The White Ribbon
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 30, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
84
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Shot in spectacular black-and-white by cinematographer Christian Berger, and marvelously acted by a first-rate German ensemble, The White Ribbon captures a mood of thickening tension and mounting violence. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is visually masterful. It's in black and white, of course. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
There’s no denying this is a coldly commanding tale in which Haneke’s signature obsessions--bourgeois control, sexual repression, emotional cruelty, cathartic violence--simmer quietly as subtext before bursting into the open in the final reels. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
The ends remain loose in The White Ribbon.’ But that lack of closure is thrilling. Haneke lays his movie and its mysteries at our feet, leaving us to ask, “What in tarnation?’’ Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
What makes The White Ribbon a big movie, an important movie, is that Haneke's point extends beyond pre-Nazi Germany. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin Wilson
A stark, contemplative and hauntingly brilliant film. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
The White Ribbon is a ghost story without a ghost, a whodunnit without a denouement, a historical parable without a lesson, and for two and a half hours, this unforgettably disturbing and mysterious film leads its viewers alongside an abyss of anxiety. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterPeter Brunette
It's a superb cinematic work and an appropriately serious one, given its subject matter and its intentions. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
A kind of mashup of "Our Town" and "Village of the Damned," the film is both draining and enthralling. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Detailed yet oblique, leisurely but compelling, perfectly cast and irreproachably acted, the movie has a seductively novelistic texture complete with a less-than-omniscient narrator. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Haneke’s latest is essentially an inquiry into the roots of a certain kind of evil. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey
We don't go to Michael Haneke films for comfort, but to gaze through a glass darkly. That vision -- tense, provocative and unnerving -- is on full display in The White Ribbon, which could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A severe and eerily beautiful German-language drama. Read full review
90
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon nonetheless proves a difficult film to entirely embrace. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Haneke (Caché) has created a morality tale that concludes with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand: one more example of a solitary act of violence that unleashes a cataclysm. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Haneke’s vision is gripping. The craftsmanship, classically shaped narrative and icy visual beauty cannot be denied. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
As in all powerful films, the content unfolds onion-like, with each level being peeled back to show something fascinating beneath. Read full review
88
Orlando SentinelRoger Moore
Haneke tells this tale a bit too patiently for my taste. But the metaphors are unmistakable, as is the power of the film’s message. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
This haunting film never pushes itself on you. It trusts you to suss out the horror that lies beneath the veneer of innocence. You'll be knocked for a loop. Read full review
88
New York PostKyle Smith
The White Ribbon is one of the finest films that ever repelled me, a holiday in the abyss. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The tension between the comely and comforting manner of the film and its undecided and beguiling content is, arguably, Haneke’s signature touch. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
Slow, stark and sometimes surreptitiously beautiful, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon is as cold and clinical an examination of evil as you could imagine. Read full review
80
EmpireDamon Wise
A hard film to love, but a hypnotic meditation on all the elements -- gossip, religion, bullying -- that can turn a parish and country bad. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Smarting like hell, the artist and his art are at it again. Consequently, like most of Michael Haneke's films, The White Ribbon is profoundly disturbing, impeccably shot, superbly cast, allegorically ambitious and, yet, slightly disappointing – just enough to make you wonder if that salt-in-the-wounds theory is as dogmatic as the dogma he likes to condemn. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
The film is chilled by characters that never really come alive or generate any deep sympathy. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
An unnerving but unsatisfying chronicle of a German village filled with hidden cruelty, set on the eve of World War I. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Shot in vivid black and white, the movie is like "Village of the Damned" directed by Ingmar Bergman, only without Bergman's intensity. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
An artful examination of a small town and small-mindedness and the potential for full-blown, large-scale evil. But it's strangely bloodless. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Unlike "Caché" and "Code: Unknown," where Haneke's investigations into societal and spiritual despair resonated with poetic force, The White Ribbon doesn't resonate at all. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Haneke's superb cast provide beautifully measured hints at the disconnect between the ribbon's symbolism and the entire town's unspoken atrocities. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie with a PhD. Or maybe an MA. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
An artsy bore. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Chill to the core, Haneke presents human cruelty not to make us empathize with the victims or understand the oppressors but to rub our noses in the crimes of our species. He thinks he’s held on to the subversive ideals of punk, but all I smell is skunk. Read full review
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