COURAGE UNDER FIRE 63
Reception
Come and See was a box office smash in the Soviet Union, racking up a phenome-
nal 28.9 million admissions. The film won the Golden Prize at the 14th Moscow
Film International Festival and the FIPRESCI [International Federation of Film
Critics] Award. It also garnered high praise from film critics throughout the world,
many of whom rank Come and See as one of the greatest films ever made. Accord-
ing to Klimov, the movie’s strange blend of nightmarish surrealism and ferociously
graphic depictions of unspeakable atrocities proved overwhelming for some audi-
ence members who had lived through the events dramatized; they had to be carted
away in ambulances.
Reel History Versus Real History
The film’s anchoring narrative— Flyora’s hellish, mind- bending coming of age—is
fictional, but most of the events depicted in Come and See are based on eyewitness
accounts, though they are sometimes embellished. For example, to achieve maxi-
mal demonization of the enemy, Klimov engages in hyperbole regarding the look
and be hav ior of the German soldiers, especially during the bizarrely carnivalesque
Perekhody massacre scene. The Germans are dressed in weird motley à la Mad
Max and depicted as a mob of ravening, rampaging monsters. Yet, in a way, the
historical real ity is even more chilling; the Nazis were disciplined killers who car-
ried out acts of genocide in a matter- of- fact manner. Nonetheless, Come and See
gets its basic scenario right. During an after- screening discussion in Germany, an
el derly man stood up and said: “I was a soldier of the Wehrmacht; moreover, an
officer... I traveled through all of Poland and Belarus, fi nally reaching [the]
Ukraine. I will testify: every thing that is told in this film is the truth. And the most
frightening and shameful thing for me is that this film will be seen by my children
and grandchildren” (http://www.classicartfilms.com/come-and-see-1985).
Courage Under Fire (1996)
Synopsis
Courage Under Fire is an American war film written by Vietnam veteran Patrick
Sheane Duncan, directed by Edward Zwick, and starring Denzel Washington
and Meg Ryan. The second collaboration between Washington and Zwick after
Glory (1989), Courage Under Fire is a Rashomon- like investigation into the Gulf War
combat death of a female Medevac he li cop ter pi lot being considered for the Medal
of Honor.
Background
A few years after the First Persian Gulf War (1990–1991) Patrick Sheane Duncan
(84 Charlie MoPic) wrote novel and screenplay versions of Courage Under Fire, a
Rashomon- like narrative inspired by the downing of a Black Hawk he li cop ter in
Mogadishu, Somalia, on 3 October 1993 that resulted in two U.S. Army Rangers
being awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously (an incident later dramatized in