The 40th anniversary of the Great Victory was approaching. [6] [12] [13] The management had to be given something topical. I had been reading and rereading the book I Am from the Fiery Village, which consisted of the first-hand accounts of people who miraculously survived the horrors of the fascist genocide in Belorussia. Many of them were still alive then, and Belorussians managed to record some of their memories onto film. I will never forget the face and eyes of one peasant, and his quiet recollection about how his whole village had been herded into a church, and how just before they were about to be burned, an officer gave them the offer: "Whoever has no children can leave". And he couldn't take it, he left, and left behind his wife and little kids... or about how another village was burned: the adults were all herded into a barn, but the children were left behind. And later, the drunk men surrounded them with sheepdogs and let the dogs tear the children to pieces. Come And See (Idi I Smotri) - English subtitled - Lumière Cinema Maastricht". lumiere.nl . Retrieved 18 February 2020.

Barfield, Charles (18 December 2019). " 'Come And See' 2K Restoration Trailer: Elem Klimov Incredible War Gets Re-Released In 2020". theplaylist.net . Retrieved 18 February 2020. Color / 1:37 / 143 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 30, 2020 / 39.95 I first saw this movie on SBS (in Australia) in the early 1990s and it has stayed with me. It is "a difficult watch", as they say, and if you are of a delicate nature then it might be best to think twice about watching it, because once seen, it is not easily forgotten. The 58th Academy Awards (1986) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 24 March 1986 . Retrieved 5 March 2020. To create the maximum sense of immediacy, realism, hyperrealism, and surrealism operating in equal measure, [21] Klimov and his cameraman Aleksei Rodionov employed naturalistic colors, widescreen and lots of Steadicam shots; the film is full of extreme close-ups of faces, does not flinch from the unpleasant details of burnt flesh and bloodied corpses, and the guns were often loaded with live ammunition as opposed to blanks. [6] [16] [17] [22] [23] Kravchenko mentioned in interviews that bullets sometimes passed just 4 inches (10 centimeters) above his head [16] (such as in the cow scene). Very little protection was provided on the set. When the dive bombs were detonated the camera crew only had a concrete slab 1.5 meters tall and 5 meters wide to protect them. [6] At the same time the mise-en-scène is fragmentary and disjointed: there are discontinuities between shots as characters appear in close up and then disappear off camera. Elsewhere, the moment of revelation is marked by a disorienting zoom-in/dolly-out shot. [6] Music [ edit ]In 2001 Daneet Steffens of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "Klimov alternates the horrors of war with occasional fairy tale-like images; together they imbue the film with an unapologetically disturbing quality that persists long after the credits roll." [49]

It's no small feat to consider when processing the 1985 masterpiece from Soviet director Elem Klimov ( Agony).

Come and See ( Russian: Иди и смотри, romanized: Idi i smotri; Belarusian: Ідзі і глядзі, romanized: Idzi i hliadzi) is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova. [4] Its screenplay, written by Klimov and Ales Adamovich, is based on the 1971 novel Khatyn [5] and the 1977 memoir I Am from the Fiery Village [6] ( Я из огненной деревни, Ya iz ognennoy derevni), [7] of which Adamovich was a co-author. [8] Klimov had to fight eight years of censorship from the Soviet authorities before he could be allowed to produce the film in its entirety. [9] [10] Come And See takes its title from The Apocalypse of John, where Johnny Cash used the words in his song "The Man Comes Around", stating, "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." Those are truly terrifying words, and they certainly ring true throughout this tragic, yet poetic movie that's full of unimaginable chaos and beautiful magic realism. Whitegirl Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance". New York Press. 16 February 2015 . Retrieved 6 November 2021. Klimov’s aim is to make the audience feel the full terror of war. We’re told that the director worried that the stress Kravchenko would have to absorb might be psychologically damaging. Would these physical and psychological torments drive the 13-year-old boy going mad? He had an idea of hypnotizing the actor as some kind of protection (the name of the mysterious psychic Wolf Messing comes up in discussion). But Alexei turned out to be mentally resilient. Flyora was beaten, abused, screamed at and threatened in every scene for nine solid months, out in the elements. More danger was involved than usual — real explosives are used for the bombing scenes and live tracer ammunition turns a night fighting scene into something terrifyingly real.

a b c d e Wess, Richard (22 June 2020). "9 Must-Know Facts About Come and See". Russia Beyond . Retrieved 7 July 2020. Come and See was selected as the Soviet entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee. [67] Award In the end, Criterion has put together a satisfying collection of supplements, covering the film’s production, it’s subject matter, those behind it, and it’s visual style. Closing

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Because this WWII in Belarus, which is between Poland and Russia, it's only going to get worse. It is enough to allude to further atrocities. However, the burning structure of villagers desperately trying to escape while Nazis laugh and clap and play music absurd to the scene, futher dehumanizing their victims, is another scene seared into my mind for all time. There have been a smattering of films over the past several decades that cover the atrocities of the Holocaust with everything from the Oscar-winning Schindler's List from Steven Spielberg to the just as important Hungarian indie film Son of Saul. Even Salo: 120 Days of Sodom covered the nazi regime in Italy and most recently, Taika Waititi took an impressive approach with Jojo Rabbit. These films have spanned multiple decades and genres that try and tell part of a massive story and war that happened not too long ago across the globe. Claude Lanzmann's 10-hour documentary Shoah captured perhaps the most visceral stories from all aspects of life from that time, but it's with Soviet film director Elm Klimov's 1985 film Come And See that some of the most disturbing visuals are shown that have capsulated the Holocaust in a strikingly visual way, similar to the recent film 1917, a vision that is not soon forgotten. Stein, Elliott (18 August 2009). "Come and See". The Village Voice. New York City. Archived from the original on 22 October 2012 . Retrieved 25 February 2014.