The White Ribbon (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Or it should - for Best Foreign Film. The best way to describe it is to think of Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" updated to a small German Protestant town immediately before World War I. The film's is shot in austere black and white. One image might be the raw intense power of two candles burning...this will change...to a mob burning down a barn later in the movie. It is all very unsettling and that is the raw power of the film.
Ostensibly the film is a story of accidents, deaths, suicides happening without explanation in this insulated religious village. Some can be accounted for by revenge and despair but others appear to have no explanation at all except that a cancer of distrust, hatred, repression, and (even)meanness is descending on the town. As we know (historically) this is the core group of people - who twenty years later - will be turning to National Socialism (Hitler) for answers. Yes, twenty years later the same persons will switch from white ribbons (totalitarian symbols of innocence) to black ribbons (totalitarian symbols of loyalty). Sociology and psychology still disappoint in providing reasons why humans act so cruelly to one another. The director Michael Haneke seizes upon that reality. He makes the film deliberately ambiguous as we watch a society disintegrate because the bonds of spiritual love and tolerance were never there in the first place.
This is a thinking person's film that seems to be directed more to the subconscious than the conscious. The return to black and white cinematography is integral and "very" effective. That technique allowed the film to move in waves of moods - in the way that Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" does.

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The First World War - The Complete Series Review

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(More customer reviews)This series is to the First World War what the classic World at War series was to the Second World War. It is shorter but excellent nonetheless.
Although the First World War gets less attention than its successor, it was really the watershed event of the 20th century. This conflict shaped the world that came after to this day. It was the catalyst for the rise of soviet communism in Russia, whose unravelling less than a decade and a half ago continues to affect worldwide diplomacy and economics. Germany's defeat provided the opportunity for fascism and Hitler to come to power there, causing the Second World War and its greater destruction. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and the diplomatic and political morass that followed was the precursor for the reconstitution of Israel and eventually brought the Middle East into center stage today.
This series is based upon the books and encyclopedic knowledge of Professor Hugh Strachan. It examines every aspect of the war, from its causes to the conduct of the war on and behind the front lines to its aftermath. In doing so, it covers the diplomatic, political, military and social aspects, each of which played a role in shaping what happened and why. It does not just present the summary facts but goes in depth in its explanations. For example, instead of simply depicting the spring 1918 German offensive on the western front, it gives detail about how they accomplished it, the attitudes of the troops on each side and the thought processes of the respective high commands.
Not having seen Kenneth Branagh's World War 1 in Color, this reviewer is incompetant to compare the two. However, because this series is thorough and draws upon the professor who may well be THE authority on this era of history, it is likely the best presentation on the subject available today.

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This definitive ten-part series offers insight and analysis to provide a coherent and strategic military narrative of the worldwide conflict that changed history.

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