Come and See / Idi i smotri 1985
This was the last film by Elem Klimov (his first name an acronym for Engels, Lenin, and Marx) because he knew he'd said everything he needed to say. This film is relentless. It was shot on location in Belarus, in chronological order, using live ammunition instead of blanks and the uniforms worn weren't facsimile but genuine originals from the war itself. We're confronting actual human evil and the only thing I've seen like it is Resnais' doc Night and Fog.
They trusted the film stock's latitude and relied on the available light -- there's a great shot including a candle and an iris pull -- so you end up with gorgeous low contrast images with grainy, milky blacks. The greens that pop in scenes with Glasha are spectacular to behold (hopefully you get to watch a decent transfer.) The use of Steadicam is phenomenal. It's unsettling, probably because it already feels like a documentary and that camera really makes you float through scenes a little too closely...
Klimov knows when an image can speak for itself so the merciless score by Oleg Yanchenko largely consists of birds chirping, dogs barking, guttural noises, cries, hums, falling piercing pitches as well as the expected sounds of war, but the real kicker is a momentary respite hearing the sounds of Mozart -- maybe there are beautiful things that have come out of this world too? Fliora is rendered deaf and by the end is essentially mute. It's an incredibly aural film that hurt my ears and when the final title card shows up, left me in stunned silence.
War is surreal and nightmarish! The film is something more impressionistic, punctuating atrocities with images so weird! so inexplicable! that they almost come off as obscene. Fliora and Glascha both descend into a psychosis that oscillates between wild laughter and uncontrollable weeping and it's so often disorienting. I don't think we're supposed to have our bearings here.
Aleksey Yevgenyevich's performance as Fliora is dynamite...like holy shit. Olga Mironova as well. She goes off the rails. She's ASTONISHINGLY deranged and an extraordinary dancer. And these were all fresh, untrained, uninitiated actors!!! I can't imagine how Klimov managed to get these performances out of them. What did he tell him, what did he say??? I need to know. I read Klimov wanted to hypnotize Aleksey during some of the more brutal scenes so it wouldn't alter his young brain but hypnosis didn't work on him so he just had to you know, face it head on as a fourteen year old. I'm pulling my hair out typing this, I just can't believe how far young Mister Yevgenyevich knocked it out of the park. He moves like a seasoned veteran.
Now the “rewinding history” montage...yowza. The surreal and stylish and exaggerated film without a moment's notice switches to archival visuals that disturb and distress you in a way that no recreation no matter how accurate could do. Following the execution of the captured Germans and their collaborators, Fliora finds a framed portrait of Hitler resting in the mud (a villager was forced to carry it on their death march.) Using his rifle for the first time in the film, he begins to shoot it and with every bullet shot, it intercuts reversed footage of Hitler's life. When the footage reaches its final image -- the first known photo taken of Hitler as a baby, sitting on his mother's lap, Fliora finds himself unable to fire anymore. Maybe it's a reminder that the man whose name is synonymous with Evil, didn’t appear from a different planet but came into the world in the same unremarkable way as the rest of us. The Resistance kill the Nazi's but don't further desecrate or violate them after the fact. "As evidence of war, and as a plea for peace" humanity remains in these people who've been totally stripped of it (quote from co-author, Ales Adamovich.) This is nowhere near nihilism, I think there's tremendous affirmation in that.
**Seen in glorious 4:3 filling the entire screen in Theatre 1, with the loudest surround sound afforded by the Northwest Film Forum, After Hours. You were in it, there was no escape.
Just...imagine having to stage this. I'm overwhelmed...
They trusted the film stock's latitude and relied on the available light -- there's a great shot including a candle and an iris pull -- so you end up with gorgeous low contrast images with grainy, milky blacks. The greens that pop in scenes with Glasha are spectacular to behold (hopefully you get to watch a decent transfer.) The use of Steadicam is phenomenal. It's unsettling, probably because it already feels like a documentary and that camera really makes you float through scenes a little too closely...
Shooting day for night? Lit by morning light, sparklers, and gunfire. A cow's eye more harrowing than Un Chien Andalou, no doubt.
War is surreal and nightmarish! The film is something more impressionistic, punctuating atrocities with images so weird! so inexplicable! that they almost come off as obscene. Fliora and Glascha both descend into a psychosis that oscillates between wild laughter and uncontrollable weeping and it's so often disorienting. I don't think we're supposed to have our bearings here.
Floria so young, so spirited! Colorful cheeks! Misguided optimism!
Aleksey Yevgenyevich's performance as Fliora is dynamite...like holy shit. Olga Mironova as well. She goes off the rails. She's ASTONISHINGLY deranged and an extraordinary dancer. And these were all fresh, untrained, uninitiated actors!!! I can't imagine how Klimov managed to get these performances out of them. What did he tell him, what did he say??? I need to know. I read Klimov wanted to hypnotize Aleksey during some of the more brutal scenes so it wouldn't alter his young brain but hypnosis didn't work on him so he just had to you know, face it head on as a fourteen year old. I'm pulling my hair out typing this, I just can't believe how far young Mister Yevgenyevich knocked it out of the park. He moves like a seasoned veteran.
This movie has the gnarliest burn victim makeup I've ever seen. After we see it, Fliora tries to bury his head into the muddy earth hoping he can erase or escape his trauma but it's impossible. This scene...hoo boy...this one really got me....
The close-ups really force us to look at the faces that carry the brutalities of war and the suffering of an entire nation. The raped woman here is not Glasha. In his fugue state Fliora thinks it's her, but we never actually see Glasha again after we leave her at the village. It's a totally different actress: Glasha played by Olga Mironova, this woman played by Tatyana Shestakova.
*****IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT HONESTLY SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH, I DOUBT IT'LL BE A LESS EFFECTIVE SCENE BUT GOING IN BLIND WILL PAY OFF******
Ebert calls it "one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead." The film is no allegory! This isn't a film about war, but one specifically about the evils of Hitler and National Socialism. So fuck the worthless Nazi scum that have made themselves present in the year 2018 (???) here in the United States. Remind yourself of the barbarity, the cruelty, the savagery, the inhumanity that these limp dicked pieces of shit stand for. From the Book of Revelation: “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, ‘Come and see.' And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
**Seen in glorious 4:3 filling the entire screen in Theatre 1, with the loudest surround sound afforded by the Northwest Film Forum, After Hours. You were in it, there was no escape.
😍
I think Kino is the only US distributer that's released a DVD but it's also available on Filmstruck. Don't settle for what you can find on youtube. I think we watched a torrent off the Japanese blu-ray and it looked pristine. I'll try and get my hands on it, maybe upload it to a google doc? for anyone alienated by the bourgeois streaming service heh. We also got a copy of it at work the week after I saw it. Very weird. We're selling it for fifty (you heard me, five-zero) dollars...
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