Children Of The Wars

They say it takes a village to raise a child. In the Austrian film The White Ribbon, it takes children to ruin a village. A series of unfortunate events in fictional, rural, pre-World War I Eichwald, Germany, are not only imposed on the village youth, but attributed to them. A...

By S. Anne Durham

January 28, 2010

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. In the Austrian film The White Ribbon, it takes children to ruin a village. A series of unfortunate events in fictional, rural, pre-World War I Eichwald, Germany, are not only imposed on the village youth, but attributed to them. A hidden wire causes the town doctor's horse to be crippled and the doctor is hospitalized; a boy is found tied upside-down in a barn, beaten; and a Down syndrome child is blinded. More and worse acts follow. But the film is about more than evil children; it's about the birth of a specific kind of evil. The movie implies that a childhood of such cruelty could lend itself to future years of systematic violence and hatred. The audience sees how philosophically, these children could grow up to populate the Nazi party and inflict their terrorism on a larger victim pool: Holocaust victims. The White Ribbon screens at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday, and 2 and 4:30 p.m. Sunday at Magnolia at the Modern, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St. Tickets are $8.50. Call 817-738-9215 or visit themodern.org.
Fri., Feb. 19, 6 & 8:30 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 20, 5 p.m.; Sun., Feb. 21, 2 & 4:30 p.m., 2010

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