Harrowingly realistic; the true horrors of war

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2007)

Russian director Elem Klimov's final film, 'Idi i smotri {Come and See},' is a masterpiece of the genre, a war film so disturbingly intense that it strays into the realms of psychological horror. Set in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Belarus, the film follows the fate of a young boy, Florya Gaishun (Aleksei Kravchenko), who joins the Soviet partisan army. As the horrors of war unfold before him, Florya loses his idealistic preconceptions of combat, becoming confused and psychologically unstable. The entire film is witnessed through his young eyes, as his civilised world is thrown into turmoil and those that he loves perish at the hands of a merciless enemy.
Much like Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now,' the film is almost surrealistic in its exploration of the horrors of war, constructing a hallucinatory nightmare of escalating confusion, fear, death and madness. And yet, despite this, the film manages to come across as being frighteningly realistic. Perhaps this surrealistic approach is also, paradoxically, the most realistic depiction of war. Young Florya is cast into a hellish world he simply can't comprehend; placed in the same position, I imagine, the experience would strike us as being one long, distressing and horrible dream. Florya seemingly even treats it all as such. With the ghastly events happening all about him, he can do nothing but stare with petrified shock and awe, as one who expects to wake up at any moment.
'Come and See' boasts a string of remarkable sequences which will resonate with viewers for a long time after they see it. A series of bomb strikes tear apart a Russian forest, silently obliterating the mature trees as a shell-shocked Florya hears only the maddening ringing in his ears; Florya attempts to clamber through a thick, murky bog, feeling with each step as though he is getting nowhere; he awakens in the midst of a thick mist, his head resting on the carcass of a dead cow. Perhaps the most lasting scene is one in which an entire population of villagers is herded into a barn, and then consequently set alight. Words fail to describe the horror of watching the flaming barn doors still flapping wildly as the inhabitants fight with their last breaths to save themselves and their families. Meanwhile, Florya just stares, his blank, disbelieving expression infinitely more effective than any other actions would have been.
Inexperienced teenager Aleksei Kravchenko is excellent in the lead role, which the director subsequently described as "a very difficult role with extreme emotional states." So arduous were the emotional burdens of the film that Klimov later expressed surprise and relief that young Kravchenko did not suffer any adverse psychological trauma during and after filming, which notably employed the use of live ammunition to maximise authenticity. His character is placed in situations that are, to us, simply impossible to fathom, and Florya reacts to these changes in his life with a sort of awed silence, sometimes anger. Young actress Olga Mironova, apparently in her only film role, plays a pivotal role as Glasha, whom Florya befriends in the early part of the film.
The film ends with a simple but very disturbing montage of archive footage. As Florya attempts to symbolically destroy Adolf Hitler by firing bullets at his portrait, the black-and-white World War II footage rapidly rewinds: we see corpses at a concentration camp, a 1930s Nazi party rally, Hitler's services during World War I. As Florya fires more and more bullets, the images continue to reverse themselves, as though eradicating the history from existence. Finally, we arrive at a photograph of Adolf Hitler sitting on his mother's lap as a young baby. Unlike the Nazi savages who felt no remorse in torching entire villages to the ground, Florya cannot bring himself to symbolically murder this innocent child, even with the knowledge of the horrors he would later orchestrate. Is this morality the reason why wars are an inevitable consequence of human existence?
Though the final reel does undoubtedly stray towards propaganda (the Russian citizens are clearly shown to possess superior morals to those of the evil, fiendish Germans), the entire film is executed so disturbingly perfectly that you are too engrossed in the spectacle to really notice at all. There is no clear resolution to the story. Of course, the valiant Soviets successfully triumph over the company of Nazis, but they then strike off for another confrontation. The War will go on forever, and Florya will never be given a reprieve from all the horrors he has witnessed. The original working title of the film had been "Kill Hitler," not specifically referring to the infamous dictator, but with a more general meaning. As Klimov explains in the DVD preface to his film, he meant the title to suggest that we should kill the "Hitler" within ourselves, "because we all have our demons in this or that measure." However, after the title was deemed inappropriate, another was chosen from chapter 6 the Book of Revelations: "...and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, "Come and see!""
'Come and See' was the final film that Klimov ever directed. Having experienced World War II with his own eyes as a child, he felt that it was a film that he needed to make, and, after doing so, he was no longer compelled to continue directing. The director comments, once again on the DVD preface: "I don't regret that I made that film. It had a difficult pre-history and history. But one has to make it a difference once in a while, to commit something worthy. Herein lies the sense of creative work, when you can offer to people something real serious, real meaningful" Simply put, this is the masterpiece that he was born to make, and a single viewing will ultimately change the way that you view war.