"Come and See" by Elem Klimov
Brutal, violent and unrelenting portrayal of World War II German atrocities in Belarus. A visceral Anti-war masterpiece.
1985 - Soviet Union
Criterion Collection / Streaming: Criterion Channel
Recommendation: Worth watching, with great caution
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As an American viewer now separated almost 70 years from the horrors of World War II and the Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe, my experience with the worst of what occurred in small towns and villages in the many invaded countries is limited to movies like Hollywood films like Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan. I grew up hearing stories in lectures or books about German SS raids where they committed mass murder, but it was all so distant and abstracted by a retelling it became easy to both overlook or not comprehend what I was reading. Old grainy black and white photographs faded in storage become images without context and can be ignored as something foreign. Once the reality and inhumanity of those stories is forced upon you in a way one cannot look away, the gravity of it all shocks one awake to a new comprehension of what took place on earth during these years.
"Come and See", a beautifully-shot masterpiece by an unknown filmmaker from Belarus, manages to do this in a way no other film can.
I heard about this movie from Roger Deakins and his wife James Deakins as one of their favorite films of all time. For those who do not follow film, Roger Deakins may be the most important cinematographers in movie history and absolutely one of the best working now. He was behind the camera shooting such modern masterpieces as "There Will Be Blood", "O Brother Where Art Thou", "The Shawshank Redemption", "No Country for Old Men", "Sicario", and "Blade Runner 2049". He has been nominated 13 times for the Academy Awards. So when a man with his eye recommends a movie that highly, I was expecting a truly remarkable movie. But its a horror that I will forever remember like a bad nightmare.
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"Come and See" follows the story of a young teenager named Flyora in a village somewhere in Belarus at an unknown time during the German invasion of the USSR. As the title so accurately sums up, Klimov literally takes us as viewers alongside Flyora's experience moment by moment. At the start, Flyora finds a soldier's rifle buried in a field while playing with a friend, and decides to join the Soviet resistance (the "Partisans") to fight against the invaders. He is quickly pulled into the war naively unaware where events would take him and what would happen to the world around him.
Attempting to explain everything that unfolds would barely do justice to this film and what Flyora witnesses along the way. He faces extremes of adversity as he flees one village to another deep in the countryside, trying just to comprehend what is going on when bombs fly and he fights to survive from one moment to another.
The director Klimov's use of camera movements and staging and settings is extraordinary, managing to dissolve time as you yourself try to make sense of every event on screen. Every scene is riveting, but there are certain shots which are so beautiful and haunting, they will stay with you.
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Thinking about it, this is perhaps the most challenging film I've ever watched in my entire life — most uncompromising, savage, horrific, sickening. Which begs the question: Why watch it?
Hollywood has conditioned most American viewers to expect movies to fall neatly into perhaps three escapism "buckets": an entertaining or thrilling experience, a thoughtful dramatic experience, and a "heartwarming" experience. We like happy endings or at least a film with a clear concluding message to understand as the credits roll and we walk out of an emptying cinema.
"Come and See" does none of these things, and prohibits it's viewers from casually walking away. We are forced to grapple with reality - not in the way a documentary will film real life people going through the world, but an unflinching view of the psychological impacts of what occurs. Pablo Picasso's famous "Guernica" painting comes to mind in the art world - a picture of a war event but dramatically distorted to the point that the artist's own experiences of the event depicted dissolves into the creation of the artwork. Picasso didn't just show what it looked like... he shows you what if FELT like as well. And it is by transmitting these internal feelings from artist to viewer where the real importance of experiencing it comes into place.
Reflecting back, I've watched many very memorable horror movies and other war movies that made me ill and were hard to sit through. David Fincher's "Seven" comes to mind of dark serial killers. Gaspar Noe's "Irreversible" and witnessing a violent rape on screen. Darren Arnofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" and it's depiction of the consequences of drug addiction. These among many others still haunt me and I'm unwilling to go back and re-watch most of them. But these can all be calmly dismissed as "just a fiction story" when I recall the horror shown. "Come and See" manages to break that barrier forcing you to reckon with what occurred and could occur again on earth without people reflecting back on the impact. The events aren't simply "fiction" - they are showing humanity at its most depraved and unhinged moments.
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For those readers willing to watch, be prepared for a difficult movie and to walk away irreparably altered. For those who are uncomfortable confronting such images, I can absolutely empathize with the choice.
"Come and See" is not a film to take lightly, but it is one that cannot be ignored.
Thanks for reading.