The Preacher Man predicts that come this time next week you’ll have had enough of hearing about The White Ribbon. In the week when Roland Emmerich destroys the world (again) and Michael Caine returns to the mean streets of London in Harry Brown, the Palme d’Or winning film from Michael Haneke is going to dominate radio and tv discussions, newspaper and magazine features, not to mention all film-related pub, restaurant and dinner party debates from here to the year end. Even here at Screenrush we’ve bowed to pressure and among our usual offering of wonderful photo features and interviews on the upcoming mega-blockbusters we’re offering our lucky users the chance to win a box-set of the complete film works of this Austrian provoc-auteur!

And so, it may be assumed that this is a film that everyone is going to see. Unfortunately not.

Haneke’s last film, the French-language thriller Hidden caused a sensation amongst critics in the UK and grossed over a millions quids at the box-office, astonishing for a challenging release, let alone a foreign language one, but sadly it seems that The White Ribbon might not replicate this phenomenal success.

The reasons cinema goers, like yourselves, might avoid it is simple: in critics’ attempts to paint this film as something truly important they will invariably focus on its bleakest aspects. While most reviewers - who, at Cannes, hedged their bets, called it a masterwork but steered clear of resounding five star ratings – will refresh their original verdicts, give it full marks and embrace the film’s humanism as something rather new to Haneke’s work, they will simultaneously renew their original disclaimers that this film is not for everyone, that it’s heavy, slow, complicated and unnecessarily long.

Some of which might, and quite understandably, edge you towards the warm and reassuring misery of your local retail-park multiplex where you can collapse into a two-and-a-half-hour embrace with the none-more-soothing John Cusack as he saves the world from ancient Mayan prophecy and mahoosive waves.

But the Preacher Man is compelled to step in your way. He knows that come the day of the The White Ribbon’s release you’ll have probably have heard everything you think you can handle about Haneke’s self-reflexive scattering of knowing nods, taunting nudges, and winking stubbornness to answer the questions that his tightly structured narratives tend to pose; the importance of the setting for this complex study of a feudal Lutheran before the outbreak of the Great War; how the provocative German subtitle (Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte – A German Children’s Story) has been intentionally dropped from the English and French language releases because while Haneke didn’t mind that German people knowing that the film was about a specifically German problem, he didn’t want the rest of the world to assume it wasn’t about their problems too; and how the film’s stark austerity hardly makes its 142 minutes playing time pass in a Bourne-esque blur.

What you might not have heard or been told is that you should, without hesitation, equivocation, criticism, grumble, argument or carp:

GO. SEE. THIS. FILM.

Now, you might not know The Preacher Man - after all his name is disguised and his face is a mystery - and so, he knows you’re thinking, why should you listen to him?  The answer of course is that you shouldn’t.

His is not a closely argued critique or a vaguely enthusiastic thumbs up, and so it is not enough for him to reassure you that as the twenty-first century rolls inexorably on, even as mankind marks twenty-years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and forty years since it first stepped on the moon, it is not enough for them to simply remember their little successes but rather it’s important to commemorate, investigate, dramatise and analyse our greatest failings. Instead he hopes that you’re piqued by his assurances that this is not just the finest example of film-making skill, ability and prowess you’ll see this year but also in any other year, probably your lifetime; his guarantee that you’ll be gripped by its hinting yet haunting suggestions of the moral decay of the 20^th century; he promises you’ll be humoured and charmed as much as repulsed and terrified; he’s certain that you’ll be endlessly intrigued by the clues to the story’s essential mysteries.

But he also wants to remind you that you’re all – yes all of you - terrible, morally vacuous, aesthetically vapid and that if you’re very very lucky, if you pay your tenner and simply sit and watch this magisterial work of art it might just change the way you look at and see not only the world as-it-is around you, but also the world as-it’s-becoming, as you live in it.

And so, the Preacher Man entreats all you poor, desperate, lifeless, X-Factor watching drones:

GO. SEE. THIS. FILM.

NOW.

When the Preacher Man heard on Sunday that Roman Polanski had finally been arrested on a thirty-year-old warrant and was facing imminent extradition to the United States for sentencing on a conviction of ‘unlawful sex with a minor’ the Preacher Man, as any all-round know-it-all would have, shrugged.

He knew the little Frenchman had been on the run for thirty years and was sure that one day the long hand of the law would pluck him from his life of luxury in Paris and deliver him safely back into the loving arms of the US Justice system.

