War movies are an interesting breed because the subject they focus on is so universal - humanity has been plagued by war since the dawn of time, and we are no stranger to it. Yet war films still tend to fascinate us, despite how chillingly close we’ve become accustom to the subject. Granted, many are excuses for set piece action scenes, and others are nothing but expensive pieces of flag waving propaganda – but when a war film does it right, it can be powerful material. Some of the greats include The Thin Red Line, Cross of Iron, and The Cranes are Flying. But Elm Kilmov’s 1985 masterpiece Id ii smotri (Come and See) transcends every war movie ever made. In fact, it’s one of the best films ever made, period.
The thing that sets Come and See apart from most war films is that it doesn’t glamorize it. A lot of war films – even the good ones – tend to glamorize war, inadvertently or not. There are not very many that make you hate war. Come and See makes you hate war. It has purity about it in this way I’ve never experienced in a war film before. I’ve seen films come close to it, such as Cross of Iron, but no film has ever been as pure in its revulsion of war as Come and See. It depicts war as it is: a sick, twisted, grotesque animal. The very fabric of the film seems to detest the very idea of war. I know this seems like an exaggeration, but having watched the film twice, I still can’t shake the feeling. It’s nothing I’ve experienced before.
Come and See is certainly not for everyone, however. It could nearly be classified as a non-narrative film. The main character is a Russian boy named Flor who is eager to join a band of Belorussian partisans. His face is filled with anticipation of finally being able to join the struggle. The film follows Flor the entire time, and the film is told entirely from his perspective. There really is not much of a ‘plot’, as there is no ‘goal’ in the film. It just follows Flor around as he finds himself experiencing the war and drifting closer and closer to what can only be described as hell on Earth. It has a wandering, aimless feel – but in a good way. The audience, like Flor, never knows what’s going to happen next because Flor is lost, both physically and mentally. He drifts through the battlefields, the wilderness and the swamps. He meets a girl who travels with him, but as soon as they find each other they are separated. He decides to travel back to his village, only to discover the population had been massacred. He is alone, he is scared, he is angry, he is confused – and the brilliant thing about Come and See is the audience feels exactly the same way.
It should be mentioned that Come and See is also one of the more ‘abstract’ war films you’ve probably ever seen. But this is simply part of the brilliance of the film. The sound mix is completely unconventional. The score is a haunting, chilling mixture of sounds. A droning plane over the sound of distant tanks mixed with the screams and wails of a crowd becomes the music. Sometimes there will be a dim piece of Mozart mixed with the sound of birds, but it’s distorted and muffled because Flor is shell shocked - and therefore so is the audience. A lot of the sound in this film is distinctly distorted. It serves to create a feeling of uneasiness, and even of alienation. The music and the layered, frantic, disorienting sound makes your head spin and as the film progresses it gets more and more intense until the horrific, climatic sequence where the sound hits a crescendo and doesn’t let up. It lets you know you’ve arrived in hell. But there are very few films that have took such marvelous advantage of the artistic capabilities of sound. Instead of having sound just for the sake of dialogue and so forth, Come and See brings it to an entirely different level where sound is a key instrument in painting the horrific experience that the film is.
Visually I loved how everything was filmed on location and how there are no camera filters or crane shots or anything fancy. I wouldn’t say it’s done documentary style, but it is done in a frank and realistic fashion, and it feels like you really are wandering the scorched earth of the battlefield. Even the technical aspects seem eerily real, such as some of the firefights where tracers are flying just above the character’s heads. When I looked into it, I found out this is because in certain sequences, they used REAL ammunition. I even read that Aleksei Kravchenko – the actor who plays Flor – said he could actually hear bullets whiz just over him during filming. No wonder everyone looked so genuine. But back to the visuals, I really liked the muted colour pallet and the way nothing is tampered with. It’s like they set up a shot in the middle of a swamp, filmed, and just kept it like it is. They didn’t doctor anything up or stylize with the visuals. It just looks real and it’s all and all a very ‘gritty’ film, visually.
Now I mentioned before the devastating sequence during the climax, and I’ve got to say more about it, because it’s one of the most overwhelming depictions of evil on film that I’ve ever seen. Basically, the Germans end up herding an entire village population into a church and lock them in. Flor ends up trapped inside as well, but so far no one is quite sure what is happening. The film begins to turn into a frenzied, manic, hellish nightmare. As mentioned before, the audio becomes thick, confusing, disorienting and terrifying. You begin to question if what you are watching even real? The German soldiers are like a band of thugs - dancing around, screaming, yelling, and singing. It’s like we are watching some horrible dream. Next thing you know the Germans start throwing grenades in the church, and before you know it they’ve set it on fire. They are laughing and enjoying themselves, it’s as if they don’t even think anything of it. They’re just going to burn 500 people alive and then go for a coffee break. It’s a difficult sequence to watch – both because of the subject matter and because of the way Kilmov was able to turn it into a surrealistic nightmare. It’s also interesting to note that even though it’s one of the most horrible, evil things I’ve seen depicted, you never actually see the violence. Kilmov was a master at horrifying his audience without having to use bloods and reaction shots, and this sequence can attest to that.
The final scene features a broken Flor standing over a picture of Adolf Hitler. The camera looks squarely on his face. At the beginning of the film his face was full of youth, vigour and enthusiasm. At the end, Flor’s face is weathered and wrinkled, like that of an old man. He aims at the depiction of Hitler and begins to squeeze off rounds into it. Every time he shoots stock footage of Hitler and the war cuts in and the manically edited music and sound kick in. Everything is moving backwards – the entire history of the war unfolds in reverse. Flor continues to fire and the unrelenting music, sound and frenzied editing continues until we finally rest on a picture of Hitler as a little boy. Flor stops, completely drained, his eyes empty and dull. His soul broken.
And that’s why Come and See is the masterpiece that it is. It is the most successful film I’ve ever seen that shows what war does to the very soul of a person. The film spits on war, it is disgusted by it. I’ve never seen a film before that made me so despise it. It uses sound, music and visuals to shocking effect. Kilmov disorients, frightens, and otherwise terrorizes us with his brilliant mixture of audio and visuals, and truly creates an atmosphere of sheer dread and horror. There are sequences in this film I will not soon forget, the images seared in my mind. Ultimately, Come and See is one of the best films I’ve ever seen because the audience can so closely identify with the main character. We feel his outrage, his anger and his broken heart. We feel hatred; we feel his loss of hope and humanity. When Flor is firing into the picture at the end, we are carried away in a torrent of raw emotion which has been building for two hours. All the wars, all the chaos, all the destruction, all the hate - Come and See is unique in that it allows us to experience it all, and by the end we feel drained and hopeless. An intensely emotional experience like no other; a masterpiece of film, and a horrifying looking glass into the horrors of what human kind is capable of.
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