Das weisse Band (The white ribbon) from Michael Haneke

I am very sorry for the Germans but a movie from Michael Haneke who wins the Palme d or in Cannes must have something to tell about National Socialism. And I guess this one is no exception but it is one of the best I ever saw.
First, I heard a long time ago about a Jewish writer who sat the theory that the Shoah could only have happened in the third Reich and nowhere else; even though Italy and Spain followed the fascism lines they didn t go so far. When that theory is not proved, this essay could be a kind of confirmation of it. Why civilized Europeans became suddenly Nazis?
Michael Haneke finds an explication in their childhood. He describes the daily life of normal kids from a little village in Germany and how they were traumatized constantly by too much discipline, religion, violence and abuse. The film finishes in 1914, when all those kids are around ten, so they would have been potential electors for the Fuhrer.
This is not the direct subject of the movie and it is where it is genius. For 144 minutes you do not get bored one minute because there is a kind of suspense, enigma to solve where everybody in the village is suspect and nobody find the real responsible of all the violence. There is no answer to it because the only guilty one is the society, everybody in the village who detains power abuses of it in a legal way and is a victim of it in an illegal way. Do not miss the key scene where the Baroness explains why she wants her children to grow up far away from the village, in Italy.
Mastery directed, mastery played and mastery put in decor! Germans will remember stories about their grand-parents and the rest of the world will be more careful about the education of their children, and the need to bring them humanity and individuality!
Bravo!