62 COME AND SEE [russIAn: IDI I SMOTRI]
Production
Come and See was shot in sequence over a period of nine months in 1984. To achieve
maximum realism Klimov employed lots of Steadicam shots and often loaded
the guns used in the film with live ammunition, as opposed to blanks. Aleksey
Kravchenko, the 13- year- old nonactor who played Flyora, mentions in interviews
that bullets sometimes passed just millimeters above his head in certain scenes.
Worried that the extreme rigors of the shoot might drive Kravchenko mad, Klimov
tried unsuccessfully to have the boy hypnotized to inoculate him emotionally. As it
was, Kravchenko stayed sane but returned to school thin and prematurely grey.Plot Summary
In 1943 two Belorus sian boys, hoping to join the Soviet partisan forces, dig up a
battlefield for abandoned weapons. One of the boys, Flyora (Aleksey Kravchenko),
finds a rifle. The next day he is conscripted but when the partisans move on, their
commander, Kosach (Liubomiras Laucevičius), orders Flyora to stay behind. Upset
and angry, Flyora enters the refugee camp and encounters Glasha (Olga Miron-
ova), an attractive but demented woman in love with Kosach who thinks that Fly-
ora is Kosach. Suddenly the camp is shelled (shattering Flyora’s ear drums) and
then attacked by German paratroopers. Flyora and Glasha hide themselves in the
woods, then flee to Flyora’s house only to find it empty. Flyora refuses to think his
family killed, so he instead convinces himself that they have sought refuge in an
island across from the bog. Fleeing the village, Glasha spies a pile of half- naked
corpses in a pile behind the house, but chooses not to inform Flyora. At first Fly-
ora is incapable of accepting the truth, but an encounter with other villa gers who
have run from the Nazis leaves him convinced that his family is actually dead. Fly-
ora blames himself, but a partisan named Roubej (Vladas Bagdonas) helps him to
move forward and search for food. At sunset, Roubej and Flyora steal a cow from
a Nazi- occupied village, but Roubej and the stolen cow are shot by Germans as
they run across a field. Flyora attempts to steal a horse and cart, but the owner of
the cart stops him but then decides to assist the thief by helping him to obtain
false identification. Their plans are interrupted when a German einsatzkommando
[mobile killing squad] arrives and surrounds the village. Flyora tries to alert the
townsfolk of the impending attack, but he is rounded up by the German soldiers.
Flyora exits the church by jumping out a high win dow, but is caught and forced to
watch as Wehrmacht soldiers light the church building on fire with the villa gers
locked inside. A German soldier then puts a gun to Flyora’s head for a photo graph.
Flyora leaves the village and discovers that partisan soldiers have surprised the Ger-
mans in a counterattack. After retrieving his coat and weapon, Flyora encounters a
bloodied woman who is dazed after being raped and sees that his comrades have
successfully imprisoned 11 Germans and their associates. The associates cover the
German soldiers with gasoline, but the partisan soldiers shoot the Germans before
the fire is lit. As the partisan forces depart, Flyora finds a portrait of Adolf Hitler in
a puddle. In a surreal sequence, Flyora shoots at the picture, causing time to unwind
in reverse and all the horrors of the war to be undone. The film ends with Flyora
joining the other partisan soldiers in their march through the forest in the snow.