Come and See/Ідзі і глядзі/Иди и смотри (Idi i smotri) (1985) - Klimov's soul-searing war film

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A frightening, zombie-like appearance in the weather-beaten, catatonic face of a young man makes up this intense poster for Elem Klimov's Come and See

During World War II the Nazis march into Belarus to exterminate Communists. Here the big lad Flyora has his life unrooted permanently. 

 

Come and See is written by Ales Adamovich (Synovya ukhodyat v boy (1971)) and Russian master filmmaker, co-writer/director Elem Klimov (Welcome, or Nor Trespassing/Dobro pozhalovat, ili Postoronnim vkhod vospreshchen (1964)), whose 6th feature it was. It is based on the true story of the Nazi's burning down of more than 600 villages in Belarus during the war, as well as the books Khatyn and I Am from the Fiery Village by Adamovich. The title is a quote from Chapter 6 in the Bible's Book of Revelation.

Perhaps the greatest anti-war film of all time, Come and See is a deeply transfixing experience, related with a towering authority: A voluminous, 'forgotten' chapter of horror from WWII: How the Nazis exterminated and burnt down 628 Belarusian villages.

Aleksey Kravchenko (Jacked$ (2004)) is unforgettable as Flyora; he utilizes his face muscles to deliver some of the most intense and frightening expressions of human terror and despair in cinema history. Photographed (by Aleksey Rodionov (The Party (2017))) incredibly beautifully and inventively, with camera travelings that precurse work which Emmanuel Lubezki and other fine cinematographers would later be heralded for (such as found in The Revenant (2015)).

Some of the most unpleasant sequences in cinema history are here combined with surreal images (the stork, the burnt man) and an expressive portrait of the crimes of the Nazis. The evil is unfathomable. SPOILER The scene in which the building full of people gets burned down is horrifying as few others before or after it. 

Come and See, for most who dare, is a film you watch once and never forget.

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Reportedly 20.9 mil. $

= Uncertain but likely a mega-hit (projected return of 20.9 times its cost)

[Come and See premiered 9 July (Moscow Film Festival) and runs 142 minutes. It took Klimov 8 years to make it, most of them spent in pre-production since the Soviet authorities would not allow the production for years. When at last they did, all he had to change was the work title Kill Hitler. Shooting took place chronologically for 9 months in the Soviet Union. All of the portrayed events did reportedly occur. Klimov utilized hypnosis and autogenic training to shape the performance of Kravchenko, who was also put on a minimal diet. Live bullets were fired, at times just 10 centimeters from Kravchenko's head, he has alleged, and security measures were generally few and primitive. 28.9 mil. reportedly paid admission to the film, an incredible number that is impossible to verify. It was reportedly #6 at the annual USSR box office in 1986. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. It has additionally made in excess of 1.2 mil. $ on the North-American home video market alone. IMDb's users have voted the film in at #91 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Singin' in the Rain (1952) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Klimov retired from directing after the film. Kravchenko returned in Melkiy bes (1995). Come and See is certified fresh at 89 % with an 8.6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Come and See? 

Ivan's Childhood/Ива́ново де́тство (Ivanovo detstvo)/My Name Is Ivan (1962) - Childhood shattered by war in Tarkovsky's impactful drama

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A nasty thorny plant makes up an overwhelming, ominous dark background to an image of two children on this poster for Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood

Ivan is a boy in the Soviet Union during World War II. His mother and sister are murdered, and his father is gone. Ivan wants to serve as a soldier, but he is not permitted. He survives in a ruthless world of mud, cold and darkness.

 

Ivan's Childhood is written by Vladimir Bogomolov (Zosya (1967)), Mikhail Papava (Ivan Pavlov (1949)), Andrey Konchalovskiy (House of Fools/Dom durakov (2002)) and Russian master filmmaker, co-writer/director Andrei Tarkovsky (The Steamroller and the Violin/Katok i skripka (1961)), whose 2nd feature it is. It is based on Bogomolov's short story Ivan (1957). The title is a literal translation of the original Russian one.

Ivan has terrible nightmares, when he sleeps. The film is unique and highly worth searching out, especially for its ethereal images (cinematography by Vadim Yusov (Solaris (1972))) and Nikolay Burlyaev's (Russkaya ruletka (1990)) gripping performance as Ivan, a strikingly mature child performance for the ages.

