This video is brought to you by Mubi,
a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from around the globe. Get
a whole month free at mubi.com/spikimamovies Belarus, 1943. A young boy named Flyora Gaishun is
fixing his gun with a dressing; ahead of him are soldiers frantically moving around,
packing their gear and carrying wounded men to safety. Suddenly, a faint sound of a whistle is heard from a distance. The boy turns around to see a young girl limping toward him, covered in blood with a whistle in her mouth. Once the girl stops moving, the two blankly stare at each other,
their eyes lacking soul, emotionless and static. As the boy murmurs a cryptic phrase
and turns around to join the others... ...we see this. The scene you just saw comes from
Elem Klimov’s 1985 film, Come and See, which is widely regarded as one of, if not
the most, disturbing anti-war films ever made. There are countless videos and articles
discussing the film's unhinged depiction of violence and tragedy - and yes, there are a lot
of disturbing moments in this film - but for me, it has always been this particular shot
that made the biggest psychological impact. The most noteworthy aspect of this shot is
its use of a split diopter lens, a piece of half convex glass that can be attached to the
main lens of the camera to create an illusion of a deep focus. This basically means that both Flyora and the girl will be
in focus despite their distance from the camera. Because this isn’t how objects are normally seen,
many films try to cover the out of focus boundaries between the two subjects to make
the image seem more natural. However, in Come and See,
the blurred space is never hidden; if anything, it’s emphasized. This amplifies the strangeness of the image and
creates a strong sense of unease in the viewers. Split diopter shots also connect the subjects that
are in focus by, well, keeping them both in focus. By revealing the girl through a slow pan, the
film links the boy’s state of mind with hers, suggesting that the nature of the two characters’
trauma is essentially identical. This is why, in the preceding shots, the camera captured each
character as if they were facing one another, when in fact, they were most likely separated.
It’s a cinematic depiction of their situational connection, and their physical disconnection -
neither Flyora nor the girl are able to process the shared traumatic events that befell
them. In short, they are alone, together. But this isn’t the only split diopter shot in this scene; there is another shot that uses
a horizontal split just minutes earlier. Another effect of a split diopter lens is that it allows the shot
to provide more information. The hysteric energy of the running soldiers imply urgency,
while the calm, impassive movement of Flyora illustrates his mental detachment from the situation. By keeping both Flyora and the soldiers
in focus, the scene allows the foreground and the background to communicate their stories without
interruption, and it’s up to you to move back and forth between them to connect the dots. Tying
this concept to the previously described effects, the resulting picture tells a story of a young boy
in the midst of a mental breakdown, surrounded by horror, but silently locked inside his own head. This is why, despite the screams around him, Flyora - and the audience alike - hears nothing
but an irritating drone, and later, the whistle. As you can see, the essence and the true horror of
Come and See is in the experience of an experience - a shared perspective - more than
the rationale behind its narrative development. This means that the context required to better
understand the dread of this scene has little to do with the story of the film, but with the
rest of the film language that surrounds it. And the best way to notice the highlighted
language is to cut the film into chunks and observe their repeating patterns; Come and
See can be divided into roughly 12 sequences, each with three prominent tricks:
the sound, the color, and the camera. One of the most intriguing aspects about
the sounds of Come and See is that most of them are presented from the perspective of Flyora. While the climactic scene of
the German soldiers killing the villagers features a variety of different sounds that collide with
one another, it accents only two distinct tones - the unreasonably bright quality of the yodeling and the laughs, and the rough and bleak texture of the screams and fire. The accented juxtaposition makes a logical sense if you consider the audible elements as
