The following notes on Come and See were written by Steph Chung, PhD Student in the Department of Communication Arts. Come and See screens at 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave, on Saturday, September 6 at 7 p.m. Admission is free!
By Steph Chung
Elem Klimov originally planned for his war saga Come and See (1985) to be titled Kill Hitler. When Goskino (the USSR State Committee for Cinematography) rejected this title, Klimov called his brother German, who consulted the New Testament. He turned to the Revelation of St. John the Divine, where he found a verse which refers to the opening of the seal of the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. “And when he had opened the fourth seal,” the refrain reads, “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 with him.” With this biblical context and the film’s resolute approach to depicting war, Come and See presents an eerie invitation to peek into the depths of the darkness and sate the viewer’s morbid curiosity in exploring how far violence and brutality can truly go.
In a 2001 interview with Ruscico (Russian Cinema Council), Klimov clarified that by Kill Hitler, he didn’t mean the Nazi dictator himself but rather the philosophical idea of the “Hitler” in a person—a capacity for cruelty that he believed anyone could possess. The original title’s bluntness declares the director’s intent: his film would be an exhortation to confront and defeat the potential for evil within. It would be undiluted, unflinching, and unforgiving. And Come and See is just that: unforgiving. The film centers on Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a young boy living in Belorussia in 1943. Dreaming of patriotic triumph, he joins a ragtag band of Russian partisans only to be left behind. From there, Flyora wanders from forests to bogs to villages, witnessing unspeakable tragedy as the film progresses.
While many war films have sought to properly portray the destructive force of war, Klimov and his production team elevate Come and See by incorporating disorienting tonal variations throughout the film. The beginning of the film almost possesses the levity of child’s play: Flyora and his friend scrabble across the sandy remains of a battlefield looking for treasure, and when the partisans finally collect Flyora for recruitment, he wears a giddy grin with a comically large coat and pants as if he stumbled out of the closet while playing dress-up. This whimsical energy vanishes when Flyora is caught in the crossfire of war, with the abrupt shift emphasized by practical effects, sound design, and expressive performances. Klimov articulates this through sustained close-ups, in which his characters stare squarely into the camera. With each shot, the viewer can’t help but search the characters’ eyes, with this emotional probing often revealing an indescribable hollowness.
Later, those blunt, horrific moments unexpectedly melt into surreal flashes, perhaps the most notable being Glasha and Flyora’s romp in a rainy forest. The two giggle and play as rain coats them in iridescent shining mist, the young characters wrapped up in this comforting, dreamy haze. A rare reprieve from the rest of the film’s brutality, it remains difficult to fully shake off the dread the film has planted deep in our bones. The visual and sonic construction of Come and See makes each tonal shift viscerally felt, creating a hermetic, destabilizing experience.
The jarring tonal shifts eventually manifest in sequences that more vividly simulate this descent into chaos. In one scene, Glasha and Flyora spot a German plane flying overhead, its ominous thrumming slowly swallowing the birdsong of the forest and blanketing the whole soundscape. Glasha and Flyora simply resume their play, but even with their giggling, we can make out the plane engine’s hum ever so slightly, at the edge of earshot but still smothering the scene with a sense of unease. The children eventually see soldiers floating down on parachutes; they count them like shooting stars, until fear creeps into their expressions of wonder. The thrumming then sharpens into a whistling whine. Glasha screams, and the first shell finally hits the ground, throwing up a magnificent plume of black earth. The camera pans sideways to capture twenty-two bombs carpeting the forest one-by-one and spraying sheets of dirt to coat the frame. Each blast thunders louder than the last until a high-pitched ringing fills our ears and we hear Flyora’s gasps for air, which are tinged with a metallic buzz. For the next two minutes, every sound, from Glasha’s yelling to the Nazis’ gunfire, feels distant; the only sounds that effortlessly reach our ears are the high-pitched ringing and Flyora’s ragged breathing.
Many of the practical and formal decisions in the making of Come and See are informed by a dedication to realism. In a 2001 Ruscico interview, production designer Victor Petrov noted that the crew used real military explosives and artillery to achieve the sensory devastation they believed was necessary. Speaking on the ethos of the film in the same 2001 interview, Klimov cites the works of the Soviet author, activist, and co-screenwriter Ales Adamovich as “touchstones” for his directing. Texts like Out of the Fire and Khaytn, which draw upon witness testimonies to chronicle Nazi violence in Belorussia, were “too sacred” for Klimov to allow for any falsehoods in his screen treatment of this material.
There was personal commitment as well. In the 2001 interview, Klimov shares his own experience escaping the warfare in Stalingrad as a young boy. He recounts seeing the city in flames and marveling at the Volga as petroleum runoff from a bombed terminal nearby caused the river itself to burn. From the ferry he was on with his mother and baby brother, he could see the water below them boiling. He explains, “Naturally, I’m burdened with very strong recollections about that hell. Because it was a trip to hell. And it lives with me forever. So I thought— it was a must for me to make a film about the war.”
It was ultimately this dedication to realism that eventually jeopardized Come and See’s release. In its last official review in 1977, Goskino demanded eleven censoring changes to the narrative. Klimov staunchly refused; as a result, Come and See was put away in a vault. This standoff would stretch on until 1985, when Goskino, forty years after Victory Day, finally warmed to the idea of a true war film—or, rather, a true anti-war film. The impact of Come and See’s stance on war lies in the powerful, visceral experience it creates. With its unflinching depiction of war and meticulous tonal control, Come and See transcends mere shock content and becomes a true exploration of man’s capacity for evil.