Really good and interesting, but not great

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2020)

My initial response was that Haneke was exploring where the support for Nazism came from and how the treatment of many of the village kids helped to influence this movement. As the schoolteacher says, "They could clarify some things that happened in this country". After watching the film though, I looked up some interviews only to learn Haneke denied that this film says anything about Nazism/fascism, so I realized I had to amend my reading of the film. I then came to the conclusion that Haneke was more interesting in exploring the repressive social order of the village and its effect on its inhabitants. While I wouldn't say this is a great film, I'd definitely say it does a great job at painting a bleak portrait of the village, one which is a lot more nuanced and complex than one would expect from reading a summary of its themes.
In the village, the father figures hold the most power, controlling their kids and sometimes even going against their wives. The baron lies at the top of this social order. He has a paternalistic attitude which he displays throughout the film and occasionally lectures to the villagers. Though he isn't popular, most of the villagers are dependent on him. Since he's the employer of half the village, he has the power to fire and refuse to provide work to all the members of a particular family, shown by what happens to the farmer and his family. The next prominent character is the Pastor, who ranges from strict puritanism, seen by how he restrains his son to his bed after he finds out that, to authoritarianism, shown with his physical punishments of his kids and even his wife, to a degree. The film's title comes from how he ties white ribbons to his kids to remind them of their innocence and purity, but this motif later symbolizes the oppressive constraints placed on the kids concerning how white ribbon is used to tie the pastor's son to a bed or how ribbon is placed over a kid's eyes after he's savagely beaten. In spite of this, the pastor shows middle ground given a couple tender scenes where he allows his youngest son to care for an injured bird or how he accepts his son's gift of a bird later in the film. Another prominent character is the farmer. While we get to see some of the control he has on his family, he primarily shows us what can happen to a family who gets on the baron's bad side and he reinforces the dependency the villagers have on him. The last prominent character is the doctor. Although you initially sympathize with him, he's later revealed to be emotionally abusive to his wife (and possibly towards his previous wife) and physically abusive to his daughter. Each of these father figures contribute to the film's themes in many different ways. Due to this, it's not easy to pick up on everything from a single viewing and it usually takes a few viewings to grasp everything which goes on.
These father figures effect the children in a variety of ways, presumably causing them to carry out the acts of violence. The connection between these incidents are that they're caused by the repressive social order of the village. For instance, the farmer's son destroys the baron's cabbage field as he believes he was responsible for the death of his mother, leading to the other struggles his family undergoes throughout the film. The steward's son pushes the baron's son into the water as he was jealous of him for having a working flute (he likely had it due to his family's high position in the village) while he had trouble whittling one out of wood. The steward's violent confrontation with his son afterwards was the effect of that. It's likely that the acts we don't see are also carried out by the children. For instance, were the pastor's kids responsible for attacking the baron's son given how their Dad punished them in a similar way? Were the pastor's kids responsible for the rest of the incidents in the village concerning the conversation the schoolteacher has with the pastor at the end? The way the final act handles all these mysteries might disappoint some people, but I found the payoff to be quite unsettling. The schoolteacher's final narration stuck with me for a while after the film ended.
With all that being said, I'm not sure why Haneke chose to make the schoolteacher the protagonist. Where does he fit into all of this? Considering how fleshed out and interesting many of the other characters in the film are and how much they add to the themes, the schoolteacher feels one-dimensional by comparison. His relationship with Eva, for instance, holds such little relevance towards the film's themes, save for an admittedly interesting visit to her family where we see that the repressive social order of the village occurs elsewhere. For the most part though, I thought he was kind of boring. I wasn't quite as bothered with his character the second time around, but he still acts as a detriment to the film and locks it firmly in the really good tier.
In conclusion, I'd say this is an example of a film held back from greatness from one major issue which could've easily been fixed. In spite of that, the rest of it is truly excellent. I imagine I'll get more out of the film if I were to watch it again since there's so much to unpack from it in terms of all the character dynamics (I know I didn't say much about the steward). If you haven't seen this one, I highly recommend it.