I watched Elem Klimov's 1985 anti-war masterpiece
Come and See this morning on DVD (for some reason, the Kino Video release splits the film onto two discs); Hippy always talked highly of it, so I finally got it from the library. An article I read described the film as "apocalyptic," and Klimov's vision of German occuppied Byelorussia is indeed a mud-choaked, hellish landscape, the air filled with the constant droning of a Luftwaffe observation plane, the buzzing of nagging, biting insects, and the rumble of artillery explosions in the distance (along with the use of Mozart on the soundtrack). The most harrowing events of the film come in the second half, as the young teenager Floria, who left home to fight with the Soviet partisans, is swept up in an SS liquidation raid that burns down an entire village and kills all but a few inhabitants. The images of brutality, ugliness, and savagery of the attack are still playing in my mind.
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