Loznitsa's MY JOY was one of the very best films of 2010, and so I was very much looking forward to seeing this. Whilst it is not as ground- breaking and arresting as the earlier film, it is still a fine entry in the long-standing tradition of the (ex-)Soviet war film... The setting is Belarus under German control, calling Klimov's COME AND SEE to mind, but this is a much more low-key, sober, elegant film concerning the muddy morality and conflicted ethical choices of war-time. Its quasi Jesus-like central figure recalls Shepitko's THE ASCENT, but whilst Shepitko's Jesus is sacrificed, Loznitsa's finds that suicide can be the only solution to the ethical dilemma of how to be Good in an internecine war. In a situation where to do nothing is collusion, where to be spared death is seen as collaboration with the enemy, where betrayal and suspicion are stronger than loyalty and solidarity, there is no room for virtue. This bleak world-view echoes the darkness of MY JOY, but in this film, Oleg Mutu's typically brilliant cinematography is bright and sharp, luminous. Beautiful forests surround the sinful and sinning characters; the irony of the beautiful world in which human ugliness takes centre stage.
Review of In the Fog
