"Why? Why?"

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2012)

I am always haunted by the idea that torture, murder, rape, war -- these thefts upon human dignity -- are of a surety happening now, simultaneously, somewhere in the world, but the illusion of distance makes it so that the reality of their existence does not intrude upon our thoughts as we go about our day. For the majority of us in the USA, our struggles are rarely near the thin line of life and death.
Even though the SS invasion of Byelorussia and the genocidal extermination of its people by the Nazis happened in 1943, Klimov's film Come and See encapsulates war so realistically that it tears down that very illusion of distance. Ripping away the curtain of reality and "sanity," we are faced with the very real issue of life and death -- that thing which we are hardwired to avoid. After watching Come and See and "staring death in the face," as Yeats put it, I was enveloped in a mood which ultimately made feel the preciousness of life and peace.
If you see the film it may make you seriously consider whether it would not be better to be dead than to live and to witness the absolute desecration of the human image (particularly in the famous scene when the peasants are herded into a church and burned alive by the Nazis). This is magnified by the fact that we see the events through the eyes of a boy turning into a man, the 13-year old boy Florya. As the film unfolds his eyes look as though they cannot take anymore -- yet there is more and he, we, are forced to go beyond this limit. At one point, eyes full of agony, he clutches his head as though it would explode. Yet there is nowhere for him to hide -- and perhaps something does explode within that shell of a body...
Some elements of the film which lingered long after its viewing included the leitmotif of the Nazi fighter plane - it is hypnotic the way the plane flies overhead, a symbol of strength, almost cleanliness, of technology, impersonal and god-like and untouchable in its power to destroy (we do see one grounded later on however). Its removal from us on the ground, in the mud, who are fighting for life which it has the power to give and take away. Its constant accompanying hum, in some distant way reminiscent of the sound of the flies that hover around the kitchen when Florya returns to his home. The hum of the plane was so otherworldly it gets inside your body and makes you feel war's unrelenting tension and fear.
Another scene that stayed with me: the cow that Florya steals is gunned down and he falls asleep next to it in the night after the deadly onslaught of machine gun fire -- one could almost feel the warmth and safety of that dead carcass. The way you see the white hairs on the cow in the light of the morning when Florya wakes up the next day. A moment of respite with the world upside down as Florya tries to tear the cow apart.
I have seen some reviews comment on the "reversal footage" scene of Hitler as a failure, yet I think that if you look at it not as a segment in itself but as part of the sequence preceding it and continuing into the next, then it is necessary: It is preceded by the villagers shooting the Nazis rather than torturing them, hence holding on to their humanity, and then you also see Flyora refrain from shooting the infant Hitler. Those acts are the only thing I think that can allow for one to imagine peace for those thousands who were killed.
There is the slightest solace at the end, with the sight of the snow in the forest (a symbol of the coming defeat of the Nazis) and the music as the camera moves through the forest. In fact, the film made me listen to Mozart's Lacrimosa in a completely different way - though familiar with the music I don't believe I had ever perceived the absolute scale of this composition before, but as it plays and you yourself remember the nameless, numberless thousands that were killed in this way, you felt its greatness in speaking for you, that it can contain all these images of suffering and so beautifully plead to give the dead rest.