Film Review: Come and See

I.

I watched a famous Soviet era war film called Come and See last weekend after my wife and daughter had gone to sleep. I’d have asked my wife to watch it with me, but Roger Ebert said something like “It’s the worst date movie ever made.” (You can read his review here.)

I knew two things going into this film: The first is that it’s considered one of the greatest (anti) war films ever made, and was released in Soviet Russia in 1985. And the second is that it’s apparently difficult to watch, as the content of the film is intense.

Watching a depressing Soviet anti-war film is the sort of thing that sounds interesting, but when you have time to yourself on a Saturday night, you usually find something better to do, which is why it was on my to-watch list for the better part of a decade. It is an interesting film though, and was unlike any other war film I’ve watched.

I was expecting extended scenes of suffering and tragedy. Instead the film felt more like a surreal horror, and relied more on discordant soundtracks, and filming sequences that felt more like a nightmare than reality.

The protagonist of the film, who is a Belarusian boy on the cusp of puberty, maybe 14 years old. At the start of the film he’s digging up dirt in a forest, and eventually finds a gun, which had apparently been buried there for some reason. We next see that local partisan forces, somehow realizing he has found a gun, take him away from his mother to join their hidden military operation in the woods. This all takes place in media res, and you have to piece together what is going on. The film doesn’t spoon-feed it to you.

Next, the boy arrives in some woods outside the village, and there are some scenes where the group of ‘soldiers’ are taking silly pictures of themselves, with some background drama regarding the so-called commander, and what appears to be his girlfriend. There isn’t any structure here, and a lot of the scenes are this boy observing his surroundings, with disorienting scene jumps.

Eventually the young boy wanders off, and stumbles into the girlfriend of the commander, who is crying. Their conversation is some mixture between foreshadowing, and nonsensical. With close-up scenes of the girl as she oscillates between crying and manic laughter. It wasn’t clear to me if it was hard for me to follow because I’m missing context due to the fact that I’m reading subtitles from a 35 year old Soviet film, or if it’s deliberately disorienting. Although I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

At the end of this scene, the boy and girl, who we don’t know much about at all, seem to become friends. Then the woods starting being bombed, German paratroopers come down, and the film pops off.

II.

The film then devolves into scattered scenes of atrocities. As a result, Come and See is a difficult film to review, since it relies more on this style of horror surrealism instead of plot. I could tell you the sequence of events that happens, but that’s not interesting. Instead let me share with you the first hand account of a Polish women who survived a similar occupation by the Wehrmacht. (I found this when poking through a WW2 archival project called the ‘Chronicles of Terror’ after watching the film.)

The group was herded in the direction of Górczewska Street; however, instead of driving us through the flyover in the direction of the city, we were ordered to turn left into Górczewska Street before we reached the flyover. We passed the place where the machine guns had been pointed at us, and where corpses were already lying, and were brought almost opposite to a yard, near which houses were still burning.

The yard was forty meters long and thirty meters wide. On the sides houses were burning, in the back there was an empty ground, and on that ground there was a small wooden house which was not on fire. In the yard from the side of the two houses there were corpses, I didn’t have the time to count them, but anyway there was already a pile.

We were brought in threes to the left side of the yard (near the single standing house). In front of the house there were several Gestapo men who fired at us from light machine guns. I followed my father, who, seeing that they were killing people, held me up and said: “Mietek, this is the end”, and then he collapsed behind me. I was not hurt, I do not know whether my father got hurt at that time. We later confirmed that he was dead, he had been shot through the head. I assume that they finished him off later. Having collapsed, I lay near the edge of the pile, from the side of the shooters, and my head got half-covered by my coat. When everybody was already on the ground, the Germans were still shooting the machine guns in the direction of the lying people, firing long bursts, and then I heard that they were bringing in another group.

Our execution started around 3.30 p.m. and ended after an hour and a half. However, after the last group had been brought, Ukrainian soldiers returned three more times and killed off the dying. The Ukrainians were laughing, talking, they were drunk, and they were eagerly shooting anyone who was moving or giving any signs of life.

I stumbled across this specific account from a few hours of reading these. The occupation of these towns across the Eastern front all sound remarkably similar.

What Come and See did that reminds me of these first-hand accounts, is it didn’t tell a story. There is no story in the account above, it’s a sequence of terrible things that happened.

The reality of war, is that for the civilians who suffer it is pointless and violent. Come and See doesn’t present a character or plot driven film, and there is no sentiment. The characters have little dialogue, and we don’t know them particularly well. Instead we witness an occupying force commit atrocities. And if that doesn’t sound entertaining to watch, you would be right.

III.

What the film does offer as a substitute for the lack of story or entertainment, is an unusual style. As the film progresses, the scenes increasingly feel like an extended dream-sequence.

The most striking example occurs after the initial bombardment, when the boy is looking for his family, and cannot find them in their home. While he’s rummaging through his families small cottage the sound and presence of flies increase. As you’re watching it you begin to predict what has happened. He then becomes convinced his family must have crossed a swamp into the island, and begins running to the swamp as fast as he can.

With the angle of the shot, the viewer and girl become aware of what happened to the village and his family. As the girl tries to catch up to him, the mud of the swamp slows her down, and looks as though it will drown her. As she is trying to speak, she is so terrified that she can’t put the words together to get his attention. It’s an extended scene that feels like the filming of a nightmare.

IV.

I’m not trying to sell watching this film, because I can’t honestly say anyone would enjoy watching it. But if you’re like me, and feel some duty to try and understand the horror of war, it’s worth watching. Particularly now, as militaries are being rebuilt, and we’re awaking from our complacent slumber. The collective consciousness of past war is slipping away from us, which means it’s important for us to read and watch past accounts of war.