Salutations!

I’ve found some free time and decided to review the Russian/Belarussian film, Come and See. If you don’t want to see story spoilers, just go watch it, unless you’re sensitive to the imagery of corpses(a lot of them), violence, sounds of screaming(a lot of them and they go on for too long), etc. please look for something else entirely.

The Story

The film takes place in 1943, during the Nazi occupation of Belarus. Two young boys dig up old trenches to find weapons they could use to get into the Red Army. The protagonist, Flyora, finds a gun and takes it back home. The next day he is recruited by soldiers of the Red Army, and taken to a camp, where he spends most of his time completing chores. There he meets a girl roughly his age, Glasha, which was rescued by the partisans. She serves as a nurse at the camp. Soon the leader of this group, Kosach, decides to move on and leave a few troops behind, including our protagonist and Glasha.

The camp is attacked and Flyora is partially deafened by the bombings, but together with Glasha manages to escape the paratroopers. Flyora suggests they go back to his village, but no one is there. Flyora is in denial of what has happened, all the signs were there, so he suggests that his village has escaped to an island across the bog. On their way there, Glasha Notices the corpses piled up behind a barn, she is terrified but doesn’t tell Flyora yet. when they finally get out of the bog she begs him to stop, his family is dead. Soon they meet a partisan fighter, who takes them to the survivors’ camp, there he encounters his uncle, the chief of the village, who had been covered in gasoline and set ablaze, the Germans had refused to kill him. Flyora tries to commit suicide out of guilt but is stopped by Glasha.

In the next act, Flyora together with the remaining partisan fighters leaves on a mission to gather supplies. One by one, his friends die, one is wounded, another helps him, they step on a landmine. The last soldier helps him steal a cow from a village controlled by germans, but as they’re leaving, heavy machinegun fire kills both Flyora’s friend and the cow. in shell shock, Flyora falls asleep where he lay. The next day, he attempts to steal a horse and carriage to move the dead cow but gets stopped by the farmer. When they hear the german army approaching, the farmer tells him to hide his uniform amid haybale.

The final act of the film is, for a lack of words, 30-minutes of psychological torture. When the germans reach the village, they round up everyone and ask for their documents proving their identity. They offer some to go to Berlin for reasons not clear to them and then push everyone else into an empty church. They tell the peasants that they can leave if they leave their children behind. Flyora escapes and passes an inspection by the commander in charge, and gets thrown to the ground. He then witnesses the germans light the church on fire with Molotov and flamethrowers, the entire platoon fires upon the church with all manner of machine guns, and even throw grenades inside. They only stopped when they could not hear a voice.

The germans take the women they spared and leave. Flyora remains facedown, shocked at what he just witnessed. Later on, he goes back to retrieve his gun and his uniform. And there he finds his old comrades who had left him back at the camp, rounding up the remaining german soldiers after they ambushed their convoy. The high command of the German platoon confess their crimes and are shot dead by the partisans. Flyora meets Glasha, who had been raped but thankfully was saved by Kosach before the Germans killed her. Flyora then follows his platoon into the forest, and then the camera turns to the sky and fades out.

The Cinematography

This film had a lot of quirks, some scenes I didn’t mention because I would have to explain them again here.

All-seeing eye

Throughout the film, and from the very beginning, Flyora is being watched by a recon aircraft, a Focke-Wulf 189. It is told to us by Flyora’s uncle that the germans came because he was spotted holding a gun by this plane. The plane presents itself from the view of Flyora and the pilot’s view overlooking Flyora. The audio that plays in the plane changes each scene, one of Hitler’s speeches in one, radio chatter, laughter in another. It creates a sense of dread and symbolically represents the coming danger.

Dangerously realistic

Alike many movies made in the 1980s, Come and See used actual explosives, live ammo, real flamethrowers, and burned real buildings. It feels uncomfortably realistic, and it has a kind of charm to it. Alas, it is so sad that we’ll never see a movie made this way ever again.

Look into my eyes

Multiple times in the film, the director would film the actors’ faces straight on, for uncomfortably long, and in the latter half of the film, the view would also get filled by other characters moving in the background. It forces you to remember Flyora’s face and his descent into madness.

Stand triumphant

Just before the end of the movie, Flyora finds a picture of Hitler in the mud. Flyora raises his gun and fires. What we see is the entire life of Hitler played in reverse; audio-visually speeds up each time Flyora shoots and slows down when Hitler is in clear view. Eventually, it turns into pictures, each shot by Flyora, replaced by a picture of a younger Hitler. When it reaches a picture of the just-born Adolf Hitler with his mother, Flyora suddenly stops, tears run down his face. It symbolically represents that, even after all this suffering inflicted upon him, Flyora didn’t lose his humanity.

Conclusion

Come and See is regarded as the second-best film made by the Russian Federation. It is a beautiful yet painful story of suffering, and as the movie ends, some cards inform us that this was one tale of possibly more than 600 villages that suffered the same fate. It is a cinematic masterpiece you should watch.

Until next time, R&M