Idi i smotri (1985)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Elem Klimov

Writers:

Ales Adamovich (screenplay)
Ales Adamovich (stories)

Release Date:

17 October 1985 (Hungary)

Genre:

Drama | War

Plot:

A boy is unwillingly thrust into the atrocities of war in WWII Byelorussia, fighting for a hopelessly...

Plot Keywords:

Byelorussia | Boy | Atrocity | WWII | Airplane

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Aleksei Kravchenko	...	Florya Gaishun (as A. Kravchenko)
Olga Mironova	...	Glasha (as O. Mironova)
Liubomiras Lauciavicius	...	Kosach (as L. Lautsyavichius)
Vladas Bagdonas		(as V. Bagdonas)
Jüri Lumiste
Viktor Lorents		(as V. Lorents)
Kazimir Rabetsky		(as K. Rabetsky)
Yevgeni Tilicheyev		(as Ye. Tilicheyev)
Aleksandr Berda		(as A. Berda)
G. Velts
V. Vasilyev
Igor Gnevashev		(as I. Gnevashev)
Vasili Domrachyov		(as V. Domrachyov)
G. Yelkin
Ye. Kryzhanovsky

Also Known As:

Иди и смотри (Soviet Union: Russian title)
Come and See (USA)
Go and See

Runtime:

142 min | Argentina:146 min | Germany:146 min | USA:140 min

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

Belarusian | Russian | German

Color:

Black and White (archive footage) | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:16 | UK:15 | France:U | Germany:16 (DVD rating) | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | West Germany:16

Company:

Mosfilm

Trivia:

Many of the uniforms seen throughout the film are originals.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Several Germans can be see wielding MP or STG 44's which were not in service until summer 1944 (this film is set in 1943).

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Defiance (2008)

Soundtrack:

Die Walküre

Makes Schindler's List look like Sesame Street

The best quality of Elem Klimov's film is its ability to shift tone and visual perspective. Although "Come and See" predominantly follows the rites-of-passage journey of a young boy, it is remarkable how often and effortlessly Klimov is able to offer us the objective and subjective states of a wide range of characters and objects.

Like Malick, Klimov is as much interested in the landscape (and the objects and people that inhabit it), as he is in representing the minutiae and widening horror of his protagonist's journey from home to the multiple sites of slaughter and genocide that mar the countryside.

For example, in one of the films most remarkable and surreal scenes, several characters are shown guiding a cow across what seems to be open and unguarded terrain. Suddenly a series of intense firefights break out. Several characters are killed, but it is the fate of the cow with which the film is most preoccupied.

The images of the cow standing untouched by the raging skirmish, then struck by a barrage of tracer bullets, and finally of its eyes rapidly shifting and dilating before death, are indicative of "Come and See's" ability to produce indelible images from what are often quite standard war film situations.

The journey of a wide-eyed innocent across a fallen landscape is common territory for the war film, but like Ichikawa's "The Burmese Harp" and Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood", "Come and See" enlivens and enriches the form through the iconoclasm and intensity of many of its images.

Unlike "Schindler's List" (Spielberg screened "Come and See" several times for cast and crew prior to shooting his Holocaust film), "Come and See" is also remarkable for its use of abstract colour and sound. This is not a realist film, its greatest shocks and effects are produced by the nightmarish pilling of horror upon horror, the mutedness of its burnished cinematography, the extraordinary close-ups of several of the characters impossibly aged faces, the hyper expressive performances of many of its actors, and the impressionistic and at times almost expressionistic use of subjective sound.

In this context, the title of the film is not just an entreaty for the audience to bear witness, to "see" that which is not imaginable, that which has little visual record, and to get a sense of the physical conditions (the "come" of the title) experienced by those who tread this bleak battleground and frontier, but a description or pointer towards the material conditions, qualities and spectatorial expectations of the film.

The film is essentially an epic journey and many of its images possess an almost Dantesque quality. It can also be seen as a "coming of age" film, a remarkable "coming" or progression (or is it regression?) that is etched upon the utterly transformed face of its central character.

10/10