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"  The artfully composed shots in Michael Haneke&amp;#039;s The White Ribbon\u2014playing now at Film Forum in New York City\u2013coupled with strong dialogue seek to ensure that the film and its message will remain with you in a meaningful way well after you&amp;#039;ve returned home. The movie begins with the town doctor taking a terrible spill off his horse. This would seem innocent enough if it weren&amp;#039;t for a tripwire right outside his home, a foreshadowing that this sleepy little town will soon find itself in the midst of a nightmare, where the `accidents&amp;#039; soon turn into plain premeditated acts of malevolence. The result is a hate-mongered cycle of blame that rips through the town, pitting neighbor against neighbor in an effort to uncover the perpetrator.  The deeper into the lives and motivations of the characters the audience goes, the more distasteful each of them become. Ruled by anger, hypocrisy, envy and pure hatred, the film almost becomes a sociological study on the effects of negativity passed from one person to the next, from generation to generation. Interestingly, while the adults go about engaging each other with their irresponsible hate-speak, no one pays attention to the gang of children who bear witness and are never far behind when tragedy strikes.    Captured in gorgeous black and white, Haneke lights the film as if to leave no room for gray areas. The character is either good or evil, and as a viewer your mind is made up for you quite quickly. From the brightness of the town blanketed in virgin snow (the town itself is good and bears no blame) to the shadowy, dimly lit room where the doctor commits his sins, the darkness appropriately attaches itself to characters and places, always recalling the evil in the who and the what.  At its core it&amp;#039;s a film about how easily innocence can be perverted and quickly hate and anger can spread like rampant diseases. It&amp;#039;s definitely not a date movie, or one for those who like lighter fare, but, nonetheless, it is dazzlingly visual and thought-provoking cinema. \u2014Laura Geiser Photo: Films du Losange, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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