Hello, bonjour, buenos dias, guten tag, zdrastuvoy, konichiwa, etc, etc. Welcome to Foreign Entertainment, a blog dedicated to importing the wide world of non-US art and media to audiences who may never have found it otherwise. Today, you can call me Mikhail Leonardovich. Put on your warmest coat because we're traveling to Russia, home of some of the finest art, music and cinema that doesn't get wide distribution in the Anglophone world.
Yozhik v Tumane, aka "Hedgehog in the Fog" is a unique work of animation from 1975. Written by Sergei Kozlov and directed by Yuriy Norshteyn, it is a surreal and occasionally frightening take on the otherwise familiar modes of a children's story.
Our protagonist, Yozhik (Hedgehog) is on his way to have tea with his friend, Bear Cub. The art and pacing encourage a feeling of panic and steadily creeping paranoia. In the first few seconds of the film, we see Yozhik running across hills rather than strolling along a well-lit road. It's fairly obvious that he belongs to a much more difficult world. He runs through a disorienting sequence while telling himself how calm his tea time with Bear Cub will be, though none of the visual clues are at all reassuring. As night falls, Yozhik stumbles into a foggy forest where he sees a beautiful white horse grazing. While this is ostensibly a children's cartoon, Yozhik v Tumane establishes its dark undertones early with lines like, "I wonder... if the horse lies down to sleep, will it choke in the fog?"
It's easy to project a cautionary moral onto this film. Yozhik, however nervous, descends into the fog himself out of an infatuation with the horse. Depending on the viewer, this can be a story about lust, temptation, recklessness, curiosity, or the dangers of striking out on one's own into alluring but unfamiliar territory. Unlike most fables, Yozhik v Tumane is roundly ambiguous to the very end. The protagonist is accosted by a variety of creatures, none of which have clear motives. None of them harm him, though there's no guarantee that none of them have the intention of harming him. An owl occasionally pops up behind Yozhik, a dog stalks from far away before showing a hint of benevolence. Most disconcertingly, when it appears that all is lost and Yozhik will drown in a river, a creature hidden below the surface offers itself as a raft, never to reveal itself or its impetus.
The murky visuals and shuddering protagonist keep Yozhik v Tumane far away from the all's-well conventions familiar to Western audiences who grew up with Disney. Yozhik never smiles, never gives a warranted sigh of relief. In the end, rather than interpreting his survival as proof that the world and all those in it are basically good, Yozhik sits wide-eyed by a fire, unable to fully engage in small talk. He has undergone a transformative experience that shook him at the outset and never quite left his thoughts thereafter.
The dream-like feel of Yozhik v Tamane is the result of mixed-media stop motion animation. Using such diverse materials as glass and paper to create the desired effects, Norshteyn produced one of the most enduring, internationally beloved shorts in history. Though the darkness and complexity may have kept this gem away from some audiences in their early years, it's never too late to discover something unique and captivating.