Acting is top notch by the whole cast, especially children's faces beam just like in Bergman films. The symmetry in the shots and the tidiness of the houses, even of those belonging to the poor farmers hint at the discipline and rigor Germans are well known for. If adults do not face up the truth, however this truth might be against their convictions, rise up and take charge, then who will? And according to whose morality? Isn't fascism with racism, in short Nazism, misdirected popular anger and an easy response to deep injustices within a society ? Haneke observes mostly psychological, educational and religious roots of Nazism while leaving economic aspects mostly in the background. Social justice is a stranger to town, yet villagers are entrenched in apathy. The Baron employs half of the village in his farm, yet almost no one seems to be against feudalism, nor rise up against the accidents that happen in the workplace. As might be expected, love in this town is restrained and uneasy, while incest and affairs are overlooked by villagers. Certainly this environment will make it easy for them to not only accept but seek ruthless authority later in life. The priest feeds children with guilt and sexual repression instead of love and punishes even their most innocent mistakes. The children's natural path to maturity is blocked by strict religious morality, cruelly enforced by the priest, thereby inhibiting their personal observation of the world around them. We get to know each one of them and a few other villagers along with children of this village, calm on the surface but deeply tormented by an undercurrent of brutality, envy, malice and apathy. The doctor, the priest, the baron and the teacher who also narrates the film form the elite of the village. The culprit or the culprits behind the crime wave will not be too easy to find.
The white buffalo band stars series#
During the course of the year before WWI, a series of tragic and suspicious looking incidents take place in a small farming village somewhere in black and white Germany.
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