Come & See [Import]

I had to write this review in response to the comments below which denigrate this magnificent film as Communist propaganda. First, I think we should separate politics from art. "Battleship Potemkin" and "Triumph of the Will" are two masterpieces that support evil regimes. Yet we can appreciate their technical and artistic skill without becoming Communists or Nazis.

Second, "Come and See" is an accurate historical portrayal of a Nazi massacre of a Belarussian village. While I sympathize with the fact that we hear next to nothing about the Communist massacres, and are inundated with news about the Nazi massacres due to the Holocaust, we should not attack the film on such grounds. Somebody should get up and make a film about the rape of Germany at the hands of Soviets if they are so inclined.

Last, "Come and See" is astounding cinema. The tracking shots and surreal atmosphere are brilliantly rendered. This film is a cross between "Apocalypse Now" and "Schindler's List" and equally good if not better. The lead performance by the teenage actor Aleksei Kravchenko is awesome. "Come and See" is one of the most harrowing movies ever made, and should be watched by everyone.

In 1943 Byelorussia, Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), a 14-year-old boy who is eager to fight the Germans, goes off to join the Russian army, against the pleadings of his mother. But the regiment makes him stay behind at the camp, and he wanders off on his own, joined by a peasant girl (Olga Mironova). Rendered partially deaf by aerial bombardment, and evading capture from German paratroopers, he tries to return home, but fate guides him to a band of partisans, after which his journey leads him ever deeper into the inferno of the Nazi invasion.
The picture's rigorously subjective style, hallucinatory imagery, and refusal to soften or glamorize the realities of war, makes it something of a milestone in the Soviet World War II film, a genre distinguished, at its best, by a sense of grief over the great tragedy of that conflict, which killed an estimated twenty million Russians. In Byelorussia, the Germans systematically wiped out hundreds of towns, rounding men, women, and children into barns and burning them alive. By depicting these horrific events through the eye of a naive boy, Klimov gives them immediacy, elevating them above the mere recounting of historical fact into the heightened realm of an actual witnessing, where they appear strange, grotesque, and unbearable.
Kravchenko's almost wordless performance is riveting. Over the course of the film we see his face become aged beyond his years, hardening into a mask of fear and trauma that reflects every atrocity he has seen and endured. The film is constantly directing our attention to people's faces, their expressions, their stares and glances, which visually emphasizes the fact that all these horrors are happening to people, to someone, the unutterable limits of inhumanity experienced in the souls and feelings of living beings. Klimov doesn't let the viewer detach to contemplate psychology or motivation, but brings us down to the stark level of survival, where his young protagonist lives.
Sometimes the images are lyrical, as in the brilliant sequence in a forest where Florya and the girl are hiding. The girl dances in the rain, a stork wanders through a clearing -- the beauty is tinged with fear and ominous foreboding. When Florya is deafened, the movie's soundtrack is muffled, and the music and sound effects express his disorientation and maddening inability to connect with what's going on around him. At key moments, Klimov always chooses an unexpected image or shot, startling us out of ordinary perception and keeping us on edge, as in the scene when Florya and a partisan are stealing a cow and come under fire, and we suddenly see a close-up of the cow's eye, another uncomprehending creature subjected to the merciless insanity of this world.
Come and See (even the title alludes to our role as witnesses, willing or not) is a deeply unsettling experience. This is a film designed to shake you to the core of your being, a vision of what life looks like when all we know and cherish is savagely uprooted, when love and morality are ripped away and humans turn into beasts. In one of the film's most daring flourishes, Florya vents his rage on a symbol -- a picture of Hitler -- and with each gunshot Klimov moves the newsreel images of history backwards, undoing in fantasy what can never be undone, until we are left with the haunting face of a child. The shooting stops; we can never go back, but we will never -- should never -- forget.

P.S. To watch the movie preview video clip you can on russianDVD.com website for free.

4.5 Stars

Although initially sceptical regarding this movie's historical accuracy as it was a Soviet era production, after watching it I thought this film to be a very honest and sobering portrayal of the war on the Eastern Front, between Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union during WWII. The movie depicts an often overlooked facet of the war, specifically the activites of the SS "Einsatzgruppen," or special action police units, whose task was to liquidate Jews, communists, and any potential threats to the Nazi regime behind the front lines of the actual fighting. These SS police units travelled behind the army's advance, and in addition to conducting mass executions of Jews and suspected communists, were also employed to "pacify" occupied regions that were suspected of taking part in, or aiding, the growing underground resistance. The activites of such an SS unit provides the background to the movie as the main character, a young teenage boy, loses his parents and survives the razing of a Russian village - a scene quite unpleasant to watch, yet very well depicted and brutal in its realism. Of mention was the role played by local Russian militia in carrying out these executions and "reprisal" raids - as this is a Soviet film, and was subject to state oversight, I was surprised that such unpleasant reminders of Russian collaboration were incorporated. Large numbers of volunteers from the occupied territories were accomplices to the SS in their cleansing actions, a fact documented in this movie.

"Come and See" also provides an interesting glimpse into the role and activities of the Soviet partisans, the insurgent groups fighting the Nazi occupation behind the front. Furthermore, the suffering and harsh conditions endured by Russian civilians living under Nazi occupation is not lost upon the viewer. Although there are definitely stark Good vs. Evil undertones throughout the film (all Germans are essentially portrayed as cold, sadistic, Nazi killers - the Soviet partisans as heroic, beleaguered freedom-fighters), it must be remembered that this movie offers a mere snapshot of the war at its most horrifying level. SS actions such as the ones depicted were commonplace on the Eastern Front - as was the willing, and often enthusiastic participation of anti-Soviet / anti-Semitic elements in the USSR, whom the Nazis depended on for support.

Excellent camera work and photography, in my opinion the quality of filmmaking rivals the most recent Hollywood productions. This film is highly recommended to those interested in watching an accurate account of World War II in the eastern theater, and the war as experienced by the Soviet population.