Crimes Against Humanity

Come and See

Elem Klimov, USSR, 1985; The Criterion Collection

OVER THE YEARS, ELEM KLIMOV’S MONOLITHIC Come and See (1985) has gradually evolved from muchcoveted cult object (long available in the States as a colorfaded DVD from Kino Video) to acknowledged standard-bearer for the proverbial “uncompromised” anti-war film and the Citizen Kane of hallucinatory Holocaust nightmares. There is enduring controversy around the question of whether its staggering (and extremely influential) idiosyncrasies aid the film in its mission of frankly depicting mass murder (in this case, the Nazi genocide in Byelorussia) without romanticizing, exploiting, or otherwise diminishing the revulsion of its represented atrocities, or whether Klimov’s pervasive stylization distracts from his mission, elevating the violence to objects of morbid aesthetic fascination. Whatever the verdict, is among the most vividly realized war films ever made; a work of truly lacerating power and endlessly beguiling strangeness. Indeed, if (as Harold Bloom argued, and I’m paraphrasing) the value of an original work is to be measured by its strangeness, then Klimov’s film represents an apogee of its kind.