Name of film – Come and See (1985)
Lizard film – 034
Chosen by – Jones
Date – June 2019
Director – Elem Klimov
Starring – Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova
Duration – 142 mins
Genre – Foreign (Belarus, Russia, Germany) Drama, War
Summary –
During WWII, a Belarusian boy is thrust into the atrocities of war, fighting with a hopelessly unequipped Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces. Witnessing scenes of abject terror and surviving horrifying situations, he loses his innocence and then his mind.
MASHITER’S SCORE & REVIEW
ACTING – 8
DIRECTING – 8
SCORE/AUDIO – 9
CINEMATOGRAPHY – 7
ENTERTAINMENT – 5
TOTAL – 37/50 = 74% ***
I’ve tried most challenges when it comes to brutal films and video nasties. Sitting down with my Aunty at 7 years old to watch ‘An American Werewolf in London’ must have kindled a morbid fascination in me for the darker side of cinema. Bizarrely, after watching nearly all of the banned films and video nasties, including ‘A Clockwork Orange’, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, ‘I Spit on yourGrave’, and ‘Faces of Death’, possibly only ‘The Exorcist’, with its anti-religious connotations, actually got into my head. It would be interesting to see what this one did.
I’m not a world cinema film buff and it was obvious I was going to have to have a bit of patience with this one from the start, and a strong stomach. What I didn’t realise is how angry the film would make me, yet helpless to do anything to assist the characters on screen. Nearly as angry as I felt when the dart-board had been removed from The Golden Rule.
The film comes to life 20 minutes after the young teenage boy is dragged from his screaming mother and twin sisters to enlist in the Russian fight against the German invasion in the middle of World War ll. From the dropping of that first bomb, there is no let up, no holding back and absolutely no happy ending.
There are flashbacks, through musical interludes, of life before the war and brief periods of happiness as Florya and Glasha play around between German attacks. But these are intentionally out of place, designed to drop you further into the murky depths of this real slice of war when the next scene begins.
The audio and sounds in the film are designed to disconcert the audience. High pitched whistles, barely audible low flying aircraft noises and mechanical sounds with intermittent bomb and gun fire mixed with an ambient soundtrack mean that it’s not exactly a picnic in the park to sit through. I’m sure that Rob J will have watched this with headphones on which will only have intensified the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in an inescapable nightmare. At times voices are inaudible or just guttural growls but all designed to make this the most uncomfortable experience possible. Perhaps though, it is the intermittent laughter that disturbs the most as there is certainly no place for it in this film.
The movie doesn’t require acting of the highest notch. This is a real-life story being retold and real-life is what you get in droves. But the acting of the young boy is quite phenomenal. He ages 50 years over the course of a few days. His permanently shell-shocked expression tells a million stories – all as gut-wrenchingly sad as the last one.
If the soundtrack to the film is surely the noise you would descend into hell with then the visuals will have an even greater effect on your sub-conscious. The Stork signifying a Nazi watching the sleeping children in the forest; the skull of the dead German officer plastered with clay before having his ears ‘reattached’; the burnt uncle – set alight by German soldiers. Those were the lighter moments. You could almost smell the kerosene and burning flesh as a whole village community was burned to the ground in the church: just one of 628 villages that the German Army inflicted such an act on.
Seriously, just to act in this, women and children included, must have been so claustrophobic and harrowing. The child actors must have been terrified. The scene where one young boy is thrown back through the window after their parents had tried to get him to escape was particularly thought-provoking and disturbing.
So where did it rank amongst the more extreme films I’ve seen. Well it was by far the ‘realest’ as this, and worse, did actually happen. Part of the power of the film is to pose you a million questions – one of which is ‘How on earth can this happen – on our continent and only recently?’ Of course, it is happening somewhere in the world whilst I am writing this. The film is very uncomfortable to watch but you feel it is your duty to do so to make up for the sheltered life that we lead ourselves. To put yourself in the position of those who suffered like, hopefully, we will never have to.
Anyone who wants to experience a war film involving man’s inhumanity to man with a visual and audio intensity that you’ll never have seen before then watch this. It’s not a case of ‘Come & See’, more a case of ‘See if you can sit through this’. I found it was a case of challenging myself to get to the end rather than wanting to do it. And really, you just have to. But it won’t sit well afterwards…
DREYER’S SCORE & REVIEW
ACTING – 8
DIRECTING – 9
SCORE/AUDIO – 7
CINEMATOGRAPHY – 8
ENTERTAINMENT – 6
TOTAL – 38/50 = 76% ***
Nines across the board! Not my genre at all, but that was a super piece of work!
ACTING 80%
DIRECTING 85%
SCORE/AUDIO 80%
CINEMATOGRAPHY 75%
ENTERTAINMENT 55%
TOTAL SCORE 75%
(MM – 74% RD – 76%)
*** 3 STAR LIZARDMAN RATING ***
Lizardman Film Club 