The Invitation: A Review of Come and See (1985) Dir: Elem Klimov

Elem Klimov’s Come and See is an invitation, a calling to bear witness. The film rewards us with a masterful, wholly artistic, and unique contribution to the medium, but no pleasure or joy can come from accepting Klimov’s invitation. Few films are as confrontational as this. We become passive participants in the film, as its beaten and broken characters seem to peer directly at the viewer - a visceral directorial choice from Klimov. Answering the call, accepting the invitation becomes a responsibility. History repeats itself, more so, forgotten history. What happened in Belarus in 1943 can not be repeated or forgotten. 

For two young boys, war is a fantasy. There are courageous heroes, pitiful villains, each receiving due justice. For two young boys, digging for rifles, they can play and laugh, despite their village elder’s warnings. A plane flies overhead, it sees them, and as ethereal music drones around, we believe the plane can see everything. One of the boys, Flyora, finds an old rifle buried in the dunes. Despite his wailing mother, he is excited to join the Partisan militia. Flyora’s service with the Partisans consists of menial tasks. While cleaning a pot, he is adorned with flowers by Glasha, a young woman roughly the same age as Flyora. As the militia clashes with the Germans, Flyora and Glasha are left behind to attend the camp. This moment is the only moment in the film we can breathe and frolic freely with the two young people. Indeed, the only moment Flyora and Glasha can embrace their youth, indulge in it, and share it, hidden among the trees. 

The trees around Flyora and Glasha explode. The Germans have arrived, bringing death. They become death itself and plague the forest where Flyora and Glasha not so long before and danced and laughed. Flyora is deaf. He has sipped the bitter drink from the cup of war, and like the biblical Star Wormwood of Revelations, everything henceforth will be made bitter. The young man does what any young person does, runs home.

Flyora’s village is empty. The only occupants are the roaring flies, covering the small Belorussian town like a funeral veil. Flyora’s home is empty. His mother and infant sister are gone, leaving behind dolls to serve in their place. In a fevered madness, Flyora scrambles to find his family. As they run, Glasha see’s the truth. A mountain of corpses behind a shed is the truth. Flyora drags Glasha into a muddy bog. He laboriously carves a path through the mud with his rifle. When he emerges, she tells him the truth. Unable to accept, he shoves her back in the bog, which is now clear - as is the truth.

Roubej, a wandering partisan militiaman, finds the traumatized teens. He joins them with the rest of the displaced villagers who confirm Flyora’s family is dead. “I told you not to dig,” the village elder wheezes, lying on a death bed of fir branches. Nevertheless, Flyora did dig. A grave to lie down his innocence. The villagers gather around and make an effigy of Adolf Hitler from clay and bones. They spit upon it. With strength and use to the militia, Flyora joins Roubej and companions on a mission to fetch food and supplies from the vacant village. 

Mines kill the companions. Only a bloody detached foot remains of them. While attempting to steal a cow to take back to the villagers, Roubej is shot dead. The cow is also shot—Flyora bunks behind the expired cow and sleeps. In the morning, Flyora finds himself bobbing about a great mist that has fallen on the field. From amidst the shrouded field appears a horse, a wagon, and an older man. The man offers to shelter and protect Flyora, giving him an alias if questioned by the Germans. In the village of Perekhody, Flyora has found himself surrounded by occupying Germans and Ukrainian cooperators. 

The horrors that occur in the following sequences are nearly unwatchable. However, we have agreed to come and see. To turn away now would be to turn away from our Flyora, Belorussians, and history itself. Klimov does not turn away. His camera fixates upon the burning barn, where inhabitance of the village, young and old, are riddled with bullets and burned alive. Klimov does not turn from the young woman, catatonic from unspeakable violations. She can only express her pain through a weak and rusted whistle. Flyora escapes, only to live and envy the dead. 

Down the road, the Germans lose ground. Some, including the S.S. Commander plea for their lives, another condemns the Belorussians and their country. Klimov manages to shift perspective in this moment of high tension. Now, the audience is being watched, not by any characters, but by our moral fortitude. I confess I was ready to delight in the slaughtering of the barbarous Nazi Germans. I felt like I deserved it. I was seen, then. My faults illuminated. No one deserved this. Justice cannot be a reiteration of violence, perpetuating animosity, a descent into the primitive. 

What has come from accepting Klimov’s invitation? What bitter fruit did it bear, and knowing its taste, have we the courage to finish it? In the film’s closing sequence, Flyora shoots his rifle into a portrait of Adolf Hitler. It is the first time Flyora has fired his weapon. With each shot, Klimov cuts to images of World War 2, reversing itself. With each shot, feverishly fired from Flyora, decimated buildings restore themselves, and Hitler digresses backward through time to his humble beginnings. Only upon the image of an infant Hitler, sitting on his mother’s lap, does he stop firing. The closing title card reads that 638 Belorussian villages and their people were burned. We cannot save Flyora, just as we cannot visit the past or alter it. The destruction of innocence can never restore innocence. The future is unclear, but we can observe the past - and through this observation, we can find hope in the future. Now, for a better tomorrow for all people- come and see. 

10/10