Come and See

CUSTOMER REVIEW



I was browing through the local public library's video shelves yesterday and pulled down "Idi i smotri" on a whim; I'd never heard of it and hoped only that I might be in for a better-than-average morality play, with the various subplots and melodrama typical of the war movie.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience. It is a singleminded, intensely focused, harrowing record of war, unlike anything I have ever seen. Elem Klimov gives us no moral context, makes no attempt to ground the viewer in any way (with the exception of a single scene near the end, after the cremation of the living villagers of Perekhody); instead his camera displays a frighteningly dispassionate willingness to simply show us. The title, I've read, may come from a verse in Revelations about the Beast; regardless, to "Come and See" is exactly what the film invites us to do -- simply to see reality. I think this is why the film is so engaging. I was forced to inhabit completely the eye of the camera, with nothing to protect me from what I was witnessing.

The most compelling "event" we're forced to witness is the evolution of the young protagonist's face, from that of a grinning, excited boy to a wizened, ageless yet ancient shell, scarcely a human face at all. (I've read a review which states that this film is about retaining one's humanity in the face of war. This is sanctimonious nonsense; it's about the obliteration of one's humanity.) Other incredible moments: the dreamlike scene in the forest, after the partisan camp is bombed, when Florian watches Glasha dance in a bright nimbus of falling rain...

I'm still recovering from this film... I may never recover. But I will watch it again, I know, because it's one of the most powerful viewing experiences I've ever had. Elem Klimov is a genius.

Just watch it!