Here was a subject that took the Preacher Man far away from his normal preaching-grounds of film and film-makers and deep into a decades-old legal case (for those who need a summary: The child testified before a grand jury but expressed a preference not to go through the circus of a trial by jury so, in a plea-bargain negotiated between Polanski’s lawyers, the DA and the presiding judge, the director admitted to the lesser charge mentioned above before being sent for a psychiatric evaluation. After 42 days in jail, while awaiting sentencing, Polanski heard that the judge was set to bow to public opinion and renege on his promise of a light sentence so promptly quit LA and the United States forever!).

But then the Preacher Man got wind of a growing outrage among conspiracy theorists, senior members of the French government, and the international community of film-makers and cinéastes.

The conspiracy minded paranoiacs were first to come forward with many a zany theory such as the one that claimed the Oscar-winning director’s arrest was a political act designed to soothe US/Swiss relations following their banking system’s refusal to divulge details of secret accounts requested by the US Treasury (now breathe!); almost simultaneously at least two senior members of the French government (Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Culture Minister Fréderic Mitterrand) suggested that the arrest was both not very ‘nice’ (the former) and ‘didn’t make any sense’ (the latter).

Meanwhile, the Sociéte des Auteur et Compositeurs Dramatiques also known as the SACD (alternatively known as the most self-righteous yet morally vapid orgainisation ever to issue a demand) issued a statement demanding Polanski’s ‘immediate release’ which has now been signed by a who’s who of cinematic luminaries ranging from Woody Allen and Pedro Almodovar to Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders.

This wave of outrage at Roman Polanski’s ‘unfair’ arrest has been both encouraged and disputed by various strands of the media, and while many of the conspiracy theories have already been either disproved or proved unlikely (eg. Swiss bank UBS AG has already been funnelling previously secret information to the US tax authorities for some time), and the crowd-pleasing politicos behind the stupidly bland and blindly ignorant statements as to the fugitive’s niceness and artistic merit have been widely dismissed as nitwits (the French government has just put out an official release stating that Mitterrand spoke without engaging his senses and that it considers Polanski neither above nor below due process of the legal negotiations now going on between Switzerland, the United States, France and Poland - of which Polanski also claims citizenship), that still leaves a troubling and rapidly growing list of film-makers and cinematic organisations who continue to demand the Swiss government expedite Polanski’s release.

The Preacher Man is a careful soul. He likes to read a contract carefully before signing it, He likes to understand an issue before speaking on it, and He will pedantically parse a petition before he puts his name to it.

It is in this spirit that he has closely examined the facile claptrap put out by the SACD and has a couple of simple questions to ask any or (given the opportunity) ALL of its signatories.

1)

In the preamble to your demand for Mr Polanski’s immediate release you state that the director "is a French citizen, a renown (sic) and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in conseqeunces and will take away his freedom". Exactly what are you contesting with this?

a) That he didn’t admit to ‘unlawful sex with a minor’ and then jump bail before sentencing?

b) That convicted rapists (that’s what the crime makes him) shouldn’t face justice?

c) That renowned French citizens and international artists are somehow above the law?

2)

Do you really want to use Switzerland’s neutrality and the ‘extraterritorial nature of an international film festival’ as justification for giving moral and judicial amnesty to an elderly man who, when he was 44 years of age, lured a thirteen-year-old girl into his company and, according to her testimony before a Grand Jury that has never - to the best of the Preacher Man’s knowledge - been contested by either Polanski or his lawyers, filled her with champagne and quaaludes (a barbiturate-like seditive) before kissing her, performing oral sex on her and, despite her protestations, inserting his penis in her vagina and anus?

