My Darling B has challenged me to come up with a one-word review for each movie we see during the Wisconsin Film Festival. The only word I could think of to describe In The Fog was: Russian. The word B came up with was “bleak,” which is the same kind of vibe but “Russian” is “bleak” times one thousand. At least one thousand.

The movie is set during World War Two. The German army has occupied Belorussia, and the natives who have not been able to fade into the background have become either collaborators or partisans. Over the course of the movie, we meet all three kinds. For each one of them, life is bleak, has no meaning, and ends in pointless death. “Doomed” is the most optimistic way to describe each of the characters.

The final scene of the movie sums everything up best. All three of the principal characters are in it. Two of them are dead. The one remaining alive, the only one who has retained his humanity, is left holding a pistol in his hand as a heavy fog rolls in to envelop him. Most other directors would have ended the movie as the fog completely obscured him, leaving his fate open to conjecture, but this is A Russian Film. The sound of a gunshot is the only way to be sure that his fate is sealed.

Blam!