Critics reviews

In an era when vague is en vogue—when filmmakers are more likely to find acclaim for posing big questions than for trying to answer them—In the Fogstands out for being resoundingly unambiguous. Everything—camera style, performance, structure, pacing—is in the service of establishing and contextualizing Svirsky's dilemma.

In the Fog is quite nice to look at—most of it unfolds in the picturesque Latvian forest where the film was shot—even as Loznitsa's authoritative hand removes much of the beauty present in Mutu's delicate photography. When the film reaches its risible climax... the boundless austerity takes on the air of tragicomedy gone awry.

This is neither a tale of redemption (its largely unsullied main character, despite the trials he is put through, is not in need of such things) nor is it a portrait of improbable, Christlike goodness. The film is grounded in the material world, in recognizable human behavior and interaction; its ironies are those of the everyday, delineated in clean, compassionate storytelling strokes that don't sacrifice complexity for clarity.

If the movie has a star, it may be cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the Romanian who lensed "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days." Even when the pace wanes, the images are still gripping.

The world and its choices are often cruel, but for all the devastations visited on the characters, Mr. Loznitsa is searching for the human good amid a human catastrophe. The stunning opening scene — a probing sweep around a Bruegel-like tableau of people, dogs and mud — puts that search into cinematic terms and also telegraphs the narrative's circular form. We go on, circle back, go on.

Perhaps the obvious point of comparison for In the Fog, given the endless melancholic long shots in the woods, is the work of Andrei Tarkovsky... But unlike Tarkovsky, who left words unspoken for his characters, Loznitsa occasionally writes his ideas too explicitly in the film's dialogue, though he makes up for this by deftly employing some ironic symbolism elsewhere.

More accessible and less stupefying than My Joy, In the Fog has the inevitability of an avalanche, and only our overfamilarity with Nazi-tribulation scenarios, and perhaps its excessively punctuated ending, could slow it down. A better anti-summer blockbuster is hard to imagine.

Loznitsa is still intent on portraying mankind as a writhing, impotent mass of dubious morality and wretched cruelty—life as one long cautionary tale of human folly with a series of inevitably tragic ends. But with In the Fog, he allows his characters good intentions. The film is the director's big reveal, a glimpse past the steely façade... of My Joy—an expression of his overarching cynicism as a thinly veiled hope for humanity, not a battle cry in favor of its extinction.

For a while, [In the Fog] is mysterious and gripping. The whispery sounds of the forest impart a lulling yet tense sensation, as if death could come from anywhere at any moment... But obviousness sets in when the film begins flashing back to the men's lives before their current dilemma. The initial strangeness wears off as the narrative rhythms become more predictable—enter past, return to present, repeat—and the clichéd existential metaphors pile up.

Here, the director of the recent My Joy, a bilious road movie that consisted mostly of detours, works with an all-too-clear formal symmetry, fleshed out by characters who essentially function as stand-ins for varying degrees of core-principle durability, as in a fable or a dead-on-arrival joke. But as it shows an already grim scenario growing still more so, this film does approach the punch-to-the-gut thrust of the earlier one...

As a nightmare of revolving war-film possibilities, In the Fog explores how quickly a character's trajectory can evolve within such a terrifyingly fluid space. Maybe that's why its deeply cynical ending doesn't feel entirely hopeless. Even though the rigors of war are relentless and uncompromising, there are small moments of peace hidden within these tragic compositions, reminders of togetherness that, no matter how fleeting, have to count for something.

The heavy tragic faces here, the sorrowful contemplation of our collective lot and the absence of levity of any kind all adhere to national stereotype to a degree that some will find wearing. But the intellectual range is vast, and the images and performances stirring beyond the customary standard. In its thorough meditation on man's moral place, and its beautiful depiction of one version of life's trial, lies this film's joy.