Episode 3—Come and See: Subjectivity, Surrealism, and Storks
Warning: This episode involves discussion of murder, genocide, suicide, sexual violence, and animal death.
“This is a movie that you recommend to someone because you know it will change their life.”
Aleksei Kravchenko as Flyora (right) sees a stork, an ominous and significant symbol, in Elem Klimov’s 1985 anti-war magnum opus, Come and See (Janus Films).
“I can sum it up in one word: Brutal.
...It’s a masterpiece I never want to see again.”
Aleksei Kravchenko as Flyora (center) made to pose for a photograph with the SS holding a gun to his head while a Belorussian village burns around them (Janus Films).
Original 1985 USSR movie poster (Sovexportfilm).
Of all the movies Frankee watched in this last year, the Soviet anti-war film Come and See (1985) was her favorite - an odd thing to say about a movie that one Youtube commenter declared "makes Schindler's List look like Toy Story." Come and See is a coming-of-age story, an anti-war film, and a horror film that is an innovative, challenging, and realistically surreal descent into hell itself.
Prepare for potentially triggering topics as our resident expert in Modern Eastern European history talks with her sisters about the concept of an “anti-war” movie, film’s ability to bear witness, and the mythology of storks.
Three memorable close ups of Flyora’s face throughout Come and See: at the beginning in the forest (left), at the halfway point in the bog (center), and at the end in the Nazi-ravaged village (right) (Janus Films).
Show Notes
Film Synopsis
Set in Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1943, Come and See follows a 14 year old boy named Flyora after he joins the Belarussian partisans. We follow his journey as he faces the horrors and realities of war, culminating in one of the most shocking and affecting depictions of war atrocity in cinema.
Come and See, Ідзі і глядзі, directed by Elem Klimov, written by Ales Adamovich and Elem Klimov, cinematography by Aleksei Rodionov, and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova.
References
Richard Wagner, composer
Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Hitler Among the Germans, by Rudolph Binion
Jarhead (2005)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The History of English podcast
Article on storks in European mythology, Ancient Origins
Storks (2016)
The Shining (1980)
Toy Story (1995)
The Painted Bird (2019)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
The idea of a Gorgon in Come and See, The Village Voice
Palm Springs (2020)
1917 (2019)
Son of Saul (2015)
The Pianist (2002)
Shoah (1985)
Recommendations
Jessee: Detainment (2018); The Nazi Hunters, by Andrew Nagorski
Frankee: Ivan’s Childhood (1962); The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell
Annee: The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Frankee’s Additional Suggestions
FILM
Andrzej Wajda’s War trilogy (A Generation, Kanal, and Ashes and Diamonds)
LITERATURE
Białoszewski, Miron, A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising (1970)
Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate (1980)
Kertész, Imre, Fatelessness (1975)
Tišma, Aleksandar, The Book of Blam (1971)
NON-FICTION
Alexievich, Svetlana. Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II (1985)
Bartov, Omer, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018)
Bergholz, Max, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community (2016)
Brown, Kate, Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland (2005)
Gross, Jan, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)
Merridale, Catherine, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 (2005)
Naimark, Norman, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (2001)
Snyder, Timothy, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010)
