At the risk of spoilers, I do not believe that ending was the right one. You see the fog, but you should not have heard what you heard.
Actually, that's not all that was wrong. There was far too much meaningless tracking through those woods, and far too many non-significant pauses in between the dialogue. Bradshaw in the Guardian gave it four stars, and I took too much notice of him.
Yeah I agree. The phrase 'Art for art's sake' came to mind watching this. The long drawn out single shots from the camera were tedious and brought nothing to the film. The ending has been described as 'tragic'. I didn't find it tragic, I found it pathetic. This guy had a young son to live for, and he seemed intelligent and self-aware enough to realise the best thing he could do would be to turn his situation into a more positive one. If he was so determined to take his own life then why not take out a few Germans with him for example? He could have tried to assassinate the police chief who'd put him in his predicament. He may have been killed during it but so what, he had chosen to die anyway! Argh that ending was lame and blatantly trying to shock the viewer just for the sake of a surprise.
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Duty Now For The Future
SteveResin, I agree with your post. He seemed especially despondent because he wasn't even sure if his wife believed him. But as you noted, he had a young son to live for.
I felt like they had his character made this final decision primarily for the sake of shocking the audience. As a result, I was more annoyed, and not shocked at all.
Nevertheless, it was an interesting film. Although it was slow to a fault. I watched it on DVD with subtitles, which allowed me to fast-forward through many of the long scenes of the men trudging through the woods. Even with liberal use of FF, the film was still tedious to get through.
His fate was to be killed, along w/ the other three who were hanged. He knew this. He was prepared for this. And when it didn't happen because he was released by the Germans, he knew that his fate would catch up with him eventually because he would be viewed as a traitor. When Borav comes to his door, he is not remotely surprised. He even says, I knew you would come. When he's shoveling his own grave, you might think he would use the shovel and try to defend himself. But no. He wanted to fulfill his fate. But intervening circumstances got in the way when Borav was shot. He had one chance at redemption by carrying Borav's body. But he needed Voitek to be a witness to that and to document it so that people would believe that he was not a traitor. But when Voitek was killed, all hope for redemption was lost. Now there was no one to witness what he had tried to do for Borav, and therefore, he would never be accepted again by his people, and in particular his wife, and probably his son when he got old enough to understand. The only honor was death, and he took his own life because it was more honorable then staying alive.
The movie is about impossible choices. Very compelling.
Totally agree with Mike. Great movie.
shareMIKE NAILS IT!!!!!
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