thefilmstage:A stark contrast from triumphalist Allied narratives of World War II, Elem Klimov’s spe
thefilmstage:A stark contrast from triumphalist Allied narratives of World War II, Elem Klimov’s spellbinding Belarus-set masterpiece Come and See–now playing in a beautiful new restoration from Janus Films–tells a harrowing story of the Eastern Front from the perspective of those for whom victory against the Nazis came at far too steep a price.Based on Ales Adamovich’s painstakingly researched historical novel I Am from the Fiery Village (the author also co-wrote the screenplay with Klimov), Come and See follows Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a young boy from rural Belarus seeking to enlist with the Soviet Partisans, eager for martial glory even as he ignores warnings of impending doom. Once war breaks out, Flyora’s reality begins to warp and fold in on itself as he bears harrowing witness to the Nazis’ war crimes and the existential horror of total war.Klimov’s technique, and thus the film’s sense and layering of realities, is intentionally chameleonic, shifting back and forth between cold-eyed realist war memoir and surreal impressionist nightmare–a reverie in which dreams, myths and visions meld seamlessly into the dispassionate facts of history and the conscious artifice of the cinema. In these mesmerizing stretches ambient sound surges and plummets; characters gaze eerily into the camera with shimmering ghostly eyes, uttering anguished cries and otherworldly portents. While not invoked by name, the spirits and customs of East European folklore hang heavy over the film–in sets, in incidental dialogue, in the persistent presence of animals as symbols and messengers. Like Terrence Malick, Klimov presents the natural world and folk culture as a space of prime and savage spiritual order, a transcendental flow violently interrupted by the intrusion of the twentieth century’s industrial war machine with its industrial secular ideologies, a shapeless but terrible behemoth which permits no spirit, faith or love to exist in its wake. A visual highlight of the film is a traditional mud scarecrow fashioned in the mocking visage of Hitler - a telling symbol of the clash between folk culture and violent modernity.With a new restoration of Come and See now in theaters, we explore the power of psychological violence in Elem Klimov’s anti-war classic. Komm und sieh -- source link
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