In his book Film Form, Russian master Sergei Eisenstein likens the process of composing shots to the task of devising a line of descriptive poetry. “Cinema is, first and foremost, montage,” he writes. He proceeds to compare cinema and a series of haikus. He notes of the concise lines of poetry: “from our point of view, these are montage phrases.” In essence, Eisenstein explicates the image-first and emotionally-charged composition accepted in poetry as a clear conduit we can trace from written literature to film form. We can therefore accept that film does not always necessitate a clear and present narrative. Rather, the form is an opportunity to orchestrate an arrangement, a montage in the Eisensteinian sense, of affecting images in the lineage of descriptive poetry. I invoke all of this because Augusto Sandino’s A Vanishing Fog (2022) is the purest example of that idea I have encountered in a long while.
A Vanishing Fog takes place in the Paramo of Sumapaz, an expansive and isolated ecosystem in the Colombian mountains. A man named F. (Sebastian Pii) lives there with his father Colombo (Mario de Jesús Viana). F. watches over both the beautiful but fragile environment around him as well as his father, whose mind has almost fully left him behind. While bombs and gunfire throughout the mountain range gesture at a conflict raging in the background, F. makes his rounds, coming across an array of strange figures and bizarre circumstances. All the while, F. struggles to come to terms with the impending loss that he will face when his father finally succumbs to whatever slowly eats away at him. Presented as a stream of both poignant and surreal sequences that push both F. and the viewer to consider the relationship between earth and humanity, A Vanishing Fog is an intoxicating experience.
Aesthetically, Sandino revels in the surroundings. The Paramo of Sumapaz is one of those locations so ethereal that it feels like you’re gazing at a different planet. Ridges flush with brush. Cliffs give way to lakes. An array of trees and flowers all living under an ever-present shroud of fog. Sandino reveals the extent of the setting’s beauty through F.’s perpetual wandering as he takes stock of his homeland each day. As a result, Sandino’s style emerges as an interplay between this lone man and the landscape. Returning to Eisenstein’s idea, you can pull out any of these wandering sequences and distill them into an enchanting series of touchpoints. A cloud descending. F. running his hand through the water. One curious cow munching while F. lounges under a tree.
Therefore, the surrealist flourishes in A Vanishing Fog incorporate seamlessly, building on the baseline aesthetics to codify a dreaminess. In one sequence, Sandino places an escalator in the midst of a sparsely occupied ridge. F. comes upon it and just accepts it. This white and blue hunk of machinery extends up into the fog where it disappears. Yet it lingers in our mind as an uncanny representation of the feelings F. must be grappling with. He walks around, accompanied solely by his thoughts. This is a man who is alone in the world apart from his father, a man who is clearly on the precipice of his corporeal ending. F. may not comment directly on the escalator, and Sandino similarly never delivers an answer about its purpose, but the longer it sits in the back of your mind the further it calcifies into a moving representation of pre-emptive grief.
From a thematic standpoint, Sandino’s array of visual poems combine to offer a biting comment on the state of environmentalism as well as the lasting implications of colonial violence. He provides minimal context to the bombings and gunfights that F. sometimes encounters, but even without explanation, they fuse into a singular representation of brutality encroaching on a peaceful haven. Add that with the aesthetic fixation on F.’s communal with the natural order, and A Vanishing Fog rapidly adds up to a meditation on the interchange between the living individuals, and the broader decisions humanity makes to impede on the natural order of the earth. In this sense, we can see F., and Pii’s performance, as an extension of Sandino’s directorial eye. A guide through the flow of Sandino’s poeticism. It is to both their credits that their partnership results in a cinematic wonder.
A Vanishing Fog was viewed in the Visions section of SXSW 2022.
Director: Augusto Sandino
Writer: Augusto Sandino
Rated: NR
Runtime: 76m
Rating: 5 out of 5
Devin McGrath-Conwell holds a B.A. in Film / English from Middlebury College and is currently pursuing an MFA in Screenwriting from Emerson College. His obsessions include all things horror, David Lynch, the darkest of satires, and Billy Joel. Devin’s writing has also appeared in publications such as Filmhounds Magazine, Film Cred, Horror Homeroom, and Cinema Scholars.
