Das Weisse Band (Michael Haneke, 2009)

Let's be charitable to veteran Austrian psychodrama merchant Haneke for his decision to sell out in the style of, say, George Sluizer with The Vanishing, as he remade his thoroughly unsettling Funny Games for Hollywood, dutifully acceding to the studio strictures and draining out all traces of unconventionality and interest. We see now he clearly needed the money for the greater good, just in choosing to screen 7,000 children for The White Ribbon. And a creepy bunch the selected ones are too.
We open in a Northern German village in 1913, and the initial tone, repressed and monochrome, suggests an environment somewhere between Fanny and Alexander and Heimat. But this is Haneke, of course, and even if it takes a while, a darker undercurrent will out. And it's of course man's inhumanity to man, as a series of grisly incidents divide the community and bring out the rot at its core.
It would be a step too far to draw great parallels between this development and the rise of fascism, and to his credit Haneke doesn't hammer home the point. This, however, brings a concomitant problem: the black and white tones are in danger of fading to grey as no similarly dramatically strong theme replaces the political metaphor. Well executed, then, and sincere, but in the end a little flat.

6/10