Deep, dark and disturbing - and Ich weiß nicht whodunnit.

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2012)

Spoilers? Absolutely. Maybe even an explanation.
This (long, sorry) review is for people who have already seen The White Ribbon. If you haven't, you should. It's superb.
The pivotal scene in The White Ribbon is when the schoolteacher, the film's narrator, tentatively voices to the priest his suspicion that the priest's own children may be responsible for the series of horrific, random acts of violence that drive the story and provide its mystery. In a clever reflection of when the priest forces his son to confess to masturbating, the priest turns the tables and lets the schoolteacher know exactly where he stands in the social order. From that point, the schoolteacher is no longer in control of the story and the mystery must remain a mystery. The priest can live with mysteries; the schoolteacher and the audience find it less easy.
From the beginning, Haneke tells us that the story is the imperfect recollection of the schoolteacher, so no-one should expect resolution in the Hercule Poirot way. It's a subjective account by an unseen old man, not some sort of contrived detective story (though for my grey cells it was the midwife all along).
The first thing I wondered when the film ended was 'what happened to the doctor and his children?' - when he shut up shop and disappeared with no explanation. Of course, the doctor must have realised that now that the Down's syndrome child he probably fathered by the midwife was dead, he had no reason to remain, especially now that the woman herself was quite likely unhinged. This sense of obligations paid is reflected in the Baroness's earlier split-up scene with the Baron.
The second thought that occurred to me was that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was as much an inexplicable act of violence as any of the events in the village - it's just that the consequences would be global. Many of these people would be sent to war, like the cabbages being laid to waste by Death with his scythe. In the scene in church where the Baron calls on the whole village to watch out for and denounce the perpetrator of the latest atrocity, he might as well be calling on all Germany to avenge the death of the Archduke.
So the white ribbon (such as the priest wears round his neck) is a symbol and reminder of innocence; what happens in the film is that everyone loses their innocence, and no amount of repression, control or self-delusion can prevent that loss. Just as the little boy learns that 'everyone dies - and your mother didn't go on a trip', everyone in the village learns that the social order is a illusion, and neither the church nor the aristocracy is going to be there to hold their hands or provide a satisfactory explanation when they need it, and all the police can do is bully little girls. In time, the state will harness your self-hate and send you to kill people; in this sense The White Ribbon is like a prequel to All Quiet on the Western Front.
The acting, photography, costumes, sets and direction of The White Ribbon are up there with the best, and the use of black and white is absolutely right; it's like putting your eye to a magic box which transports you back to 1913. Of course there are times when nothing seems to be going on, or scenes seem to be pointlessly long, but not for a moment do you lose the illusion that your are witnessing reality, and the sense of mystery is strong enough to keep you guessing. It's just that you'll still be guessing after the film has ended, though not in a frustrated way because Haneke gives you so much to look at and think about. If nothing else, The White Ribbon has the best set of child actors I've ever seen.
There is no suggestion in The White Ribbon itself that Haneke is trying to 'explain Nazism' or anything like that, but it did strike me that the schoolteacher and his innocent Eva (a stunning performance by Leonie Benesch) were prime candidates to become leading lights of the local party later on - Eva, after all, is so perfectly Aryan.
If Spielberg had directed this, we would have had a scene in colour at the end where the 130-year-old schoolteacher, or maybe his and Eva's war criminal son, bashed it into our heads that the mystery was never solved, and he was sorry for any offence Germany caused during the 20th century. Unnecessary; if TWR has a message, it's that your innocence is between you and your conscience, not the responsibility of church, employer, or state.
Plot points: 1) Who strung the wire that brought the doctor down? Whoever had access to a long piece of strong wire, such as a farm labourer. Was it because the doctor might have been Jewish, I wonder?
2) If the children blinded (the only true innocent) Karli, who wrote the Biblical note? The priest's eldest daughter might have done, but surely this was an another attack on the doctor with racial/religious overtones, or the midwife by herself in a Munchhausen way - but plenty more people in the village than just the characters we met were capable of doing this.
3) Who fired the barn? Who birched and strung up Sigi? Anyone with a grievance. We know who destroyed the cabbages, but anyone we see in the final scene might have been evil enough to have done any of those things, that's the point. And in a way, it's a Poirot solution - they all did it. My money's still on the midwife though - she even stole a bike.