 

Related posts:

Andrei Tarkovsky: Top 10: Best epic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  

Andrei Rublev/Andrey Rublev/Андрей Рублёв (1966) - Tarkovsky's undying epic of faith in Russia 

 

Watch a fan-made trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown but projected 200k $

Box office: Unknown but at lest 4.64 mil. $ and projected at 6 mil. $

= Uncertain but likely a mega-hit (projected return of 30 times its cost)

[Ivan's Childhood premiered 6 April (Moscow) and runs 94 minutes. Tarkovsky took over the project, which had been shooting under director Eduard Abalov, whose material was then discarded. Tarkovsky was reportedly put in charge and finished the film in 8 months, 24k rubles under budget. Shooting took place from June 1961 - January 1962 in what was then the Soviet Union and is today Ukraine. The film was among Tarkovsky's most successful in terms of box office, selling a reported 16.7 mil. tickets in the USSR, coming to approximately 4.17 mil. rubles, approximately 4.64 mil. $. The film was released widely internationally, although gross details are regrettably not available online; a 6 mil. $ final gross is projected. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was the Soviet nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar of the year, however it did not ultimately receive a nomination. Tarkovsky returned with Andrei Rublev/Andrey Rublyov (1966). Burlaev returned in Sud sumasshedshikh (1962). Ivan's Childhood is fresh at 100 % with an 8.90/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Ivan's Childhood?

Alexander Nevsky (1938) - Eisenstein's propaganda turkey

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The Russian folk hero and his right hand man on this poster for Sergei Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev's Alexander Nevsky

During Stalin's dictatorship in the Soviet Union, the country's most prominent filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin (1925)) was engaged to make a film of a Russian prince, who protected Russia against the German Teutonic Knights in the 13th century.

Nevsky stands up to the incoming Mongols and speaks many a passionate word of Russia's greatness, as he ventures out to lead his army against the German imperialists.

The Nevsky legend obviously fit the times well in the late 30s, as Russia, along with large parts of the rest of the world and Europe in particular, were anxious about Germany's aggressive new direction under Nazi leadership. And Alexander Nevsky is obviously a propaganda film.
It is also made under strict restrictions to the freedom of expression:
The film was screened directly for Stalin before its release, as Eisenstein had publicly compared Nevsky to Stalin, and it apparently lost a reel at the event; probably a piece of the film that didn't suit the butcher. The filmmakers were awarded the Stalin Prize for the film in 1941.

Nikolai Cherkasov as the title character in Sergei Eisenstein and Dmitri Vasilyev's Alexander Nevsky

The details:

Unsurprisingly, a good film doesn't materialize in such a context:
Nevsky lacks the experimental excitement that characterize other Eisenstein works: It is a conventional story of a hero without any depth to him, who speechifies at any given moment and seems much more like a blown up figurine than a real man. He is played by Nikolai Cherkasov (Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958)), who leads a cast, who are all uniformly stiff and have uniformly bad haircuts.
None of the other characters in the film are any more believable or interesting than their dull leader: The big subplot in Nevsky concerns two soldiers in his army, who are courting the same honorable woman. - This plays out about as romantic as dried toast if you were wondering.
It is all executed in oddly staged scenes in front of what is obviously immobile backdrops. The fight scenes are technically pathetic by any contemporary standards. Any seriousness of struggle, sacrifice, pain and the nature of war is lost, also due in part to the strangely celebrated score by Sergei Prokofiev (Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1945)), which plays circus-like, high-spirited melodies during scenes of mass-slaughters and religious ceremonies indiscriminately, seemingly ridiculing, satirizing or just distancing what goes on for the audience. The film awakens no emotions whatsoever.
Eisenstein co-wrote it with Pyotr Pavlenko (Man of Music (1953)) and co-directed it with Dmitri Vasilyev (Lenin in October (1937)).
Alexander Nevsky is praised by some, but it is little more than a boring, blatantly nationalistic piece of uncompelling propaganda from a time when film was actively used in instances such as this as a direct tool to control entire populations by their mad rulers, in this case one of the biggest murderers of the 20th century, Joseph Stalin.

