Come and See

I have a bad habit of reading too many reviews and comments about a film before I've seen it, mainly to get an idea about whether it's going to be worth a couple of hours of my time watching it. As a result, I am often slightly disappointed with much of what I see, as all the hype that I've read about a film kind of blows my expectations out of all proportion. I had a feeling this would be the case with Elem Klimov's 'Come and See', a film I'd read a lot about, particularly here on the IMDb. (Imagine my "excitement" when, having tried to see the film for nearly a year, I discovered it was to be released on DVD a week or two ago from today!) Well, I finally watched the film yesterday and... well, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer intensity and unflinching visceral horror of the atrocities that 'Come and See' invites us to... come and see. (Has anyone commented before on what a clever title that actually is...?) This is one of those films, like, say, 'Requiem For A Dream' or 'The Magdalene Sisters' (both of which, though great films, are simply not in the same league as Klimov's film), that one does not (obviously) so much enjoy as submit oneself to. By the end of such films we are left numbed and shell-shocked, wondering what we are supposed to do with the intense emotions that have been evoked within us. Yes, I felt like the ground had been pulled from beneath me; yes, what I saw in that film made my blood boil, my head hurt and my heart pound; and, yes, it showed me things I'd seen before but to a degree of intensity and detail that I had not experienced before. The point though, I guess, is that the role of cinema (and art in general) is not to offer answers or tell us what to think but to simply show us particular events and characters and allow us to come to our own decisions about what those things 'mean'. I'm rambling now, but I'll simply end by saying that 'Come and See' is, with its outstanding technical and artistic credentials aside, a film whose very title alone demands that it be seen. It is the work of a visionary, a cry of despair from the depths of hell, and an important reminder of humanity's capacity for inhumanity Go and see...

One of the greatest of all war films, Klimov's stunning work stands amongst such works in which the horror and sorrow of conflict are made fresh over again for the viewer, left to stumble numb from the cinema thereafter. Produced for the 40th anniversary of Russia's triumph over the German invaders in WW2, based upon a novella by a writer who was a teenage partisan during the war, the propagandist use to which it was later put - when the GDR was still in the Eastern Bloc, citizens were forced to watch this to warn them of another rise of fascism - does not impair its effect today at all. It echoes intensity found in another masterpiece by the director. Klimov's shorter Larissa (1980) is a remorseful elegy to his late wife. Poetic and very personal, its sense of shock anticipates the heightened anguish that ultimately reverberates through Come And See. Through his images, the director stares uncomprehendingly at a world where lives are removed cruelly and without reason, if on this occasion not just one, but thousands.

At the heart of the narrative is Floyra, both viewer and victim of the appalling events making up the film's narrative, his history a horrendous coming-of-age story. It begins with him laboriously digging out a weapon to use and much changed at the end, he finally uses one. As he travels from initial innocence, through devastating experience, on to stunned hatred, in a remarkable process he ages before our eyes, both inside and out. His fresh face grows perceptibly more haggard as the film progresses, frequently staring straight back at the camera, as if challenging the viewer to keep watching; or while holding his numbed head, apparently close to mental collapse. Often shot directly at the boy or from his point of view, the formal quality of Klimov's film owes something to Tarkovsky's use of the camera in Ivan's Childhood, although the context is entirely different.

The film's title is from the Book of Revelations, referring to the summoning of witnesses to the devastation brought by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. 'Come and See' is an invitation for its youthful protagonist to arm up and investigate the war, but also one for the audience to tread a similarly terrible path, witnessing with vivid immediacy the Belorussion holocaust at close hand. Here, the intensity of what is on offer justifies amplification by the use of a travelling camera, point-of-view shots, and some startlingly surreal effects pointing up unnatural events: the small animal clinging nervously to the German commander's arm for instance, soundtrack distortions, or the mock Hitler sculpted out of clay and skull.

Main character Floyra is the director's witness to events, a horrified visitor forced, like us to 'see' - even if full comprehension understandably follows more slowly. For instance during their return to the village, there is some doubt as to if Floyra is yet, or will be ever, able to fully acknowledge the nature of surrounding events. In one of the most disturbing scenes out of a film full of them, Glasha's reaction to off-screen smells and sights is profoundly blithe and unsettling. So much so, we wonder for a brief while if the youngsters really know what is going on. Its a watershed of innocence: one look back as the two leave and the reality of the situation would surely overwhelm Floyra - just as later, more explicit horrors do the viewer.

Come And See was not an easy shoot. It lasted over nine months and during the course of the action the young cast were called upon to perform some unpleasant tasks including, at one point, wading up to their necks through a freezing swamp. Kravchenko's face is unforgettable during this and other experiences, and there are claims that he was hypnotised in order to simulate the proper degree of shell shock during one of the major early sequences. The sonic distortion created on the soundtrack at this point later appeared to a lesser extent in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, as did elements of a much-commented scene where a cow is caught in murderous crossfire. Klimov's camera ranges through and around the atrocities, although one doubts that a steady cam was available. By the end Florya is isolated from humanity, technically as well as mentally, by a striking shot that excludes the middle foreground. Disturbingly expressionistic though these scenes are, others such as the scene where Florya and the partisan girl Rose visit the forest after the bombing, achieve an eerie lyricism that are however entirely missing from the Hollywood production. And whereas Spielberg's work concludes with a dramatic irony that's perhaps a little too neat, contrived for different audience tastes, Klimov's less accommodating epic finishes on a unique, cathartic moment - no doubt partly chosen to avoid any bathos after events just witnessed, but one which sends real blame back generations.

