1035 Come and See

[FrauBlucher]

Come and See



This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov's subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration by Mosfilm, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with cinematographer Roger Deakins
• New interview with director Elem Klimov's brother and frequent collaborator German Klimov
• Flaming Memory, a three-film documentary series from 1975–77 by filmmaker Viktor Dashuk featuring firsthand accounts of survivors of the genocide in Belorussia during World War II
• Interview from 2001 with Elem Klimov
• Interviews from 2001 with actor Alexei Kravchenko and production designer Viktor Petrov
• How "Come and See" Was Filmed, a 1985 short film about the making of the film featuring interviews with Elem Klimov, Kravchenko, and writer Ales Adamovich
• Theatrical rerelease trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: Essays by critic Mark Le Fanu and poet Valzhyna Mort

[Lowry_Sam]

Feast your eyes...Restoration Trailer

Wow. That image is one of the biggest improvements I've seen of a film I saw (in 35mm) in the theater (in the 90s). Definitely worth the wait.

[tenia]

If you want some screencaps, I reviewed the French disc (which uses the new restoration) and included some screencaps for the review. Yes, it's gorgeous.

[domino harvey]

Flaming Memory, a three-film documentary series from 1975–77 by filmmaker Viktor Dashuk featuring firsthand accounts of survivors of the genocide in Belorussia during World War II

What is this? I can't even find evidence of its existence on IMDB

[knives]

Whatever it is it makes me even more excited for the release, somehow. What a great package.

[DarkImbecile]

Looks like an amazing edition; extremely excited for basically every element of this

[Never Cursed]

Flaming Memory, a three-film documentary series from 1975–77 by filmmaker Viktor Dashuk featuring firsthand accounts of survivors of the genocide in Belorussia during World War II

What is this? I can't even find evidence of its existence on IMDB

Google Books tells me that it is a Byelorussian documentary series, written by Alex Adamovich, Vladimir Kolesnik, and Dashuk, about the Nazis' liquidation of a region in Byelorussia. Some excerpts from an interview in the doc are also in the Google Books link. Adamovich's contribution to the documentary is I believe what makes it noteworthy in relation to Come And See, as he co-wrote the latter with Klimov and in part based the story on his own experiences as a teenaged partisan fighting the Nazis. The ASC's June 2004 magazine discusses Adamovich's contribution to the film in a bit more detail:

The filmmaker drew further inspiration from The Khatyn Story, a novella by Alex Adamovich, a prominent author who fought as a teenager during the war. Klimov co-wrote the screenplay for Come and See with Adamovich, who prepared the film's extras by reading passages from another of his books, I Am From the Fiery Village, which incorporated testimonies from survivors of the atrocities in Belarus.

Vladimir Kolesnik, also credited to the documentary, co-wrote I Am From The Fiery Village with Adamovich.

[domino harvey]

Nice detective work, thanks!

[Chance Hale]

The new restoration is up on criterion channel. Saw it for the first time a few months ago with the original upload and what a world of difference.

[L.A.]

Beaver.

[TMDaines]

Flaming Memory, a three-film documentary series from 1975–77 by filmmaker Viktor Dashuk featuring firsthand accounts of survivors of the genocide in Belorussia during World War II

What is this? I can't even find evidence of its existence on IMDB

It's surprising how relatively sparse IMDb is for films from certain parts of the world. I've had to add quite a bit of Ukrainian stuff. I'm not sure it has a big userbase in post-Soviet countries, probably because it doesn't really encourage engagement in non-Latin scripts.

[knives]

Though it has a giant Indian base.

[TMDaines]

Yes, as the IMDb top 250 now attests too. They even started doing a purely Indian top 100 in response to that. I guess India is English-speaking officially, which helps explain why it has caught on there.

[MichaelB]

It's surprising how relatively sparse IMDb is for films from certain parts of the world. I've had to add quite a bit of Ukrainian stuff. I'm not sure it has a big userbase in post-Soviet countries, probably because it doesn't really encourage engagement in non-Latin scripts.

It's not my first port of call for Polish or Czech titles either, although happily in those cases there are superb local databases (especially filmpolski.pl, which I use all the time and which hasn't let me down yet).

Even if the IMDB has the films (which is by no means a given), the chances are that the names of the people involved will be misspelt because they can't handle non-Western diacritics. And diacritics are indeed a matter of basic spelling, not mere decoration - a Czech dictionary will list words beginning with Š in a different section from those beginning with S.

[knives]

That's interesting as most dictionaries for Semitic languages don't which can lead to a lot of confusion to non native speakers.

[Calvin]

Packaging photos indicate that it's coded both Region A/B. Logical for them to do this when they hold the rights in both territories, but would this be a first? It looks like The Cameraman, Husbands and Scorsese Shorts are all Region A only.

[cdnchris]

I tested Come and See and it does play in my region B player. I'll look to check some other titles as well.

[EddieLarkin]

Perhaps they had intended to make it a UK release, but they were scared off (BBFC?), and so decided an A/B release would be best instead, which they missed their chance to do with Andrei Rublev and War and Peace.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Perhaps they had intended to make it a UK release, but they were scared off (BBFC?)

Come and See has never been cut in the UK. It doesn't even have an 18 certificate (it's a 15).

[EddieLarkin]

Sure, but if the guys responsible for organising the UK releases actually knew anything about a film's BBFC history, they wouldn't have wasted the time (not to mention money) submitting Rublev and War and Peace.

[tenia]

There are some Criterion releases that are ported just a few months later in the UK. That might simply be one of them.

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

My pre-order (from Criterion's website) arrived today. I don't think I've ever gotten a blu so many days before the release date. Might give it a watch tonight and return with thoughts.

[TheKieslowskiHaze]

My pre-order (from Criterion's website) arrived today. I don't think I've ever gotten a blu so many days before the release date. Might give it a watch tonight and return with thoughts.

Video presentation is expectedly excellent. Much of the movie is bright, and those scenes are crisp, and colors really pop without disrespecting the muted color palette.

My only squabble re visuals is with dimmer, "foggier" scenes. It may be my set-up, but, in motion, those scenes strike me as very blurry. See when Flyora is first in his home, talking with his mother about joining the partisans. Or when he and a few other soldiers, carrying a fake HItler, flee from nazis into the woods. I felt the same way with Stalker, which also had this blur. It's exacerbated when my eyes are distracted by subtitles. This may not be a flaw, just an unavoidable thing that happens.

[Calvin]

As per the Criterion subreddit, it appears that there won't be a UK release of Come and See despite them having the rights



The BBFC have never cut Come and See in the past, and while it's possible that distributors cut it prior to submission I can't find any evidence that this happened either; I no longer have the Nouveaux or Artificial Eye DVDs to check.

This does perhaps lend some weight to the rumour that future pressings of Andrei Rublev and War and Peace will be coded A/B for the same reasoning.

[L.A.]

That A/B locking will do just fine.