The White Ribbon is long, and slow, and creepy – in a sort of Dogville kind of way.
What’s particularly timely about it in 2020 is how it does not really implicate any particular institution as the real threat to the stability / security of the village. Yes, the church is portrayed as particularly corrupt, but the greater threat seems to be an emergent fear and mob violence.
I LOVE the creepy inter-generational conflict running throughout the entire film, which I think describes not only the relationship between parents and their own children, how pain and violent perpetuate through these more direct relationships, but also it applies more broadly to institutions and generations of society. Just look at the disconnect between median age of politicians or presidential candidates and the age of the population in the US, eg.