Watch the film in its entirety with English subtitles here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[But reportedly a huge hit. Nevsky was Eisentein's first Russian feature in about a decade, (he had made a few in Mexico during the period), and it was reportedly seen by as many as 23 mil. Russians! It also made Stalin call Eisenstein, who had previously been criticized for being a 'formalist' (prioritizing style and cinematic experiments over substance and ideology), "a true Bolshevik." The film was taken out of circulation in the summer of 1939, as Russia and Germany agreed on a non-aggression pact, but when Germany invaded Russia in 1941, the film was released again. Eisenstein himself was very dissatisfied with Nevsky, as is known from his private notes. The opportunistic and programmatic nature of the film, his servile product to please the empire's tyrant more than anything else, and the film's unexperimental straightforwardness really bothered the man, - understandably. He returned to more personal, experimental and wild filmmaking with Ivan the Terrible. You can read more about this here.]

What do you think of Alexander Nevsky?

Man With a Movie Camera/Человек с киноаппаратом (1929) - Mechanical USSR fascination in technically astute experimental documentary

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A colorful original poster with English text over it for Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera

QUICK REVIEW:

Man With a Movie Camera is an experimental avant-garde silent B/W documentary of 68 minutes, a film without inter-titles, actors or a plot. Instead, it is an abstract work in cinema and a portrait of a Soviet city.

The film is a technical montage of fast-cut images and movement. It varies between depictions of sufferings in a modern metropolis, - perhaps an implicit criticism of the economical policies of the USSR? - with an intense fascination and excitement concerning everything new, (which rather annuls any inherent critique, I should think.) It was filmed in Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev. Movie Camera features an endless display of Soviet industrial excellence and mechanical strength (through fire trucks, for instance.)
The film is made by Dziga Vertov (Kino Eye/Kinoglaz (1924)), born in Bialystok in what is Poland today but was part of the Russian empire then, and in his statement at the beginning of Movie Camera, he asserts that the film "is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theater and literature."
The radical idealism behind Vertov's endeavor here comes off to me as more of a nationally-motivated show, and I think it was the same brand of extreme idealism that led the Soviet Union to some of its most detrimental and humanly disastrous policies. - Which is one reason that I am not full of groveling admiration for the film, (as many other film scholars seem to be.)

Watch the entire film with English subtitles (for the opening titles) here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[The film had a difficult time upon release because of its radical structure and lack of formal content, but apart from this, I have not been able to ascertain whether or not it was a flop commercially. It took 3 years to make and bolsters a variety of advanced cinematic visual and editing techniques, which it remains notorious and respected for: The film was listed as the 8th best film ever by the 2012 critics' Sight & Sound poll and in 2014 was named best documentary ever (again by Sight & Sound). - Phew...!!]

What do you think of Man With a Movie Camera?
If you have insight into Dziga Vertov and/or any of his other films, please, enlighten us about him/them

Thirteen Days (2000) - Electrifying Cuban Missile Crisis thriller

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Electrifying poster for Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days

Thirteen Days is Australian director Roger Donaldson's (Cocktail (1988)) historic thriller drama about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
In case you don't know history well, that crisis was about the Soviet Union deploying nuclear missiles on Cuba, which was very close to starting World War III, had it not been for the calm reasoning and exhaustion of every possible alternative by the U.S. administration under John F. Kennedy, while his military generals were hot for war.
The movie focuses completely on the American side, perhaps because we really don't know what happened in the Soviet offices of Khruschchev's Soviet Government. So what we see is the Americans dealing with the crisis, which is well-documented and therefore historically accurate. 
Thirteen Days instead choses to take its fictional license with its lead character Kenny O'Donnell. Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves (1990)) plays this special assistant to the President, who is a historical figure, but who didn't play the part during the actual crisis that he does in the film, where he is a key person who pep-talks, motivates and puts things in perspective for the Kennedy brothers and seems a total equal to them. Costner is mostly good in the film, which he also was a producer on, but Thirteen Days becomes long somewhere well into its 145 minutes playtime, and it is Costner-scenes that could have been cut, especially the scenes with him and his family, in which we are obviously supposed to feel that he and they are the emotional anchor of the film, which doesn't work, and we perhaps don't even need. It is a shame to say it, but Costner is the main component, who is in the way of 'his own' film.
It detracts only mildly, though, because Thirteen Days portrays such an incredible historical event that most audiences, and especially us who are historically interested, will sit on tenterhooks almost throughout the film, regardless that we know the outcome. And thank God that reason and self control and peace prevailed in those fateful offices in '62!
Bruce Greenwood (Flight (2012)) and Steven Culp (James and the Giant Peach (1996)) are both brilliant as President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the film sports an exciting, solid secondary cast of men in suits and uniforms being extremely serious, from Dylan Baker and Bill Smitrovich to Michael Fairman and Kevin Conway.
The Cold War grew red hot within hours and stayed so for these climactic 13 days, and the film successfully portrays this maddening time in world history.

