Aleksey Kravchenko plays a Belarussian teenager who longs to join the partisans fighting the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1943. When he digs up a buried rifle, word spreads and the partisans recruit him, though at first he performs only menial tasks. A German reconnaissance plane has also spotted him digging up the hidden weapons cache, so when Kravchenko is separated from his unit and returns home, he finds his family slaughtered. He continues to witness Nazi atrocities as he serves, with the partisans hiding on an island in a nearby bog, moving to the rank of soldier before marching off to rejoin the battle.
In 1977, Klimov began work on the script with Ales Adamovich, co-author of the source novel I Am from the Fiery Village, inspired by Adamovich's own World War II experiences. Klimov was inspired in part by the fact that, at the time, few Russians knew of the Nazi campaign to kill Belorussian villagers. Some biographers feel the film's bleakness is also a result of the death of Klimov's wife, writer-director-actress Larisa Shepitko, in a car accident in 1979.
It took eight years for Klimov to get approval to make Come and See. The State Committee for Cinematography considered the script too negative and naturalistic. Finally under Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's new glasnost policy, the government had it put into production so its release would help commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. Amazingly, the only change they requested was in the title, which had originally been Kill Hitler.
The film's release title is a quote from the Book of Revelations: "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, 'Come and see.' And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed him." The film's setting in Belarus is the frontier region separating Germany from the then Soviet Union. As such, it was one of the first parts of the USSR invaded by the Nazis and among the most heavily damaged by them. Historians have labeled the systematic slaughter of villagers in more than 600 villages genocide.
Klimov did everything he could to insure authenticity during the nine-month shoot. Whenever possible, costume designer Eleonora Semyonova used actual uniforms from World War II. The production used real bullets, some of them passing within inches of the actors. They even shot the film in sequence so the young actors could experience the growing sense of horror as the war came closer and closer to home. Klimov shot the film entirely on location and decided to use only non-professional actors. Kravchenko, who plays Florya, was only 13 during filming. After nine-months of exhausting work on the film, his hair turned gray. Nonetheless, he would return to acting 10 years later and go on to have a long career.
Cinematographer Aleksey Rodionov achieved a naturalist feel in some scenes through the use of a natural color palette and a Steadicam that follows the characters as they travel through the war-torn landscape. He also made extensive use of extreme close-ups, not shying away from burned and mangled bodies left behind by the Germans. Yet Klimov also included tight close-ups of the characters' simply staring into the camera and rapid zooms to underline key points. The result is a nightmarish atmosphere that makes viewers feel surrounded by the war.
Come and See opened to mostly glowing reviews, though at some screening's audience members were so unnerved by the horrifying images they needed medical care. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice called it "a robust art film with aspirations to the visionary....For the most part, [Klimov] prefers to show the Gorgon as reflected in Perseus's shield. There are few images more indelible than the sight of young [Aleksey] Kravchenko's fear-petrified expression." One unsolicited rave came from a German veteran who saw the film and deemed it a highly accurate representation of what his unit had done in the USSR during World War II. The film won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival. It was a huge hit in the Soviet Union selling 28,900,000 tickets and was the USSR's entry in the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, though it did not receive a nomination from the Academy.
If anything, the film's reputation has grown over the years. In 2010, Roger Ebert listed it among the great movies, calling it "one of the most devastating films ever made about anything." Writing in The Guardian, Tim Lott said the picture "makes Apocalypse Now look lightweight." Its 2017 restoration won a special award at the Venice Film Festival. By that point, Klimov had died (in 2003). He never made another film after Come and See, stating that with the film "Everything that was possible, I felt I had already done."br>
Director: Elem Klimov
Screenplay: Ales Adamovich & Klimov Based on I Am from the Fiery Village by Adamovich, Janky Bryl and Vladimir Kolesnik
Cinematography: Aleksey Rodionov
Score: Oleg Yanchenko
Cast: Aleksey Kravchenko (Florya Gaishun), Olga Mironova (Glasha), Liubomiras Laucevicius (Kosach), Vladas Bagdonas (Roubej), Juri Lumiste (German Officer), Viktors Lorencs (German General)
By Frank Miller