an echo of Flyora’s state of mind; in other words, you’re hearing a selective audio, where the sounds Flyora chooses to focus on
are heard louder than others. This first happens right before his
departure to the partisan camps, where the sound of the birds at the other
end of the room are heard with clarity. A similar thing happens with a man’s
voice when he is looking around the camp, and with a radio when he is cleaning the pot. The initial uses of selective - or
subjective - audio are easy to miss, as their primary objective is to establish the
idea of perspective, showing that the world around Flyora is slowly intruding and affecting
his mental state, whether he realizes it or not. It’s only when the film reaches the 30 minute mark
that the audio trick takes on a more significant and noticeable role, psychologically isolating
Flyora and cornering the audience into his subjective terror. In sequence 5, the bomb that
nearly kills him (and the girl he met at the camp, Glasha) deafens his ears, muting the sounds
of the world with a neverending drone. Although the muffled world slowly goes back
to normal, the drone never quite disappears, and the audience is forced to stand
the stressful noise until the very end. In sequence 6, the buzzing of the
flies enters Flyora’s subconscious, adding an incomprehensibly repulsive
energy to the setting. As the scene progresses, it becomes more and more
evident that his family members have been killed, and the buzzing becomes a direct
link to this horrid reality. When the truth is visually revealed, the built-up tension from the
audio makes the violent aftermath that much more disturbing. In sequence 7, the same trick is
used as a tool of dramatization. Here, Flyora ploughs through the group
of surviving townspeople to find his dying uncle - the same uncle who warned him against digging up holes
to look for abandoned guns at the start of the film. At first, the crying of the townspeople is all he can hear; but as soon as his uncle begins to talk,
the loud cries of the people disappear, and it’s only his uncle’s words that remain audible. Nearing his last breath, his uncle
blames Flyora for finding the gun - suggesting that the Germans probably
found them because of his actions. With this, the mourning of the crowd returns,
and Flyora is sent into a spiral of guilt and despair. The overtly selective audio exaggerates the
gravity and immersiveness of the situation, but never lessens the believability;
after all, from a subjective point of view, the apparent manipulation is a rather
authentic reflection of reality. That’s why, from this point on, the film
repeatedly mixes in the rumbling of an airplane engine as a part of its main ambience,
and spotlights it in moments of extreme violence. The cruising aircrafts are a symbol of
Flyora’s guilty conscience, reminding him that all the pain and suffering
of the people around him could’ve been avoided if he didn’t look for that gun.
Of course, the attack would’ve happened regardless; it’s really not his fault at all, but he doesn’t know that. This is also why we hear the exact same
whistle sound twice in the last sequence, once when the girl approaches, and again when
Flyora joins others to see the captured Germans - because it creates a mental connection between
the German soldiers and the girl, reminding Flyora (and the audience) of
their despicable actions. This is how the characters are used in Come and See - as a tool adopted for the portrait of destruction - devoid of humanness and meaningful
character development. The German soldiers have no real human qualities;
the characters Flyora encounters have no real depth. Even Flyora himself, putting aside the
loss of innocence, lacks qualities of a typical protagonist. We see comparable deterioration, but no true backstory,
conveyed thoughts, or humanized expressions. He never spends time with his family,
nor does he communicate ideas outside his passion for becoming a soldier.
It’s a sketch of a simple joy, a simple sadness, that converts with time into pure rage and hostility. He is but a victim of violence,
a trail of human degradation. But could immersion alone save a film from
absence of appreciable transformation? If not, perhaps it’s the disassembly of a human form itself
that behaves as the arc in this film - a simplified version of ourselves
filled with a single emotional drive - to revenge - or better yet, no emotion at all:
a true depiction of trauma. Bringing the human characters to a standstill,
the maturation instead happens from outside the narrative realm - through colors on screen.