So Erika Abrams, Fatih Akin, Stephane Allagnon, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Gianni Amelio, Wess Anderson, Roger Andrieux, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Alexandre Arcady, Fanny Ardant, Asia Argento, Darren Aronofsky, Olivier Assayas, Alexander Astruc, Gabriel Auer, Alexandre Babel, Jean-François Balmer, Luc Barnier, Christophe Barratier, Xavier Beauvois, Liria Begeja, Gilles Behat, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Marco Bellochio, Monica Bellucci, Véra Belmont, Djamel Bennecib, Alain Berliner, Pascal Berney, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Lucien Blacher, Catherine Boissière, Thierry Boscheron, Freddy Bossy, Patrick Bouchitey, Cédric Bouchoucha, Paul Boujenah, Katia Boutin, Jacques Bral, Patrick Braoudé, Guila Braoudé, Anne Burki, André Buytaers, Christian Carion, Henning Carlsen, Jean-michel Carre, Lionel Cassan, Mathieu Celary, Teco Celio, Christophe Champclaux, Patrice Chéreau, Brigitte Chesneau, Catherine Chouchan, Elie Chouraqui, Souleymane Cissé, Jean- Pierre Clech, Henri Codenie, Robert Cohen, Alain Corneau, Jérôme Cornuau, Guy Courtecuisse, Miguel Courtois, Morgan Crestel, Dominique Crevecoeur, Alfonso Cuaron, Frédéric Damien, Sophie Danon, Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Hervé de Luze, Benoît Delmas, Jonathan Demme, Dante Desarthe, Romain Desbiens, Thomas Desjonquères, Alexandre Desplat, Rosalinde et Michel Deville, Guillaume D'Ham, Christelle Didier, Kathrin DiPaola, Ariel Dorfman, Georges Dybman, Jacques Fansten, Joël Farges, Gianluca Farinelli, Etienne Faure, Michel Ferry, Jean Teddy Filippe, Martine Fitoussi, Scott Foundas, Stephen Frears, Thierry Frémaux, Sam Gabarski, René Gainville, Matteo Garone, Tony Gatlif, Catherine Gaudin-Montalto, Costa Gavras, Jean-Marc Ghanassia, Terry Gilliam, Christian Gion, Stéphane Gizard, Christophe Goumand, Marc Guidoni, Dimitri Haulet, Buck Henry, David Heyman, Laurent Heynemann, Dominique Hollier, Isabelle Hontebeyrie, Frédéric Horiszny, Robert Hossein, Jean-Loup Hubert, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Gilles Jacob, Just Jaeckin, Anne Jeandet, Alain Jessua, Arthur Joffé, Pierre Jolivet, Kent Jones, Paola Jullian, Roger Kahane, Nelly Kaplan, Wong Kar Waï, Ladislas Kijno, Richard Klebinder, Harmony Korinne, Jan Kounen, Diane Kurys, Emir Kusturica, Jean Labadie, John Landis, Claude Lanzmann, David Lanzmann, André Larquié, Françoise Lassale, Carole Laure, Christine Laurent-Blixen, Emilien Lazaron, Vinciane Lecocq, Patrice Leconte, Claude Lelouch, Gérard Lenne, Pierre et Renée Lhomme, Marceline Loridan-Ivens, David Lynch, Michael Mann, François Margolin, Jean-Pierre Marois, Tonie Marshall, Mario Martone, Christine Mathis, Nicolas Mauvernay, Christopher, Spencer et Claire Mc Andrew, Allison Michel, Radu Mihaileanu, Jean-Louis Milesi, Claude Miller, Jean-Marc Modeste , Mario Monicelli, Jeanne Moreau, Christian Mvogo Mbarga, Juliette Nicolas-Donnard, Sandra Nicolier, Michel Ocelot, Eric Pape, Abner Pastoll, Alexander Payne, Richard Pena (Directeur Festival de NY) , Olivier Père, Suzana Peric, Jacques Perrin, Thomas Pibarot, Anne Pigeon Bormans, Michele Placido, Sabrina Poidevin, Agnès Catherine Poirier, Harry Prenger, Gilbert Primet, Philippe Radault, Tristan Rain, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Raphael Rebibo, Jo Reymen, Laurence Reymond, Yasmina Reza, Christiane Rhein, Jacques Richard, Avital Ronell, Laurence Roulet, Marc Saffar, Gabriela Salazar Scherman, Walter Salles, Jean-Paul Salomé, Jean-Frédéric Samie, Marc Sandberg, Jerry Schatzberg, Julian Schnabel, Barbet Schroeder, Pierre Schumacher, Ettore Scola, Luis Gustavo Sconza Zaratin Soares, Martin Scorsese, Frank Segier, Guy Seligmann, Julien Seri, Pierre Silvant, Charlotte Silvera, Abderrahmane Sissako, Paolo Sorrentino, Roch Stephanik, Guillaume Stirn, Jean-Marc Surcin, Tilda Swinton, Jean-Charles Tacchella, Radovan Tadic, Danis Tanovic, Bertrand Tavernier, André Techiné, Cécile Telerman, Alain Terzian, Valentine Theret, Pascal Thomas, Giuseppe Tornatore, Serge Toubiana, Nadine Trintignant, Tom Tykwer, Alexandre Tylski, Jaques Vallotton, Betrand Van Effenterre, Jean-Pierre Vergne, Sarah Vermande, Gilles Walusinski, Wim Wenders, Anaïse Wittmann, Arnaud Xainte and Christian Zeender... not to mention Pathé, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Weinsteins... what do you say?

Can you answer these questions or are you simply too ignorant, arrogant and obnoxious to acquaint yourself with the few simple details of the case that should have made it impossible to lend your names to such a demand?

Go on! Speak up! The Preacher Man can’t hear you!