37 years of the Come and See

On July 10, 1985 at the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) the premiere of Elem Klimov's film "Come and See" took place.

To make a film about the great and tragic period in the history of the country - the Great Patriotic War - Elem Klimov dreamed of almost from the beginning of his career as a film director. Or rather, he didn’t even dream, but considered it his duty, since as a boy he survived the bombing of his native city of Stalingrad. The "starting impulse" in the implementation of this plan was the acquaintance with the book of the great Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich "Khatyn story" in 1977. According to Elem Klimov, he then felt an acute injustice in the fact that everyone speaks and knows about Katyn, and almost no one knows about Khatyn.

At first, Klimov was greatly supported by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus, Pyotr Masherov, who himself fought in a partisan detachment. But in 1980, Masherov, under rather strange circumstances, died in a car accident. Many years later, the circumstances of Masherov's death were largely reproduced during the death of Mikhail Evdokimov. Since the death of Masherov, some "invisible hand" began to slow down the process of making the film. The cinematographic and ideological leadership constantly demanded that some amendments be made. Some more significant, some very insignificant. But not inclined to compromise, Klimov did not concede. As a result, work on the film was delayed.

By 1985, major changes had taken place in the country's leadership. In addition, a round date was approaching - the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory. And the cinematic leadership did not have anything significant to report. And it went downhill. The film came out almost in the form in which Klimov intended it. Only the name Elem Klimov agreed to change: instead of "To Kill Hitler" to a line from the Apocalypse - "Come and See." According to the ideological guidelines in force at that time, the name of Hitler could not appear in the title of a Soviet work of art. To the Bible, in connection with new trends, the attitude was already less strict.

But first, about the background of the tragedy. On March 22, 1943, the Belarusian partisan detachment "Avenger" attacked a unit of the 118th Schutzmannschaft Battalion (a police security battalion that specialized in punitive operations against partisans). The basis of this battalion was made up of people from the so-called Bukovina kuren - a division of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). To them were added former Red Army soldiers who went over to the side of the Nazis and represented many republics of the USSR. During this attack, German police captain Hans Wolcke was killed. But this was no ordinary captain. He was an Olympic champion in hammer throwing, personally acquainted with the Fuhrer and patronized by him. For this murder, the 118th battalion of the Schutzmannschaft was instructed to take revenge on the partisans, for which the Dirlewanger punitive battalion was sent to help him. This battalion was a special unit of the SS, created specifically to carry out especially heinous tasks that people with a normal human psyche could not agree to. Therefore, prisoners of German jails, convicted of especially cruel crimes: murders, rapes, robberies, were gathered in this battalion. The command of the punitive action was entrusted to the former officers of the Red Army Vasil Meleshko and Hryhoriy Vasyura.

In the opinion of the few surviving eyewitnesses of the Khatyn tragedy and hundreds of others like it, as well as in the opinion of the German soldiers themselves, Klimov's film reproduced the circumstances of the tragedy in the village of Khatyn with maximum accuracy and realism. But one important point in the then conditions, apparently, Klimov could not reflect to the right extent, even if he wanted to.

In his film, Elem Klimov probably wishful thinking. Namely: he showed that the performers of the action were overtaken by almost immediate retribution. But in fact, most of them survived until the end of the war and only in peacetime received punishment by the verdict of the Soviet court. The names of those convicted for burning alive the population of Khatyn are indicative, namely 149 people, including 75 children: Stepan Sakhno, Ostap Knap, Timofy Topchiy, Ivan Petrychuk, Volodymyr Katryuk, Kozynchenko, Lakusta, Shcherban ... Only Ukrainian names!

But! And this is the most important thing: one of the organizers of the punitive action - Hryhoriy Vasyura - managed not only to avoid timely punishment. He lived until 1987. After the war, he was sentenced to a long, 25 years, prison term. But he served only three years, was amnestied, after which he returned to Ukraine, joined the CPSU, took a leadership position, received several medals and titles, and enjoyed the benefits of a war veteran. And he didn't even change his name! That's what "Stalin's regime" means. It is likely that he was even honored to watch a film by Elem Klimov. And only during the years of perestroika, in 1987, by the verdict of the Belarusian court, he was executed. Moreover, the main communist of Ukraine, Shcherbitsky, ensured that the court was closed, and all its materials were classified. As they say, he did not want to wash dirty linen in public.

At the MIFF, the film by Elem Klimov was awarded the main - Golden - prize. However, it should be clarified that together with the film "Come and See" the jury of the festival, chaired by Sergei Gerasimov, awarded the Golden Prize to the American film "A Soldier's Story" directed by Norman Jewison ("Fiddler on the Roof") and the Greek film "I kathodos ton 9 (The Descent of the Nine)" directed by Christos Siopahas. Let me speculate a little about the winners of the MIFF. The 1985 festival was the 14th in the history of the MIFF. However, it was the first time that an American film was awarded the top prize. I dare to assume that this was done in anticipation of a response. Namely: shortly after the festival, the film by Elem Klimov was submitted by the Soviet Union for the Academy Award in the nomination "Best Foreign Language Film". But! The American Film Academy did not respond to such a peculiar gesture of goodwill: the film "Come and See" was not included in the list of Oscar nominees. As a result, that year, the Oscar in this category went to the Argentine film "La historia oficial (The Official Story)".

The assessments of Elem Klimov's film "Come and See" by professional film critics, both from the United States and from Western European countries, diametrically diverged from the opinion of the American Film Academy. The vast majority of reviews were enthusiastic. American film critic guru Roger Ebert gave the film a maximum of 4 stars and included it in his "Great Movies" list. Walter Goodman of the influential New York Times noted in his review: "Scene for scene, Mr. Klimov proves a master of a sort of unreal realism that seeks to get at events terrible beyond comprehension."

The film reviewer of the German-language site cinemaforever.net Philippe Paturel in his review noted the main advantages of the film by Elem Klimov as follows: "In Komm und sieh gibt es keinen Patriotismus, keine Helden und keine gro? inszenierten Schlachten, vielmehr ist der Film zwischen seinen unvergesslichen naturalistischen Aufnahmen und den expressiv geschilderten Graueltaten der Kriegsparteien eine Erinnerung daran, was Krieg wirklich ist – nicht greifbar, surreal, menschenfeindlich, ohne klare Trennlinien von Gut und Bose, kurz gesagt: nicht nachvollziehbar. Warum werden Kinder zu Bestien? Wieso werden ehrbare Menschen an der Front zu emotionslosen Massenmordern? Diesen und anderen komplexen Fragen ging Elem Klimov auf bis heute unnachahmliche Weise wahrend der brutalen Odyssee seines Schutzlings Fljora auf die Spur und gibt dabei nie einfache Antworten."

Not only among film critics, but also among ordinary moviegoers around the world, Elem Klimov's film "Come and See" was a resounding success. Suffice it to say that it is included in the IMDB list of the 250 best films of all countries and times, and there are only 3 Russian-language films on this list, and the first of them is the film by Elem Klimov (the other two are "Stalker" and "Andrei Rublev" by Andrei Tarkovsky) . 75% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10, and 33% of users, every third (!), rated the film with the highest score - "ten".

With that said, Elem Klimov's "Come and See" was rated 8,564 by FilmGourmand, making it 296th in the Golden Thousand.