TheWhiteRibbon Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm in Savannah, Georgia to spend a week as a guest blogger for the Savannah Film Festival, an eight-day fest hosted in the historic Southern town by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). [Read my entries in the "Voices from the Fest" section on the festival website.] As the town prepares to kick off the 12th annual festivities with the Iraq film, or rather post-Iraq film, The Messenger, I'm wondering how SFF's growing success might reflect or even influence the rise of film festivals that similarly fall somewhere in between the biggies (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice) and the little guys.

For starters, a brief look at SFF's line-up and star-studded guest list. The festival begins today, October 31, with The Messenger, a Sundance entry that has Oscar possibilities but more likely will make a run at the Indie Spirit Awards. Stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster will be in attendance. (I will be attempting to run into them at the local Starbucks or wherever it is that Hollywood actors hang out when they visit other cities.) Another Oscar hopeful, the Emily Blunt-starring period biopic The Young Victoria, is screening the following day.

And then there are the almost certain Oscar pictures: George Clooney in The Men Who Stare At Goats; Lone Scherfig's An Education; Michael Haneke's Cannes winner The White Ribbon; Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with star Jeremy Renner in attendance; and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, which will bring both director Lee Daniels and his star Gabourey Sidibe to town.

Read on for more about this year's Savannah Film Festival.

You may know Michael Haneke as the fiery, audience-disdaining provocateur of Funny Games – the subtitled original or the American shot-by-shot remake, no matter. And if so, you may understandably want to steer clear of further efforts by the filmmaker. After all, most sane people don't go to the movies to spend two hours getting yelled at by a crazy Austrian. Even Caché, which I actually thought was quite good, could feel awfully haughty -- like it was somehow above having a plot that's comprehensible on a literal level, without having to stretch for abstract explanations and metaphors.

The White Ribbon, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, has been described – and, in some circles, condemned – as a "departure" for Haneke. That's true. Though the film's dogged austerity and formal precision will be familiar to cinephiles, The White Ribbon features an honest-to-goodness story, one that works on its own terms and as a typically cynical allegory. Armed with a plot, Haneke's talents and style prove richly rewarding. This is one of the year's best films: a tense, foreboding creeper with devastating insight into human nature and why ordinary people sometimes do (or acquiesce to) some very bad things.

The Cannes Film Festival drew to a close on Sunday evening with the presentation of the Palme d'Or to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Filmed in black and white, it's "a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914," says Dave Calhoun at Time Out London. Haneke "solidly resists answering the 'what's it all about?' question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you're seeing." David Hudson at IFC's The Daily has gathered the reviews, some of which endeavor to answer the "What's it all about?" question.

As is often the case, the nine-member jury passed out awards to as many films as possible. The Grand Prix (or runner-up) went to Jacques Audiard's A Prophet; Special Jury Prize to Alain Resnais for Wild Grass; and Best Director to Brillante Mendoza for Kinatay. Christoph Walz won Best Actor for his performance in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress for Lars von Trier's controversial Antichrist. The complete list of winners can be easily viewed at indieWIRE. The festival's official site has a great set of award ceremony photos.

Here's a roundup of Cannes films we can expect to see in coming months. Corrections and updates will be appreciated.

CANNES TITLES WITH U.S. DISTRIBUTION

• Antichrist (IFC)
• A Prophet (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Bright Star (Bob Berney and Bill Polhad)
• Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (Sony Pictures Classics)
• Drag Me to Hell (Universal)
• Humpday (Magnolia Pictures)
• I Love You Phillip Morris (Consolidated Pictures Group)
• Inglourious Basterds (Weinstein Co.)
• Looking For Eric (IFC)
• Precious (Lionsgate)
• Taking Woodstock (Focus Features)
• Tales From the Golden Age (IFC)
• Thirst (Focus Features)
• Up (Disney Pixar)
• The White Ribbon (Sony Pictures Classics)

You can access all our Cannes coverage via this handy link.

Thursday seems to have been a quiet day in the south of France, an inevitable, hazy hangover after the four-day frenzy that began with Antichrist on Sunday and leading to the star-fueled red carpet screening of Inglourious Basterds on Wednesday night. "And so the late festival drag set in," writes Eric Kohn at The Wrap. "Fatigue from lengthy days in dark rooms and harsh sunlight generally starts to wear down Cannes attendees after a while, especially once the finish line comes into focus."

At a press conference today, Sam Raimi likened his horror flick Drag Me to Hell to "playing with a jazz quartet" (per James Rocchi at AMC News). Questioned about his latest film, The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke told the assembled journalists: "It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass" (per Reuters).

Key Screenings. Competition: Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (strange events in 1913 at a rural school in Germany), Xavier Giannoli's In the Beginning (small-time crook builds a highway). Un Certain Regard: Henitor Dhalia's A Deriva (teen girl's sexual awakening in the 1980s), Ciro Guerra's The Wind Journeys (retired itinerant accordion player takes a trip). Directors' Fortnight: Sebastian Lelio's Navidad (teen couple in crisis meet a teen girl), Denis Cote's Carcasses (eccentric used auto parts collector). Special Screening: My Neighbor, My Killer (Rwanda genocide reconciliations).

After the jump: Distribution deals for the critically-praised, criminally-minded Cannes Competition title A Prophet and environmentally-friendly Sundance closer Earth Days.

Sony Pictures Classics didn't waste any time hob-nobbin' on la Croisette or catching a 3D showing of Up before buying shelling out some francs for new movies on the opening day of Cannes. SPC snatched up Michael Haneke's latest discomfort-fest The White Ribbon (which is also in competition for the Palme d'Or), as well as the dramatic romance Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. According to IMDb, The White Ribbon's plot is as follows:

"Strange events happen at a rural school in the north of Germany during the year 1913, which seem to be ritual punishment. Does this affect the school system, and how does the school have an influence on fascism?" Creepy!

The official Cannes site has more information:

"A village in Protestant northern Germany. 1913-1914. On the eve of World War I. The story of the children and teenagers of a choir run by the village schoolteacher, and their families: the baron, the steward, the pastor, the doctor, the midwife, the tenant farmers. Strange accidents occur and gradually take on the character of a punishment ritual. Who is behind it all?"

Haneke most recently remade his own movie Funny Games in English just in case us dumb Americans didn't fully grasp our own preoccupation with violence and our own culpability in violence just by watching it. Previous films include The Piano Teacher, an adaptation of the book by Elfriede Jelinek starring Isabelle Huppert as a piano teacher who likes to self-harm her hoo-hoo, among other things, and Benny's Video, starring one of the actors from the original version of Funny Games as a teen who films himself shooting a girl with a pig-slaughtering gun.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky will probably be the better date movie of the two, but hey, I'm not here to judge what you see on your dates.