Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

it is the film of the state after the final credits. because it is not only a war film. but a film about the thin line between fundamental choices. about the answers who defines a man more than the circumstances. and this is the motif for define "In the Fog", after a long time when I saw it, a profound special film. sure, pieces from Soviet war films are present. but it is not fair to reduce to them. because it is a film about viewer. in profound sense. an "if" who not could be reduced at a story on the screen. and this does it an useful film. and opportunity to imagine the world as a delicate balance between choices.

dark, slow, cold. slice from recent history. more than a movie, a reflection support. because it is not the story of a character but the story of a generation. it is not only a film who reminds Stalker by Tarkovsky but tool for discover a side of every day reality. a film about choices and profound cruelty. about the thin line between justice and errors. and about the real purpose of a life. a film who is not easy to see. because it seems be boring and cold and neutral and to simple or too confuse. in fact, it is a testimony. far by American blockbusters, using the old Russian cinema marks. a honest movie. that is all. simple, direct,cold, slow, dark, page from recent history.

In The Fog is a film about a Soviet man, who gets released by the Germans instead of hanging him for sabotage, so everybody among the Soviets thinks he's a traitor. But he also can't cope with his guilt, so he's willing to be executed by the Soviet guerrillas.In The Fog is unlike any other war movie. It's based on a very interesting moral dilemma, and actually has a pretty good story to back that up. The cinematography and the atmosphere are also great. But it's so boring, that it almost hurt. And I don't mean by that, that it's slow, because it's not just that. There are a lot of scenes, where nothing happens. Literally minutes, when the camera is just tracking the characters walking or staring into nothing. I think half of the movie consists of walking through the woods. I feel sorry for this film, because it could have been even an all-time classic, but most of the time I was just bored to death.

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.