‘Krux’ Review: A Potently Bleak Portrait of German Village Life at the Bitter End of WWII

We’re used to films about hope and rejuvenation in the final days of the Second World War, but there’s a more novel perspective to be found in “Krux” — set in an isolated village in northeast Germany, where many of the locals have been so brainwashed by Nazism that the end of the war may as well be the end of the world. Tony Vahl’s ultra-stern, intensely atmospheric debut feature cultivates such a siloed mood of apocalyptic despair that you can almost, in the very low-lit moment, forget the historical context for all this doomsaying. It’s an effective evocation of the lasting effects of totalitarian gaslighting, even on a populace no longer beholden to the regime in question — and one that feels relevant to a contemporary political landscape of cultish extremist loyalties.

Following its premiere in Toronto’s Discovery strand, this German-Polish production made its European debut in the main competition at San Sebastián. Further festival play is assured for a film of such serious intent and polished formal execution, though all but the most austere arthouse distributors may be leery of a film this lightless and severe. It promises equally strong, perhaps more expansive future works from the Berlin-based Vahl: Her unyielding vision is well served by the rigorously composed, economically lit lensing of DP Piotr Sobocinski Jr. (Son of the late Kiéslowski regular Piotr Sr., his previous credits include “Corpus Christi” and last year’s “Anniversary.”)

It begins, as it means to continue, on a note of startling bleakness, as young war widow Greta (Jella Haase) is presented with the literal, non-beating heart of her fiancé — a Nazi soldier recently killed in battle, whose body has apparently been otherwise unsalvaged. She solemnly accepts the organ, preserving it in a jar of formaldehyde, and speaking to it in his place. In these dire times, much significance is placed on fragments of what once was: In short order, at a formal church ceremony, the village pastor (Martin Wuttke) marries her to the dead man’s helmet. Symbolically or otherwise, it may not be enough armor: With the village perilously near the Eastern Front, its residents are vulnerable to the advance of the Soviet Red Army.

The priest is the one of three male leaders left in a community otherwise bereft of its menfolk, who impose their will on the remaining women and children with varying degrees of kindness and responsibility. The most level-headed of them is stoic schoolmaster Fritz (Clemens Schick), who continues to teach with order and discipline, and whose quietly held anti-fascist sympathies align with the Thomas Mann broadcasts he listens to in secret. He’s certainly a gentle soul compared to mayor Walter (Lukas Milo), who takes very seriously the orders coming from what’s left of the crumbling Third Reich: Leave nothing behind for the invading Russians to take, human life included.

And so, in stages, Walter initiates a mass suicide mission: Livestock are slaughtered, pets drowned and possessions destroyed, before he starts handing out cyanide tablets to his constituents, for when the time comes. Fritz balks at the instruction, as do certain other villagers, Greta included; their lonely resistance lends “Krux” a single, slender thread of hope, though doom appears to await them either way. In a slimly plotted film, the encroachment of dread by fine degrees stands in for conventional tension and momentum — eventually immersing the viewer in a climate of surreally irrational despair and abject moral collapse.

Sobocinski’s exacting command of shadow and very spare light is integral to this moody saturation, as the film takes on near-Expressionist levels of stylized horror in mundane domestic spaces: A painterly poeticism is granted to images of corpses floating in stagnant lakes, burgundy blood seemingly seeping into the sky, the water supply, even the autumnal morning mist. (More figurative shots of snakes winding themselves around human skulls feel comparatively obvious, and rather less frightening.) You might feel, as early as halfway through, that you’ve got the message, but the relentlessness is rather the point, as “Krux” forces viewers to consider times, places and circumstances they’d rather not. Working hard to be horrible and beautiful at once, Vahl’s debut is a stark, memorable vision of right-wing terror ultimately eating its own tail.