Jella Haase (center) in 'Krux.' Lucasz Bak When your movie begins with a scene of a war widow being handed the severed heart of a dead soldier, sticking it in a jar of formaldehyde and communing with it as if it were all she had left in the world, you can be assured that what follows is not going to be an uplifting experience. That’s certainly the case with Krux, a ruthlessly dark portrait of a village in northeast Germany succumbing to collective madness and possible suicide as it becomes clear that the Nazis are about to lose, leaving the town ripe for the taking.
And yet this exquisitely helmed debut from writer-director Tony Vahl manages to find plenty of beauty in the bleakness, combining striking visuals and surrealist touches for a film that plays like Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon by way of David Lynch and Lucile Hadzihalilovic (The Ice Tower). This means that Krux, which premiered in Toronto and played competition in San Sebastian, is not exactly what you would call a crowdpleaser. But it does powerfully capture a society on the verge of collapse after years of brutal conflict, leaving its survivors to fend for themselves and question their own allegiances.
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Krux
The Bottom Line All the beauty and the bloodshed. Venues: San Sebastian Film Festival (Official Selection), Toronto Film Festival (Discovery) Cast: Jella Haase, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Clemens Schick, Lukas Miko, Martin Wuttke Director-screenwriter: Tony Vahl 1 hour 32 minutesThe widow in the opening is the young laundress Greta (Jella Haase), who receives news of her fiancé’s death and then gets betrothed to him soon afterwards, in a ceremony that has the local pastor (Martin Wuttke) marrying her off to an army helmet. This is how things roll in a tiny German village populated by the surviving wives and children of soldiers who are already dead or about to die on the battlefield. Meanwhile, bodies are starting to float in from the surrounding lakes and streams, transforming the picturesque setting into a hellscape that, when the Soviets arrive, is likely to get worse.
Still, life drags on, or at least tries to, as the children attend a one-room schoolhouse led by a stern teacher, Fritz (Clemens Schick), who seems to be the only one questioning the insanity of what’s happening, especially after the mayor (Lukas Miko) begins to hand out cyanide tablets in preparation for a Jonestown-style mass suicide. But even Fritz’s resistance, which he exercises by clandestinely listening to Thomas Mann’s antifascist broadsides on a radio at night, can do little amid a stifling atmosphere of fear and obedience. The Nazis may have lost the war and Hitler may already be dead, but it’s still hard to shake off years of submission to an overpowering totalitarian regime.
Vahl paints a stark portrait of the town and its few inhabitants — basically three men left in charge of a few dozen others — in succinct brushstrokes that combine the remote pastoral locations with flashes of gore and violence. The latter includes a bunch of mutilated corpses, as well as freaky stuff involving snakes, bees, and, in one scene not recommended for cat lovers, kittens being drowned in a pond. Death is everywhere, encroaching on the villagers as the sound of mortar fire grows louder, signaling the moment when their liberators may also spell their doom.
If there’s plenty to despair about in Krux, Vahl also shows how all is not totally lost. Greta, Fritz and the pastor each quietly reject the death drive of the mayor, whose Nazi sympathies wind up coming back to haunt his own family. There’s also a village witch doctor (Meta Sührich) whose spiritual resistance provides some relief for the others, although it doesn’t seem to help a young mother (Frida-Lovisa Hamann) too caught up in the folly to save herself. By the time the film ends, the Russians still haven’t arrived, but the Third Reich’s self-destructive policies — “No living Germans for the enemy to find” is the order the mayor receives — have already done enough damage.
This would all be rather excruciating to watch if it weren’t for the way Vahl stages the scenes of impending annihilation, turning them into elegantly shot tableaux of a defiantly morbid variety. Working with Polish cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski Jr. (Anniversary), who makes wonders out of candlelight in a kitchen or mist rolling over a lake, the director manages to craft something surprisingly beautiful out of so much dread and despair. Krux may be about the end of times, but these were dark times to begin with, and the film leaves us hopeful that some of the villagers will find their way back to the light.
Full credits
Venues: San Sebastian Film Festival (Official Selection), Toronto Film Festival (Discovery) Production companies: CALA Filmproduktion, Extreme Emotions Cast: Jella Haase, Frida-Lovisa Hamann, Clemens Schick, Lukas Miko, Martin Wuttke Director-screenwriter: Tony Vahl Producers: Martina Haubrich, Ewa Puszczyńska Cinematographer: Piotr Sobociński Jr. Production designer: Kataryzna Sikora Costumer designer: Aleksandra Staszko Music: Lorenz Dangel Editor: Nikodem Chabior Casting: Nina Haun, Jacqueline Rietz Sales: Global Constellation 1 hour 32 minutesTHR Newsletters
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