A film from Belarus? There's always a first time, although actually this is a co-production: Germany, Netherlands, Belarus, Russia, Latvia.
Set in World War Two when the invading Germans occupied Belarus, then part of the USSR, the film's title refers to the fog of war, in which participants only see the part never the whole. It also refers to the moral fog of war, whether to collaborate with the new masters or resist with the old. This is the dilemma confronting Sushenya who opts for the pacifist solution - and suffers for it.
Indeed the film is an account of his 'via crucis'. It immediately brought to mind Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' (Sushenya constantly being called an idiot) but more pertinent is the recollection of the donkey Balthasar in Bresson's 'Au Hasard Balthasar'. Balthasar is the intelligent but mute witness to the sufferings of humanity around him, and a victim too. Indeed Sushenya's insistence on trying to carry the wounded Burov on his back to safety makes of him, like Balthasar, a beast of burden.
I would hesitate before concluding that the director, Sergei Loznitsa, is steeped in 'Au Hasard Balthasar', let alone all of Bresson's work (although the forest scenes certainly have their echo in Bresson's 'Mouchette', again perhaps more by coincidence than design) but there are strong Bressonian virtues in the film. 1) The flashback structure gives us effects before causes, a key narrative strategy of Bresson's; 2) the protagonists are closer to Bressonian 'models' than actors, since their faces are quite new to Western audiences and Loznitsa directs them to speak in a subdued manner; 3) no music to tell us what to feel! God (who invented music) be praised; 4) Loznitsa withholds judgement, presenting the story 'without ornaments' (as Bresson said of his 'A Man Escaped').
In the subtlest of ways, Loznitsa sketches Sushenya as a Christ figure. With his beard, his tousled hair and his long face, he seems to step out of an icon-painting. And at the end, sitting between Burov and Voitik, he is Christ flanked by the two thieves.
Set in World War Two when the invading Germans occupied Belarus, then part of the USSR, the film's title refers to the fog of war, in which participants only see the part never the whole. It also refers to the moral fog of war, whether to collaborate with the new masters or resist with the old. This is the dilemma confronting Sushenya who opts for the pacifist solution - and suffers for it.
Indeed the film is an account of his 'via crucis'. It immediately brought to mind Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot' (Sushenya constantly being called an idiot) but more pertinent is the recollection of the donkey Balthasar in Bresson's 'Au Hasard Balthasar'. Balthasar is the intelligent but mute witness to the sufferings of humanity around him, and a victim too. Indeed Sushenya's insistence on trying to carry the wounded Burov on his back to safety makes of him, like Balthasar, a beast of burden.
I would hesitate before concluding that the director, Sergei Loznitsa, is steeped in 'Au Hasard Balthasar', let alone all of Bresson's work (although the forest scenes certainly have their echo in Bresson's 'Mouchette', again perhaps more by coincidence than design) but there are strong Bressonian virtues in the film. 1) The flashback structure gives us effects before causes, a key narrative strategy of Bresson's; 2) the protagonists are closer to Bressonian 'models' than actors, since their faces are quite new to Western audiences and Loznitsa directs them to speak in a subdued manner; 3) no music to tell us what to feel! God (who invented music) be praised; 4) Loznitsa withholds judgement, presenting the story 'without ornaments' (as Bresson said of his 'A Man Escaped').
In the subtlest of ways, Loznitsa sketches Sushenya as a Christ figure. With his beard, his tousled hair and his long face, he seems to step out of an icon-painting. And at the end, sitting between Burov and Voitik, he is Christ flanked by the two thieves.