In the real world, magical thinking is a type of fallacy and a source of many superstitions, but in a film like November, it can be the difference between life and death, salvation and damnation. The characters in this Bergmanesque Estonian-German fairy tale, written and directed by Rainer Sarnet, live in a village surrounded by an honest-to-goodness Haunted Forest, although for them it would be weird if it weren’t…

*November* opens with what appears to be a skeletal farm-machine monster bursting into a cowshed. It confronts a cow, hooks it up and then, rather than slaughtering it, flies away with it. That is about as useful an introduction to Rainer Sarnet’s film as you could ask for. *November* spends much of its running time allowing you to decide what sort of thing you are looking at, then quietly informing you that you…