Hallucinatory, heartrending, traumatic and uncompromising, such a movie will not to be all tastes. It certainly does not make for relaxing viewing, although those who see it often say it remains with them for years after. This was Klimov's last film for, as he said afterwards "I lost interest in making films. Everything that was possible I felt had already been done," no doubt referring to the emotional intensity of his masterpiece, which would be hard to top. By the end of their own viewing, any audience ought to be shocked enough to pick up a rifle themselves and vengefully join the home army setting out to fight the Great Patriotic War - a necessarily stalwart response without limit of participation, symbolised by the director who tracks a camera through the dense forest before finally rejoining a column of soldiers heading to the front. If you feel, like I do, that any real war film should succeed in conveying the power and pity of it all, then Come And See is an absolute go and watch.

What most of the foreign viewers perhaps don't understand is that the factual side of the movie has always been a common knowledge among millions of Russians especially those of older generations. People like me, who were born 10-15 years after the war ended, knew it all along first hand from the stories told by parents and grandparents actually living through those times and events. My own mother at the age of seven was thrown by German soldiers into a barn that got lit, her front teeth were knocked out by the butt of a German soldier's rifle and she, along with tenth of other village kids, was saved by my grand-mother and other villagers only because some partisans had chosen to attack and deliberate the village that day. What most of Western viewers find horrifying, shocking and disturbing is nothing but the truth being accurately depicted by some later movie makers. This movie is pretty much like a documentary that could actually be shot with the help of some sort of a "time machine" in case there was one in 1985 when the movie got filmed.

Come and See , well if you hate violence and brutality then you certainly wont want to see this. This Picture set in 1943 occupied Byelorussia is most probably the most true to life war movie ever, only Saving Private Ryan and Schindlers List can come close. What is amazing in this picture , is how the director uses a child's perspective and view in circumstances that you can only describe as evil. The director pulls no punches in how bad times actually were for peasents and partisans alike as German and collaborators show the viewer how low and depraved a fascist military machine actually is.

I dont want to go into the plot , as this film is a MUST for anyone who considers themselves a film buff. Disturbing and terrifying scenes do not in anyway spoil the flow of the film , but when viewing this film , please desist from seeing this movie in the early evening , as you wont sleep.

The acting accolades of course goes to the main characters , but I wish to give a special mention for the Russian Partisan Commander , who was just simply , superb. Everything about him was what you'd expect a Red Army Officer to be. The looks , the attitude and the steely determination is simply a credit to the actor. The best scene involving the Red Army Commander was when they had captured an Einsatgruppen Unit , and the SS soldier , who knew they were facing death was allowed to speak , after there own Commanding Officer was pleading pitifully for his own life. The SS soldier tells his captors that they are sub-human and that there peasent belief in Marxism was grounds enough that they should be eradicated. The Red Army Commander then in just a few words tells his men , that they are not just fighting for Socialism , but also the right to exist.What happens after...well you'll have to see.

Come and See is nothing short of disturbing, awesome, powerful and brutal. This is the best film I have ever seen regarding films portraying the Eastern Front 1941-1945 war. This film should be engraved in gold as the standard for any budding war film director. Only Saving Private Ryan and Schindlers List can be put in the same League table.

Even before the final credits rolled, I strongly suspected this movie would end up on my Top 20; in fact, perhaps even my Top 10. A teenage boy, his hearing impaired from having just been at the site of a bombing, and a young woman clutching at him, the two of them stumbling and sludging through a slimy, smelly bog. A stork in the woods as it rains. A cluster of dolls piled up on the floor with flies buzzing all over the room. You don't need vast, elaborately choreographed battle scenes to bring home the message of the senselessness and pain of war. Reading viewers' comments on the movie, it seems that most found the second half – which admittedly contained some of the most powerful massacre scenes ever filmed – as the most "satisfying". A few other viewers seem to imply the movie doesn't really get going until the second half. For me, it was the first half that got under my skin the most, for its cinematic originality, poetry and symbolic power. War is experienced by civilians as well as by soldiers: this may seem like an obvious statement, but it's only after watching Come and See that you realise how few war movies are truly about the suffering of the ordinary man and woman, defenseless child and frail senior citizen. Also, never before had I seen the plight of raped women in war so powerfully conveyed, and all this without the movie ever being voyeuristic or graphic. In cinema, rape is often portrayed as something that looks like rough sex. It isn't always quite clear why women get so upset over it. In Come and See, rape is shown as nothing but pure, unadulterated, hate-fuelled violence with only a superficial, external resemblance to sex. Unlike other raped women on film, you cannot imagine those in Come and See ever healing from their scars.

On another subject, whoever thinks this movie contains "propaganda" is obviously prejudiced against the movie simply because it's a Soviet production, and should think things over a little more carefully. It's astonishing how you can still find little traces of the Cold War mentality surviving to this day, even in younger viewers... The fact that as detractors of Come and See claim, Stalin "was no better than Hitler" has nothing to do with anything at all, in this movie's context - Klimov's picture is NOT about nationalistic oneupmanship on who had the worst tyrant - it's about the basic suffering of ordinary humanity in war - ANY war, though this one happened to be going on in Bielorussia. There was in fact ten times more propaganda in ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan than the whole of Come and See. This is painful, sublime cinema. I've always believed there's something special about Russians when it comes to producing art, especially literature - this movie goes some way towards reinforcing that impression in me.