Klimov is a cinematic master!!!

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2010)

I will never be able to forget this movie hard as I try to erase it from my memory, it remains in the back of my mind, popping up every now and again to remind me that it was not just some war movie. I felt a terror that I can only imagine is infinitesimal compared to those who lived, and died, during the Nazi occupation of Byelorussia.
The movie follows the naïve Florya, a boy around 13 or 14, who joins the Byelorussian partisans in the war in 1943. Throughout the movie he ages and looses his innocence through the disturbing reality of war.
It was so beautiful in the most demented way possible. I don't mean to say it is "beautiful" to see Nazi's running around killing everyone in sight. It's beauty lies in it's affect on the human psyche. However unsettling, I feel changed, renewed, different, although I can't put my finger on it, the world seems more beautiful, more resilient and more terrible than before. The few who lived through that war haunt my dreams and my nightmares. A close friend of my family survived that; he was able to survive war and desolation, the murder of his family, the oppression of his people, yet he was taken easily by cancer last February.
This movie is the same morbid poetry that true life is made off. In my favorite scene, Florya and Glasha, survive a bombing on their camp, and are alone in the forest. They have gone temporarily insane but are so overjoyed to be alive, they can do nothing but dance the Charleston and laugh hysterically in the rain.
While watching I wasn't thinking, "hmm, that's an interesting angle" or "did that cow really just get shot?" I was just in horror, not blinking, not moving, not thinking. Finally towards the end I decided I would just close my eyes until it was all over, I didn't want to believe any of it was real anymore. But I couldn't. I just sat, catatonic in horror, more afraid to look away than to continue. If I closed my eyes, I would be betraying Klimov and everyone that lived that horror. I owed it to them, all of them, to watch and see what we humans are capable of—both survivors and destroyers.
After the movie ended I didn't speak. It wasn't until a the next morning that I could tell my mother why I cried myself to sleep.
This movie will stay with you. It will make you wish you had never watched it, yet at the same time you'll be thankful that you did. It made me feel crazy, hopeful, furious, happy, hopeless, vengeful, and many other emotions I can't even begin to identify. This is cinematic art-sound, cinematography, location, and acting all work so effectively together, we can feel freezing rain and the putrid swamp squishing between our toes. We can smell the bodies burning, and know numb terror of the young girl with blood running down her legs. I hope someday I'll be able to will myself to watch it again so I can pay more attention to Klimov's artistry and skill as a filmmaker.