Michael Haneke at NYFF

Here is a photo I took of Haneke (sitting on the far left-hand side) during the Q&A that followed the October 7 screening of his new film The White Ribbon. Some of Haneke's responses surprised me, including his claim that a filmmaker should not impose a predetermined plan or schema on their work. It's hard for me to understand what this could mean coming from someone who, in the past, has made such formally rigorous works as 71 Fragments for a Chronology of Chance (which, as the title suggests, consists of 71 scenes, most in long takes) and Code Unknown (a series of precisely controlled sequence shots). The audience responded with great enthusiasm to his latest film – winner of the Palme d'or at Cannes in May – and this was not a big surprise considering that The White Ribbon is easily the most polished and classically structured (narratively-speaking) of all his films. Personally, I wouldn't have minded a bit more provocation.

Interesting technical aside: The White Ribbon was shot with color film stock and then developed in black-and-white. The result, according to Haneke, was not always to his liking, so they did some digital tinkering (with silhouettes, for example) in postproduction. (The effect of this, at times, is to make the film look – unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned – as though it were shot with a digital camera.)

S I-G