Your Film Professor

For me, the power of In the Fog (2013, Sergei Loznitsa) – a gritty, raw film depicting the painful brutalities and atrocities during Germany’s occupation of the territory of Belarus – stems from its final image.

The ending image is of Sushenya sitting with his dead countrymen lying to both sides of him. He ponders a gun in his hand and as the fog envelops him and the dead bodies next to him, we hear a gun shot, suggesting that Sushenya has killed himself.

Humanity’s Betrayal of Sushenya and Thus Its Self

This deeply felt act of despair is perhaps one of the very few moments in cinema where spectators may find it hard to blame him for his tragic choice! Earlier in the film, the German officer who has Sushenya’s life in his hands, says to Sushenya: “Did you think about my proposal? You still want to dangle from a rope with your friends? I mistook you for a clever fellow. But you’re an idiot. You want a noble death? Want everyone to honor your memory? Want them to write pamphlets about you? No…. That’s not going to happen. I will arrange another sort of death for you.”

In not hanging Sushenya with his fellow conspirators (though, as we see in a flashback, Sushenya objected and did not participate in the sabotage of the train’s derailment) but rather “killing” Sushenya in a much more cruel way, the German officer subjects him to the psychological tortures of being damned by friends and family because they think he has betrayed his fellow countrymen to the Germans. As we come to know, Sushenya never betrayed his people and thus is innocent of this “traitor” charge. But there is really no way for him to prove this and thus he will always be doubted by others no matter what he does to redeem himself (and, in a darkly ironic counterpoint, as we also come to see, Voitik, one of the men charged with killing him, actually did betray his people!). It doesn’t help that the two men who might have given testimony to his courageous and heroic actions to save them are now gone as they lie dead next to him.

The Monstrousness of Humanity

That is what must have been going through Sushenya’s mind as we see him contemplating his fate, whether to keep living with this dark charge hanging over him for what will probably be the rest of his life (or perhaps another assassination attempt by his own people) or end it and take his place with his hanged comrades like he thinks – and wishes – he should have. The other factor that I suspect adds to sensitive Sushenya’s despair (and thus his lack of desire to live) is his deeply traumatic psychological wounding, his experiencing the monstrousness of humanity, the general unempathetic atrocities of the Germans, the atrocities of war in general, and, of course, the way that his own people have so easily turned on him, not to mention that he seems to be constantly on the verge of losing his life. (Potently, Loznitsa enhances Sushenya’s state of despair by creating an expressionistic cold, desolate environment.)

Three Dead Bodies

However, to my mind, there is something deeper going on with this ending moment. For one thing, we get the darkly cruel symbolism of the three bodies in this ending moment (Sushenya and dead Voitik and Burov) signifying the specter of the three hanged men hanging over Sushenya in general (in a powerfully placed flashback, Loznitsa gives us this haunting image of the three hanged men set against the just released — but not free — Sushenya), a haunting that, as the German officer’s words cruelly enact, signifies the foregone conclusion of Sushenya’s literal death, e.g., he died with those men who are hanged even if he is still technically alive. Killing himself almost seems to be a technicality, punctuating Sushenya’s preordained fate inscribed by the German officer and the wartime breakdowns of humanity, a fate he had already come to accept and even long for because of a world that will allow him no other option.

In the Fog: The Degradation of Humanity

More potently, the signifier “fog” speaks to the “fog of war” adage, a saying that at least in one meaning speaks to how war creates chaos and a break down in ethical and moral judgement and behavior. Like the best (anti) war films, In the Fog reveals how war degrades humanity in many different ways, creating a dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest sensibility where atrocities and hideous abuses are prevalent if not normalized, which of course we get in the film with war crimes (hanging prisoners, physical and psychological torture, assassination) but also get in a more complex way with the plight of Sushenya, a man who seems by our little window of him to be a sensitive, soft spoken man, a man who seems to be a good father and husband and who apparently was respected by his community. However, when the German officer sadistically releases Sushenya with no explanation for why he did so, we see a different kind of degradation of humanity. In not accepting Sushenya’s word that he didn’t betray his comrades, Sushenya’s community not only condemns Sushenya to a never ending traumatic psychological slow death, they degrade their own humanity in the process, a degradation that becomes profoundly allegorical, in that their crimes against Sushenya are cast as a morality play, profoundly punctuating both why war is a primitive drive that degrades humanity into its most primitive, barbaric mode of being – and thus why it should be eradicated – and why we have to be vigilant of our own base drives, not allow “fogs” of war or any other crisis situation (when civilization breaks down) to lower our morality and degrade Others and our species being in the process.

Humanity Kills Itself

And that then becomes the deeply symbolic meaning of the “fog” that rolls over Sushenya: Not allowing us to see Sushenya actually pull the trigger that kills him, the film is essentially telling us that it is not Sushenya who kills himself but rather war itself, or, more cogently entailed, humanity kills him, a humanity who in the process kills itself through its inhumane choices and actions.