Come and See
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| Come and See | |
|---|---|
 Come and See DVD cover (Kino Video) |
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| Directed by | Elem Klimov |
| Produced by | Mosfilm Belarusfilm |
| Written by | Ales Adamovich Elem Klimov |
| Starring | Aleksei Kravchenko as Florya Gaishun |
| Music by | Oleg Yanchenko |
| Cinematography | Alexei Rodionov |
| Editing by | Valeriya Belova |
| Distributed by | Kino Video (DVD) Ruscico (DVD) |
| Release date(s) | September 27?, 1985 (USSR) |
| Running time | 146 minutes |
| Language | Byelorussian Russian German |
| IMDb profile | |
Come and See (Russian: Иди и смотри, Idi i smotri) is a 1985 Soviet war movie/psychological horror[1] directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova in the leading roles. The film is set in 1943 in various villages in Belarus during the occupation by Nazi Germany.
The screenplay was written by Ales Adamovich in collaboration with Elem Klimov. The words Come and See ("Иди и смотри" in Russian) quote from The Apocalypse of John, chapter 6, ...and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, "Come and see!" (In Russian: "...и я услышал одно из четырех животных, говорящее как бы громовым голосом: иди и смотри.")
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The film begins with two young boys digging around a sand field looking for rifles. One of the boys, Florya, finds a SVT-40 rifle. The day after, Soviet partisans arrive at his house, taking Florya with them. The group prepares to confront the Nazis but at the last minute the commander decides Florya will stay behind in the partisan camp, which rather disappoints the boy. He meets Glasha, a girl who is also staying behind. Suddenly, German airplanes appear and the camp comes under artillery fire.
Florya temporarily loses his hearing and returns to his village, certain that his family hid on an out-of-the-way island. There, he meets many villagers who fled the Nazis and eventually realizes that his family did not survive. He and three resistance fighters leave to find food for the starving villagers who are hiding on the island, but they find that the SS are engaged in anti-Partisan and Einsatzgruppen activities and are advancing far faster than they had anticipated. The storehouses of food are nowhere to be found. They manage to steal a cow from a local farmer but the cow is shot in a field during the night before Florya can walk it back to the hungry villagers. One by one they are killed until Florya is once again left by himself.
Morning finds Florya in a farm field, near the village Perekhody, just before it is raided by the Nazi Einsatzgruppe. The Germans move into the village and herd all of the people into the wooden church. Once nearly all of the villagers are inside, the church is set ablaze. Florya climbs out alive; he watches the inferno as drunken Nazis applaud their efforts.
Florya recovers his rifle and meets the resistance fighters, who have managed to capture some of the Nazis and their Russian collaborators, who are then executed. As the resistance fighters leave the ambush scene, Florya notices a portrait of Adolf Hitler in the puddle. What follows is perhaps the most famous scene from the film:
Florya starts shooting at the portrait. Each shot, separated by about 15 seconds, is interleaved with a montage that goes backwards through time: We see corpses at a concentration camp, Hitler congratulating a young German boy, some Nazi party congresses during the 1930s, stills from Hitler's service in World War I, stills of Hitler in school, and ending with a picture of Hitler as a baby on his mother's lap. After each of those scenes Florya shoots at the picture again, symbolically undoing those images, but Florya does not fire a last shot which would have symbolically destroyed Hitler as an innocent baby.
The final scene in the film is of Florya catching up to the partisan column while Mozart's Lacrimosa is playing. After following him, the camera lifts up to the sky.
[edit] Production
- Much of the footage was shot with Steadicam.
- The prosimian that is seen as the pet of a German SS Major (Sturmbahnfuhrer) is called the Red Slender Loris.
- The 2006 UK DVD sleeve states that the guns in the film were often loaded with live ammunition as opposed to blanks, for realism. Aleksei Kravchenko mentions in interviews that bullets sometimes passed just 4 inches (10 centimeters) above his head (such as in the cow scene).
- The detachment of Einsatzgruppe that raids Perekhody is called the 15th Einsatzkommando, but there was no group with that designation historically.
- There is a town called Perekhody currently in Smolensk Oblast in Russia. It's not clear if the film attempts to depict historical events in that town.
[edit] Music
The original soundtrack is rhythmically amorphous music composed by Oleg Yanchenko. At a few key points in the film existing music is used, sometimes mixed in with Yanchenko's music (such as Johann Strauss Jr.'s Blue Danube). At the end, during the montage, music by Richard Wagner is used, most notably the Ride from Die Walküre. The conclusion of the film uses the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem.
[edit] Awards
- 1985—FIPRESCI prize at the Moscow International Film Festival.
- 1985—Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival
[edit] Reception
Walter Goodman, writing for the New York Times, dismissed the ending as "a dose of instant inspirationalism," but concedes to Klimov's "unquestionable talent."
Rita Kempley, of the Washington Post, wrote:
| “ | directing with an angry eloquence, [Klimov] taps into that hallucinatory nether world of blood and mud and escalating madness that Francis Ford Coppola found in Apocalypse Now. And though he draws a surprisingly vivid performance from his inexperienced teen lead, Klimov's prowess is his visual poetry, muscular and animistic, like compatriot Andrei Konchalovsky's in his epic Siberiade. | ” |
J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote:
| “ | There are few images more indelible than the sight of young Alexei Kravchenko's fear-petrified expression. By some accounts the boy was hypnotized for the movie's final scenes—most viewers will be as well. | ” |
Klimov did not make any more films after this one, leading some critics to speculate as to why. In 2001, Klimov said:
| “ | I lost interest in making films ... Everything that was possible I felt I had already done.[1] | ” |
[edit] References
- Goodman, Walter. “Film: ‘Come and See’”. The New York Times 6 Feb. 1987.
- ^ N. Ramsey, "Filmmakers Who Prized Social, Not Socialist, Reality" New York Times January 28, 2001
[edit] External links
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