Review: The White Ribbon

Review:

Rating-- 3 out of 5

In my personal opinion this was not a great movie but not a horrible movie either. I love foreign language films-- some of my favorite movies are ones in other languages. I find reading the subtitles the only way to do it if I do not understand the language because when they put another actor's voice over the original it just looks fake.

I know this means you have to do so much work and sometimes the movie is not as good as if you just spoke the original language. I believe this is one of those movies-- as much as I wanted to be invested in this movie I wasn't. This movie was nominated for two Oscars-- Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography. Both were well deserved (the movie was shot in black and white and was absolutely gorgeous). Every shot look like it was carefully done to look flawless.

My problem with the movie is I did not understand the point. A school teacher came to a town in Germany before WWII. So the Nazi movement was technically starting to overtake the country. But the town is run by corrupt people and people are afraid of them. Suddenly bad things start to happen to them that no one can explain.

It is very poetic in terms of looking at the movie in terms of what happened during WWII to the Nazis-- they treated people badly and they were overthrown. Exactly like in the movie-- the problem was we never find out who did anything and I didn't even have a guess.

The acting was well done in the movie but no one stood out as amazing-- except for possibly some of the children. The children actors and actresses were amazing because they simply were so young to make use of their skills.

I do recommend this movie (barely) but only watch it if you do not mind foreign language films with subtitles. Otherwise rent something else like Schindlers' List which has a similar tone and was shot in black and white too!!

*Sorry for not getting to Number 17 yet-- been watching so many movies lately and I am getting behind in reviewing them all. Hopefully once school starts I can catch back up!!