V Tumane (In The Fog) (2012, Dir. Sergei Loznitsa, Germany/Netherlands/Belarus/Russia/Latvia) (Cert: 12a/TBC) ***

Starring: Vladimir Svirskiy, Vladislav Abashin, Sergei Kolesov

 

Burov (Abashin) and Voitik (Kolesov) are fighting for the Soviet Union during the Second World War, where they are looking for Sushenya (Svirskiy) who they hold partly responsible for betraying some Belorussian railroad workers to the occupying Nazis resulting in their hanging. Just before Burov is about to execute Sushenya however, they are attacked by German soldiers and Burov is wounded. With Sushenya free from execution he takes the opportunity to explain things to Burov and Voitik and the three share stories of espionage against the Nazis.

 

In The Fog is most definitely an acquired taste and what it tends to get right, it gets very right and what it tends to get wrong, it significantly falters. For starters, the film has an amazing visual sensibility and utilises the landscape admirably; especially in the night-time sequences across a landscape that barely looks like it’s on Earth. The film also should be credited in the way it chips at questions of morality, loyalty and the more human-centred side of warfare (of course, this has been a trademark of many European films about the Second World War from Das Boot (1981) to Downfall (2004)). The problem is in its style of editing. Given the three-story post-modern structure, In The Fog bares a little bit of a comparison with Rashomon (1958) and the visual style also bows to that film’s director, Akira Kurosawa (and the traditions of Japanese film-makign as a whole), emphasising long seamless takes, as opposed to faster-paced editing approach favoured in the West. It makes for an interesting effect, but it also slows the film down to a crawl throughout and can result in a painfully dull experience at the worst parts (exacerbated by the fact that characters simply shut up……………for long periods whilst they are talking). All in all, on an artistic level, In The Fog has good qualities. It’s atmospheric and Vladimir Svirskiy provides a powerhouse performance, but it is a film that requires a lot of patience and focus and probably more than it deserves.