Film Review: Come and See
Directed by Elem Klimov, written by Ales Adamovitch, Elem Klimov, Mosfilm
How do you recognize perfection? When talking about film, it should be obvious, no? Multi-dimensional characters, clever but real dialog, a main plot that both surprises and makes sense, subplots that engage and tie up loose ends. In short, perfection in film is the power to draw the viewer into and make them a part of the world that is being presented, to let them walk away feeling they’ve just returned from an epic journey—of the heart, of the mind, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the experience. Hopefully, an experience the viewer will want again and again.
But what about that experience so pure, so perfect, that you know to have it again will only ruin its perfection? For me, that’s the definition of a truly, truly well written film. And for me, that film is 1985 Soviet war movie, Come and See.
Written by Ales Adamovich and Elem Klimov, and directed by Elem Klimov, Come and See draws upon both men’s personal experiences during World War II in Belorusse, where the Nazis systematically burned hundreds of villages to the ground, exterminating their inhabitants in some of the most brutal acts of wartime in the 20th Century. The film perfectly captures what in previous films had traditionally been depicted as the nightmare of war in to a far more horrifying night terror.
Come and See begins with a gun and ends with a gun: a gun found by the boy Florya that is the tragic and absurd burden of the man Florya becomes. Told with little dialog and poetically wrenching cinematography, the film alternates between fairy-tale like imagery and gruesome reality as Florya grows from confounded innocence to angry futility at the massacre of his entire world – in fact, of the entire world.
When I think of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, the atrocities in the Balkans, the hundred years of war in Afghanistan, this is what I think of. Come and See has defined for me what it feels like to be caught in a war, to be invaded, to live through the tragicomedy of a manmade hell even though I’ve never had the first-hand experience.
This is the real magic of movies, the true power of cinema that elevates it to an art form. Come and See has the rare power to move, to haunt, to stay with you years after seeing it. I’ve only seen it once, and that was many years ago. Although I should watch it again, I feel I don’t need to. The experience was perfect: I have lived through war, I have survived, I have been changed by it forever. That is one powerful script.
Klimov never made another film after Come and See was released in 1985. In 2001 – two years before his death –he said: "I lost interest in making films ... Everything that was possible I felt I had already done."
The ability to recognize perfection is also the ability to know when to walk away.
February 2011, New Empress Magazine