliette Binoche
3-1/2 stars (out of 4) [(2005)France-Austria-Germany-Italy/Sony Pictures Classics/Rated R] - (1 hr. 57 min.)
Review:
With films like "Time of the Wolf" and "The Piano Teacher" under his belt, director Michael Haneke has nothing to prove. But like many veteran European directors he is curious about hidden technology and what part these technical advances play in our daily lives.
Film opens with a static shot of a neighborhood with apparently nothing going on though the audience is treated to the voices of a man and woman (actors Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche) commenting about something. Suddenly the entire screen is thrown into rewind and what the audience thought it was watching was actually a surveillance tape that a married couple (Auteuil & Binoche) has received anonymously.
The majority of the plotline revolves around the husband's search for the person who is sending the tapes and the tragedy that develops when an episode from his childhood resonates to the present.
Not for all tastes, but if you have to see one Haneke film in your lifetime this will be the easiest to undergo. And anyone who's seen his past films will tell you how much he likes to test the audience and challenge their assumptions.
Heck, they're releasing this in December for Oscar consideration, so you know it's watchable. I say check it out (but leave your paranoid schizophrenic friends at home, this film may provide too much confirmation of their neurotic suspicions).
'nuff said!
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Festival synopsis: As he has shown with The Piano Teacher, Code Unknown, and Funny Games (among other chilling creations) the Paris-based Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is a peerless artist-provocateur who has never met a situation of bourgeois stasis he didn’t want to explode—quietly, precisely, and with devastating effect.
Caché, though, may be his best and most meaningful detonation yet—an absolutely, excitingly unnerving study in middle-class disequilibrium brought on by realistic urban paranoia and inflamed by a latent racism in all its ugliness.
Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche are brilliantly cast as Georges and Anne, a sophisticated couple tormented by the arrival of anonymous surveillance videos of their everyday lives. And the more convinced Georges becomes that he knows the sender, the more breathtaking is Auteuil’s wisely daring performance. Caché digs deep and hits a nerve worth inflaming.