(If you haven't seen it.) Elem Klimov's Come And See is a Russian movie, made in 1985, which some people rate as the finest war-movie of its type. Of its type. That's the grab. It's neither a hero nor an action movie - it is for those who seek the realism of genocide and of resistance to an invader. It follows a few weeks in the life of Florya (extraordinary performance) a Byelorussian boy in 1943 who is eager to join the guerrilla resistance to the Nazis, and who finds the horror of war far more damaging than he could have imagined.
If you must tell someone about a film, then perhaps say something original? No tedious 'saying of the plot'?
Victimhood. There's something distinctive about Klimov's Come And See isn't there? Is it that the movie is possibly the most realistic portrayal of victimhood ever attempted? Instead of war-movie action and histrionics (of which there is some of course) it connives, surely, through artistry and filmic devices (sound distortion in particular) to wrap a story of victimhood in the 'feel' of a sweet nightmare. Victims - a terrified Florya forced to kneel with a pistol to his temple surrounded by the aggressor humans who wish to have a photograph to take back to the wives-and-children humans, a memento of the winning one and the rightful fear he can claim in the eyes of the losing one. The camera in Come And See following a motorbike and side-car through mists and across invaded country-lanes, and tied upon it the corpse of a victim whose dead hands clasp a wooden notice which reads - 'Insulted a German soldier'. And in this movie there are so very many other examples of victimhood surely.
And then to sink this victimhood into a wash of gentle nightmare - isn't that Come And See's inspired touch? Not the crass nightmare of horror-movies but gentle, almost sweet, nightmare. The greatest touch of all - that slow plane high-overhead and its muffled drone (below). A leitmotif of Come And See that is repeated several times and sometimes only on the soundscape. It is the nightmare of distant threat that, worryingly, has a pleasing aspect. It is one of the few things I recalled from my first sight of this movie decades ago. That sweet plane and that sweet drone can stick in the mind for years.
Secondly - why is there no discussion of Klimov's clear message in Come And See that (as well as grown-ups) children are part of the problem too. Surely Klimov goes out of his way to make his point? Slide together three bizarre sequences in which the 'problem' of some children is quite bluntly pointed at. Florya digging in the sand and hunting for a rifle; shouted at by an old man who warns him - later the same old man now disgustingly crisped-black with burns, accusing Florya and actually blaming him for the death of his fellow villagers and for his own horrific injuries: "I warned you not to dig. I told you not to dig, didn't I?" Nazis who have herded victims into the village barn/church where they will be slaughtered, offering a (genuine) pass to anyone who is childless: "Those without children can go out. Out this window." (Later) "The children had to stay there. Because all the trouble starts with kids. ( - ) Some nations have no right to a future." And the third sequence, the famous sequence - Adolph Hitler 'rewound' right back to the infant Adolph: and Florya who cannot fire his bullet at the child.
Klimov's Come And See is a graphic depiction of war; and throughout the movie there runs a meaty theme about the causes of conflict and the need to resist. German National Socialist and Russian Communist peoples do want to run things differently. Florya's rifle will have to be pointed. And children are part of the problem also. Children are part of the problem in two ways. And Come And See addresses both - the infant Hitler will become the deadly adult Hitler in the passage of time, and thus the infant is in fact a problem; and the child (Florya on the sand) may already have the psychology of an aggressor within him, may in fact already be a problem and the burned village-elder might have seen it in the boy. Is Klimov (like Dennis Potter, on this blog, in 'Blue Remembered Hills') clear in his mind that children are not necessarily 'innocent', as many believe, that some children at least, have genetic dispositions that already do and will in the future cause trauma to others? Come and see.
Klimov has said that Come And See is an anti-war movie, anti-war in general and not specifically the German one (despite the sources of the movie, and the original title being 'Kill Hitler' - so take that as you will). Thus the subsequent problems of a blind assumption that Democracy is the best way to run the place, and that on the contrary Wise Autocracy (sometimes religious) is the best way to run the place, and the problems of child soldiers, are on this occasion pertinent. Florya cannot pull the trigger on the portrait of the infant Hitler, and it could be that Klimov meant the sequence to be a celebration of humanity and a call to stop the cycle of violence. But is it that? At the end of Come And See Florya hurries off to catch up with the partisans moving through the woods, hurries off to kill Germans. When he cannot find it within him to fire at the infant Hitler, is he a decent man, or is he a weak one? I might think his inability to pull the trigger to be a moment of basic humanity, but then I might be weak.
The art of film-making is all over Come And See isn't it? Florya and Glasha leaving the deserted family-hut and rushing off in search of family and neighbours who may have fled to the marshlands. The pot of soup bearing a last trace of warmth; the ominous buzzing flies; the dolls lined up on the floor; the silence - and then the rush down the country lane. The hand-held camera. Glasha looking back at the hut while running; and doubtless wishing that she had not. Glasha crying out and rushing away all the faster. And then - the camera looking back, while running, and also seeing what she has seen, the bodies (victims again) piled up against the back of the hut. While running - that is the point. It could so easily have been done differently and worse. There is something about what is seen 'on the run' that is quite different to what's seen while immobile. 'Running' affects the seen object doesn't it - the object needs to be made 'still' by the mind for it to be made full sense of; seen on the run the object must be comprehended fast because there is only a limited 'snatch time' before it disappears; and the act of interpreting something while running is an addition to running, a distraction, and as such raises the risk of a fall. Thus the 'general idea' of the seen object will be intensely captured, won't it, and the detail of the thing will be sacrificed (there isn't time and it's too risky). Choosing to have what's piled up against the hut, seen on the run, really is a touch of film genius. That particular image of horror is somehow worse seen in the general rather than in the detail, for the mind will wonder about the detail later, and will plague itself.
Klimov wanted above all else to make his audiences 'feel' in Come And See, feel the trauma of victimhood as he himself had. The camera does not stand to the side and show Glasha looking while on the run - the camera itself runs. And therefore so do Klimov's audiences and they themselves see as Glasha sees. There are a handful of images in Come And See that you could have shot on the run, but that pile of bodies probably is the one a great director should choose.
And then there is the peculiar horror of that image. The wall to Florya's hut has not been shot through. Have the bodies been gathered up from where they've been murdered and brought to this one place? Were they to be burned and someone got interrupted? Or were they led there to be executed one by one? Neatness. That's the point. Someone has been enjoying the process of murder. He is not content to murder at a distance and at random: he wants order and touch.
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