Page - 52 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

52 | Gerwin van der Pol www.jrfm.eu 2018 4/1 • Sigi’s flute is snatched by Ferdinand, the steward’s son. Sigi is thrown in the water but eventually saved from drowning by Ferdinand’s brother. As there are no obvious culprits and no legal process, no police able to solve the crimes nor absolute knowledge about the causes of the events, the film cannot be done justice unless every detail is mentioned. The smallest element might be the clue that allows the spectator to solve the crimes. The spectator is an attentive learner, hoping to find meaning. But every new piece of information in this film obscures its meaning. We have difficulty attun- ing what we see with what we hear and what we infer. For example, when we see children (Klara and the rest) ask how the doctor is doing, it is the narrator who says that in hindsight this was strange; not the fact that they were informa- tive and friendly, but that they were always present after the evil has happened. We come to understand that nothing is what it seems: being friendly works here as a cover-up of crimes. Another example: as the schoolteacher recounts that he finally had the op- portunity to visit Eva at her house – a long walk from the village – to ask her to marry him, we see a winter landscape and a man walking. In the next scene, we see Eva and the schoolteacher chatting in the living room, with Eva’s sis- ters and brothers as audience. Then the door opens, and in comes Eva’s father, who looks just like the man we saw walking outside. Was it the schoolteacher we saw walking, after which he would have entered Eva’s house and sat wait- ing for Eva’s father? Or was it Eva’s father we saw walking while Eva and the schoolteacher chatted, and he then entered the house? Typically for this film, no definitive answer is given. These descriptions help us classify the film. Although it is advertised as a Eu- ropean Art Film and shown in art-house cinemas, the film finds itself somewhere between classical and art film. Classical cinema is described by David Bordwell as a transparent style of narration with psychologically motivated characters and a clear causal chain of events within a logical space-time continuum.8 Art film is by nature the opposite of classical cinema and thrives on subjectivity, and the belief that concepts such as objectivity and truth are illusions.9 The White Ribbon with its clear, objective, almost distant images, its omnisci- ent narrator and causal chain of events presents itself as a classical film. Slowly the spectator comes to realise, although not consciously, that the film is an art film in disguise. The omniscient narrator leaves essential information out, and the causality that drives the chain of events is never shown nor explained. This defines The White Ribbon as an art film. 8 Bordwell 1985, 156–204. Although “classical” is often used to refer to the specific Hollywood era that ran from 1917 to 1960, mainstream cinema worldwide remains predominantly classical, albeit with some adaptations. 9 Bordwell 1985, 205–233.