As another one of my personal favorites of the festival, In the Fog moved me from the moment I took a glimpse at the initial trailer. While many view silence as an awkward void that must be filled in order to reach a level of stable comfort, this particular film thrived on the essence of a breathless echo. As a part of the World Cinema category, the name is the obvious base for the center focus of the storyline.
Following three separate male semi-protagonists, the swirl of fog and silence become the nestling catalyst for the heart breaking back-stories that follow each man from the beginning of the German invasion of Poland in World War II. Similar to In the Lion’s Den, Director Sergei Loznitsa builds a casual suspense throughout the whole movie by pitting two morals against one another making it difficult to determine the difference between what is considered right and what is considered wrong. As a result, the film is riddled with symbolism that is supported by all aspects including lighting, camera position, sound, and pacing.
There was one scene in particular that exemplified this precisely. Every now and then, I will find a scene in a film that is so beautiful yet somehow tucked away from the average movie-goer. I feel like I have found a special gem that only the director and I know about, and despite the fact that I am not usually an emotional person at the movie theater, I tend to find myself lost in the sappiness of my own feelings. This moment arrived for me when one of the main characters, Sushenya, revisits his past that explains his initial state of trouble: The Germans release Sushenya after interrogating him about some wrongdoings of his coworkers, thinking this will shame him greater than actually dying. The accuracy of this assumption is the cruelest of all. For his community, there is no honor in living with the stigma of aiding the Germans attached to your soul. With this final verdict on his head, the camera follows Sushenya out into the sun, nestled directly on his shoulder so that we understand how he sees the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. In this moment of utter mental despair, he turns around and makes eye contact with his fate, the Nazis. In this single shot, the binaries of what is considered to be good or evil are broken down and reversed, capturing the two Nazi commanding officers standing genteelly in a bed of subtle yellow flowers surrounded by two sets of white picket fences. Switching back to Sushenya, a single tear falls down his cheek and this becomes the statement of the whole film.
Due to the deep discussions of morality in films set in war, the pacing is typically slower and ruminates with the dragging of time. In the Fog was no exception, and while I agreed that it was set at a good pace for the telling of the whole story, it could have easily been reduced by an hour. There is also some slight predictability in the way it ends, but perhaps the audience knew that from the moment they heard the title of the film. Similar to Dead Man’s Burden, Loznitsa uses silence as a character and it serves powerfully well as a catalyst for the raw emotion that floats in the air and mingles with the mist of uncertainty.
Once again, I gave this film a solid three out of five stars. While I did absolutely love the pivotal moments of symbolism scattered throughout, the timing ultimately made me weary and I feel like more could have been accomplished to refine the film to a deeper state of finality.
