Come and See War For What It Is [View all]

[Celerity]

A brutal Soviet film has some difficult lessons for today.

https://wisdomofcrowds.live/p/come-and-see-war-for-what-it-is



I have almost certainly spent too much time in the last several months on both Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels, watching with morbid fascination the war of our lifetime play out in gruesome real time. Part of the attraction is the (false) idea that one can glean some kind of insight from watching snippets of bloodshed and destruction. You think you’re getting some special perspective that doesn’t make it into the reported stories. You feel like you can track better how things are going, as if it’s some kind of contest. It’s a debilitating habit, and not good for the psyche.

Worse, it feels disrespectful. I am spending a lot of my time looking at a real tragedy which is not my own. I remember two years ago, when vacationing in Croatia with some friends, a man suffered a heart attack on the beach. A crowd stood and watched as some hero tried to revive the poor soul with CPR, with the victim’s girlfriend weeping inconsolably nearby. I just kept walking. I felt at the time that I didn’t want to be there. It felt like an awful private thing, and I wanted no part of it. I learned later that the man had died.

And yet here I am, unable to look away from the slaughter in Ukraine. This weekend, exhausted, I decided to watch a movie. It would have to be a war movie. The 1985 Soviet war film Come and See has long been on my list. I knew it would be rough going, but I figured I’d give it a go. (To say that I am about to spoil anything about the film feels wrong in its own right. “Spoiling” is the wrong word to use about a movie about such human depravity. But to those that like to see films without any idea of what happens in them, consider yourselves duly warned. And I extend the trigger warning more broadly: gruesome stuff ahead.)

Before I sat down, I glanced at Wikipedia for some background. It assured me this was an anti-war film, which gave me some comfort. But while it wasn’t about Ukraine, it did focus on the depredations the Nazis visited on the hundreds of rural villages in Belarus. Given where I felt mentally, it seemed like the thing to watch. Dear readers, this is not an anti-war film. It’s an unnervingly shot excavation of profound trauma, and an unflinching look at how human barbarism perpetuates itself. There is little that amounts to heroism in it, so it’s certainly not a glorification of war. But it is no repudiation of its logic either.

snip

1943, the Great Patriotic War, territory of Belarus. The 16-year-old boy Flera, having dug out a carbine among scraps of barbed wire, rusty machine-gun belts and shot-through helmets, goes into the forest to join the ranks of the partisans.

This film, like no other, shows the tragedy of a child on a battlefield. At the beginning of the picture Flera is just a teenager. But In the end, having gone through horror and fear, child becomes an adult, frighteningly adult - his face is distorted by senile wrinkles, and there is no room for love in his soul...

IMDb rating: 8,4

Year of production: 1985

Director: Klimov Elem
Writers: Alexander Adamovich, Elem Klimov
Composer: Yanchenko Oleg
Operator: Rodionov Alexey
Production designer: Petrov Victor
Cast: Laucevičius Lubomiras, Berda Alexander, Kravchenko Alexey, Mironova Olga, Bagdonas Vladas, Lumiste Juri, Lorenz Victor, Rabetsky Kazimir, Tilicheev Evgeny, Vasiliev Victor, Domrachev Vasily