The White Ribbon (2009)

AKA Das weiße Band (Kindergeschichte)

Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke

The memories of an unnamed elderly tailor form a parable from the distant year he worked as a village schoolteacher and met his fiancée Eva.

The setting is the fictitious Protestant village of Eichwald, Germany between July 1913 and August 1914, where the pastor, the doctor and the baron rule the roost over women, children and peasant farmers. The puritanical pastor leads confirmation classes and gives his pubescent children a guilty conscience over trivial offenses. He has them wear white ribbons as a reminder of the innocence and purity from which they have strayed. When his son confesses to impure touching, the pastor has the boy’s hands tied to the bed frame. The doctor, a widower, treats the village children kindly but sexually humiliates his housekeeper (the local midwife) and takes advantage of his teenage daughter at night. The baron, who is the lord of the manor, underwrites harvest festivities for the villagers, many of whom are the immigrant workers in his employ. He may summarily dismiss his twins' nanny Eva for no apparent reason yet defend the integrity of the farmer whose son has taken his revenge on the baron with the destruction of a field of cabbages.

Mysterious things happen. A wire is stretched between two trees causing the doctor a terrible fall from his horse. The farmer's wife dies at the sawmill when rotten floorboards give way; her grieving husband later hangs himself. The baron’s young son goes missing on the day of the harvest festival and is found the following morning in the sawmill, bound and thrashed with a cane. A barn at the manor burns down. After the steward's daughter has a violent dream about the midwife's handicapped son, the boy is attacked and almost blinded. The pastor finds his parakeet cruelly impaled after his daughter has opened the bird's cage with a letter opener in hand. The midwife commandeers a bicycle from the schoolteacher to go into town, claiming that she has evidence for the police given to her by her son. She is not seen again, and neither is her son. On the same day, the doctor's family vacates the premises, leaving his practice closed.

The schoolteacher's growing suspicions lead to a confrontation in the rectory, where he suggests to the pastor that his children have severely bullied the weaker in the village. Offended, the pastor immediately threatens him, warning that he will face disciplinary measures if he repeats his accusations again.

The film ends at the time of the declaration of war on Serbia by Austria–Hungary, with the conclusion in church on the day of a visit from the narrator's prospective father-in-law. Disquiet remains in the village but nothing has been discovered and no one accused. The narrator left Eichwald, never to return.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149362/

Hidden (2005)

AKA Caché

Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke

The quiet life of a Paris family is disturbed when they receive a series of surveillance tapes of their own residence from an anonymous source. Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) is the successful host of a French literary TV programme, living with his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche), a book publisher, and their school-age son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky). Unmarked videocassettes arrive on their doorstep, tapes that show extended observation of their home's exterior from a static street camera that is never noticed. At first passive and harmless, but later accompanied by crude, disturbing crayon drawings, the tapes lead to questions about Georges' early life that disrupt both his work and marriage. But because the tapes do not contain an open threat, the police refuse to help the family.

One videotape leads Georges to the modest HLM apartment of an Algerian man named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), whose parents worked for Georges' family when they were young. When his parents were killed in the Paris massacre of 1961, Majid remained with Georges and his parents, who intended to adopt Majid into their family. Georges confronts Majid about the tapes, but he denies involvement. However, the encounter intensifies his guilty flashbacks and recurring nightmares of a young Majid spitting blood, cutting off a rooster's head, and menacing him.

One day Pierrot does not come home from school and Anne cannot locate him. Georges and Anne suspect that Majid has kidnapped him. They go to the police, who accompany Georges to Majid's apartment. There they find Majid's son (Walid Afkir), and father and son both deny knowledge of the kidnapping. The police arrest them but they are released the next morning. On the same morning, Pierrot returns. He had spent the night at a friend's house without telling anyone. When Anne scolds Pierrot, he accuses her of committing adultery. In an earlier scene, we saw a distressed Anne permitting a few romantic caresses from Pierre, a family friend.

Georges returns to Majid's apartment at his invitation, and, after stating that he had nothing to do with the surveillance, Majid says he wanted Georges to be present for what follows: he kills himself by slashing his own throat. Now Anne insists Georges explain the whole story with Majid, and he tells her of the time they spent living in the same household so many years ago. He was six years old when he tricked Majid into cutting off the head of a rooster, then told his parents that Majid did this to scare him. This sufficiently disturbed his parents that they sent Majid to an orphanage.

Majid's son confronts Georges next. He denies involvement with the tapes, while Georges denies responsibility for his father's unhappiness and death. Majid's son says he only wanted to know how Georges felt about being the cause of his father's death, and Georges angrily leaves. Georges goes home, takes two sleeping pills, and goes to bed.

A man and woman arrive at Georges' childhood home in a 1960s-model car. They enter the house, returning momentarily with an Arab boy who protests, resists getting in the car, and runs away before he's finally caught and overcome by the man. He's forced into the back seat with the woman and the man drives the car away.

Under the credits, Pierrot and Majid's son meet in front of Pierrot's school, though their conversation cannot be heard. Majid's son leaves, as does Pierrot with a couple of his friends soon after.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/

Funny Games (1997)

Directed by
Michael Haneke

Writing credits
Michael Haneke

The film begins with a wealthy German family - Georg (Ulrich Mühe), his wife Anna (Susanne Lothar), his son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski), and their dog Rolfi - arriving at their Austrian lake house. They spot their next-door neighbor Fred (Christoph Bantzer) accompanied by two young Viennese men, Peter (Frank Giering) and Paul (Arno Frisch), one of whom Fred introduces as the son of a friend while paying a visit. The two men begin imposing themselves on the family's courtesy, and in the process destroy their phone and ruin all their eggs. Eventually a frustrated Anna demands that the men leave, asking Georg to eject them from the premises. Paul kills Rolfi, Peter breaks Georg's leg with the latter's golf club, and the two men take the family hostage, forcing it to participate in a number of sadistic games in order to stay alive.

Paul asks if the family wants to bet that they will be alive by 09:00 in the morning, though he doubts that they will win. Between playing their games, the two men keep up a constant patter, and Paul frequently ridicules Peter's weight and lack of intelligence. He describes a number of contradicting stories of Peter's past, though no definitive explanation is ever presented as to the men's origins or motives. When some of the family's other neighbors arrive for a visit, Anna passes the men off as friends until the visitors leave - much in the same way Fred did at the beginning of the film. Georgie eventually escapes to the house next door, but finds the family dead. He attempts to shoot Paul with a shotgun, but it is not loaded. Paul returns him to the house, along with the gun. After a few more games, Peter plays a counting-out game between the family members and shoots Georgie while Paul is in the kitchen. Both intruders leave.

Georg and Anna weep for their loss, but eventually resolve to survive. Anna flees the house while Georg, with a broken leg, tries to get help with the malfunctioning phone. Anna struggles to find help, but eventually Peter and Paul reappear, capture her, and return to the house. They kill Georg and take Anna out on the family's boat early the next morning. Around eight o'clock, Paul casually throws the bound Anna into the water to drown, thus winning their bet. They dock at the house of the neighbors that had previously visited the family, and request some eggs, thereby restarting their cycle of murder.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119167/