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The White Ribbon
Metascore
82 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 33 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 33
  3. Negative: 1 out of 33
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  1. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Peter Brunette
    100
    It's a superb cinematic work and an appropriately serious one, given its subject matter and its intentions.
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    The film is visually masterful. It's in black and white, of course.
  3. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    100
    What makes The White Ribbon a big movie, an important movie, is that Haneke's point extends beyond pre-Nazi Germany.
  4. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    100
    The ends remain loose in The White Ribbon.' But that lack of closure is thrilling. Haneke lays his movie and its mysteries at our feet, leaving us to ask, "What in tarnation?''
  5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    100
    A stark, contemplative and hauntingly brilliant film.
  6. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    100
    Shot in spectacular black-and-white by cinematographer Christian Berger, and marvelously acted by a first-rate German ensemble, The White Ribbon captures a mood of thickening tension and mounting violence.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    100
    Detailed yet oblique, leisurely but compelling, perfectly cast and irreproachably acted, the movie has a seductively novelistic texture complete with a less-than-omniscient narrator.
  8. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    100
    A kind of mashup of "Our Town" and "Village of the Damned," the film is both draining and enthralling.
  9. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    100
    Haneke's latest is essentially an inquiry into the roots of a certain kind of evil.
  10. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    90
    We don't go to Michael Haneke films for comfort, but to gaze through a glass darkly. That vision -- tense, provocative and unnerving -- is on full display in The White Ribbon, which could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career.
  11. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    90
    Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon nonetheless proves a difficult film to entirely embrace.
  12. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    89
    Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm.
  13. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    88
    This haunting film never pushes itself on you. It trusts you to suss out the horror that lies beneath the veneer of innocence. You'll be knocked for a loop.
  14. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    88
    Haneke's vision is gripping. The craftsmanship, classically shaped narrative and icy visual beauty cannot be denied.
  15. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    88
    The White Ribbon is one of the finest films that ever repelled me, a holiday in the abyss.
  16. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    As in all powerful films, the content unfolds onion-like, with each level being peeled back to show something fascinating beneath.
  17. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    88
    Haneke tells this tale a bit too patiently for my taste. But the metaphors are unmistakable, as is the power of the film's message.
  18. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    83
    The tension between the comely and comforting manner of the film and its undecided and beguiling content is, arguably, Haneke's signature touch.
  19. Empire
    Reviewed by: Damon Wise
    80
    A hard film to love, but a hypnotic meditation on all the elements -- gossip, religion, bullying -- that can turn a parish and country bad.
  20. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    80
    Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine.
  21. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    80
    The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.
  22. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    80
    A severe and eerily beautiful German-language drama.
  23. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    80
    There's no denying this is a coldly commanding tale in which Haneke's signature obsessions--bourgeois control, sexual repression, emotional cruelty, cathartic violence--simmer quietly as subtext before bursting into the open in the final reels.
  24. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    75
    Smarting like hell, the artist and his art are at it again. Consequently, like most of Michael Haneke's films, The White Ribbon is profoundly disturbing, impeccably shot, superbly cast, allegorically ambitious and, yet, slightly disappointing – just enough to make you wonder if that salt-in-the-wounds theory is as dogmatic as the dogma he likes to condemn.
  25. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    75
    The film is chilled by characters that never really come alive or generate any deep sympathy.
  26. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    70
    An unnerving but unsatisfying chronicle of a German village filled with hidden cruelty, set on the eve of World War I.
  27. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    67
    Shot in vivid black and white, the movie is like "Village of the Damned" directed by Ingmar Bergman, only without Bergman's intensity.
  28. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    Unlike "Caché" and "Code: Unknown," where Haneke's investigations into societal and spiritual despair resonated with poetic force, The White Ribbon doesn't resonate at all.
  29. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    An artful examination of a small town and small-mindedness and the potential for full-blown, large-scale evil. But it's strangely bloodless.
  30. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    60
    Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities.
  31. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    58
    It's an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a PhD. Or maybe an MA.
  32. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    50
    An artsy bore.
  33. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    30
    Chill to the core, Haneke presents human cruelty not to make us empathize with the victims or understand the oppressors but to rub our noses in the crimes of our species. He thinks he's held on to the subversive ideals of punk, but all I smell is skunk.
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User Reviews

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User Score
8.1 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 58 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
  1. kk10
    10
    an absolutely disturbing film and needs to be hailed as one of the best films of its decade. I've only watched two of Michael Haneke's films (the other being Cache) too realise that this man is a genius. it is a simple story, but to create that level of unease and uncertainty requires sheer craft. Great film.… Full Review »
  2. Sindri
    9
    Crystal clear film language - The inner tension is constrained and the expressions of opinion are pointed with quivering effect in Michael Haneke's tenth feature. In the foregoings of the first world war unexplainable incidents occurs in the north German village Eichwald, where most of the inhabitants work for the baron. The incidents who appear as some form of ritual punishment of random individuals disturbs the safety of the residents. This ominous and fictitious tale about a pietistic rural community being bewildered by fear and doubt after a string of incomprehensible events, is told through an aging teacher's retrospective voice-over. Are the incidents random? Are they warnings? Are they acts of revenge? Or is it perhaps so that the inhabitants are being punished? With a shred of humor and warmth which is rarely seen from the expressive film artist Michael Haneke and which is the main contrast to this films gravitating tone, a precise and sharp minded portrayal of the boomerang effect that arose as a result of the one-dimensional upbringing of children that was practiced in Germany in the beginning of the 1900th century is sketched out. With verbal and physical ways of punishment the parents inculcated sin and shame in their children, which mislead the children into the primitive entanglements of fear and stagnated their development. "The White Ribbon" opens with an accident that provokes a circulation of distressing events and leads towards the outburst of the first world war, the source of fascism, the second world war and Holocaust. The origins and the entity of violence has always been a favored motive in Hankes filmography, and with last years Palme'd Or winner the Austrian has concretisized his characteristic themes, nuanced his style and found a language that extends his expressions. Hanekes distinct though unforeseen filming and Monica Willis' abrupt editing transfers the characters suspiciousness to the viewer in this emotionally distant "Who-did-it"- crime drama, and with frequent use of the off-screen method and figurative descriptions, Haneke gives the viewer sensible impressions that underlines his aversion towards violence. This is Hanekes most aesthetic work, meticulously photographed by Christian Berger. The mood making black and white color is one of the films essential characters, the milieu depictions are credible reflection of the time period, the pace is discreet, the actors are rock solid and with this multi award winning co-production that was shoot in Germany, Michael Haneke and his collaborators has created an historical allegory that bears resemblance with Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander" (1982).… Full Review »
  3. weisberger
    6
    Beautifully filmed and acted and directed, yet ultimately unsatisfying. The story of a small German village told years later by its schoolteacher, who recounts a series of unsettling events in the months prior to WWI. The film centers primarily on the town's parson, the town's landowning baron,the town doctor, the schoolteacher and the children he teaches. Odd stuff happens and no one seems to know why. As the film slowly winds from one event to another we await resolution, but there is no satisfying moment of understanding or clarity, and all is left unsettled. The characters are so odd that the Marty Feldman character from Young Frankenstein would have fit right in and provided some needed comic relief.… Full Review »
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