Chiefly relying on analogous and complementary color schemes, the film initially paints the
screen with thick blue-green combinations to illuminate the hopelessness of the world. The
color scheme then periodically contrasts with different shades of orange to imply a glimpse
of hope in some scenes, and conflict in others. When the film reaches its emotional height,
the opposing color pattern shifts from blue and orange to purple and red, removing all traces of hope
and replacing them with rage and violence. Once the peak has been resolved, the
film returns to its original blue-green spectrum, ending the overwhelming journey
on passivity and dejection. But this doesn’t mean that the film treats all
characters as a pointless gimmick; cinematically, there are plenty of intricacies to be found
in the seemingly stale characters. It could even be argued that the effectiveness of Come and See
in large part comes from its self-restraint. The main reason why the camera floats around like a
ghost - a neutral observer - is because it finds no need to force anything; the unrelenting
reality before your eyes should enter as unprocessed as it can be, because that’s
what makes everything more terrifying. Like the sounds, the emotional overtone of the
scenes evolve with the movement of the camera, going from excitement, sadness, and an ominous
inkling, to threat, fear, and eventually, terror. Yet, the dynamic movement of the camera
is only a small portion of the film; the majority of the shots present
in Come and See is static, with over 60 of them being medium
to regular close-up portrait shots. By pairing the close-ups with
the film’s 1:37:1 aspect ratio, the characters get locked inside the frame with
little to no other visual information on screen, obliging the audience to stay and witness the
evolution of the different characters. This is most evident from the gradually mutating
portrait shots of Flyora, which illustrates the detrimental effects of war and develops his
character without verbal explanations. But the same principle applies for
other characters of the film, as the portrait shot essentially
photographs a moment in history, telling an untold story of an individual
with just a stare. In one way, the characters are communicating
through that stare, stating our inability to intervene. What started off as the characters looking outside the frame
switches to them looking directly at the audience; and by the end, it becomes the audience who
are looking at them, as if gazing at a mirror. The frequent use of portrait shots in Come and
See is as questionable as it is impressive, because, in most cases, such a theatrical shot
would diminish the immersion by reiterating the existence of the camera outside the screen.
So how does the film manage to bypass the negative symptoms of the stylish composition
and only underscore the strengths? Indeed, the film’s unique direction isn’t the only
thing that helps cover the side effects; it’s also because Come and See fully embraces
the theatricality of its techniques. The dramatic choreography of the actors and
the camera is apparent from the start - staging the scene like an arena,
and having the characters move toward or away from the camera to create depth,
instead of having the camera do the work. But they never once feel overdramatic; rather, each scene feels like a true motion picture, a combination of still images that
create an illusion of movement. They operate like a photograph. There are photo-like aesthetics
everywhere in Come and See; from character placements,
framing of background objects, to actual scenes with a camera. There are different interpretations of
the scene where Flyora stops himself from shooting the gun when a photo of Hitler
as a baby pops up on screen. Many think of his voluntary restraint
as an active portrayal of his humanity - that Flyora has managed to retain his benevolence
even after everything he’s been through. But I see it differently. There are two noticeable uses of a dolly zoom in this film - once in the partisan camp when
the soldiers are taking a picture, and once before Flyora shoots the portrait. As unrelated as the two events may seem,
they are linked through a very particular message - that what is done cannot be undone,
and can only live through your memory. Photographs are just the same; it is all about capturing
a moment that will never return. In Come and See, the act of taking
pictures is a gesture of desperation - sometimes, to celebrate,
and at other times, to never forget. That’s why the film doesn’t end
with Flyora shooting the portrait, but with him joining the rest of the troop and
moving forward - because the war is not over. The last shot of the running troops, therefore,
is in no way a downplay of Flyora’s uniquely individual, and frankly, horrific journey,
nor a glorification of his endurance. It is the face of war - a visual representation
of its dehumanizing nature. Why would the camera have lingered on their faces, if not to cherish their remaining
character, to mourn after their loss? Why else would the film have restrained itself
from giving them a conventional arc, if not to emphasize
the brutalization of their humanness? While the collective image of individuals
signal a lack of relevance and importance, their individuality speaks a story
just as tragic as Flyora’s. But like I said, war is war.
And nothing more. If it only dehumanizes, it’s only logical that it
ends without humanization. After all, the film did invite us all to come and see for ourselves.