Kevin Costner, Steven Culp and Bruce Greenwood in Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days

The details:

It is well-produced, - and well-scored by Trevor Jones (From Hell (2001)).
Another small detractor, however, is a device that the film uses again and again, which at first made me think that I was seeing flashbacks. B/W-scenes, which are just continuances of the story, but just suddenly in B/W. I guess it is used to underline the historic aspect of what we're seeing, - or perhaps as an 'artistic' idea of pointing to the artifice by Donaldson, (though I don't think so, knowing him through some of his other films.) At any rate, it doesn't elevate the film but does put a space between the story and the audience, which is a shame.
Because this is a really good film.
Unfortunately, the slow release of the film (first limited in the U.S., which seems crazy for this type of event picture) and poor marketing made this a box office bomb, wildly undeserved.
Another sad end note is that O'Donnell, Costner's character, who was very close to the real Kennedy's, was so devastated by the assassinations of first JFK in '64, where he was very close to him and later blamed himself for his death, and then Robert Kennedy in '68 that both he and his wife languished in alcoholism, which killed them both eventually.

The trailer is the single most important piece of marketing for a movie. This one didn't make the business it should. Why? It is over-crowded and political, when it should have presented the one clear, shocking concept that is close to happening in the film: Annihilation

Budget: 80 mil. $
Box office: 66. 5 mil. $
= Big flop

What do you think of Thirteen Days?

First Spaceship on Venus (1960) or, East Block Gravity

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A poster for Kurt Maetzig's First Spaceship on Venus

Today's review is of a rather obscure movie, the East-German/Polish First Spaceship on Venus, an adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem novel called The Astronauts. Pole Lem also wrote the novel basis for Solaris (1972 and 2002) and many other adaptations, but Venus was the first film based on his writings.
Venus takes place in the then sfuture of 1985, in which a spool from another planet is found at a spaceship crash site in the Siberian dessert. An international mission is assembled to journey to Venus to learn more about this civilization. But what they find is disheartening yet eye-opening.
Venus is a curious film, told in bountiful narration, and - on Earth - by a blond reporter. The small crew of the space mission includes an African, two apparently Japanese, some Caucasians and what appears an Indian, the highest standing professor of them all, who works tirelessly to figure out the message on the spool. A natural center for the men on-board is the female voyager Dr. Ogimura (Yoko Tani (The Savage Innocents (1960)), who is described as a "good woman". But - save for a brief indication of nakedness in the beginning, (to get into the spacesuit), Venus doesn't hold any hanky-panky or jokes of any kind. The very scientific team are strictly interested in facts and a sober examination of them, - making them a bit dull as characters.
But then Venus is, first and last, science fiction, and actually pretty good sci-fi: The science talk is mostly convincing, and the suits and sets are well-made. The effects include; zero gravity moving around and laughing, a robot brought along to make initial tests on Venus, the strange landscape of Venus and a kind of black, dangerous porridge that follows them there, as they escape. Several crew members die in the dramatic mission, including the sympathetic and courageous African, who is simply left on Venus.
Venus is an enjoyable science fiction curiosity, sometimes involuntarily comic, as when SPOILER one male crew member dies because the robot drives into his stomach.

Hardly 'Mankind's Most Incredible Journey!' - but Kurt Maetzig's First Spaceship on Venus is worth watching

The details:

German director of Venus Kurt Maetzig had previously done communistic propaganda for the USSR, the so-called 'socialist realism'. Instances of Soviet propaganda is said to flourish some in the long version of Venus, which runs 93 minutes. Unfortunately, I was only able to see the shortened US version of 78 minutes.
The technique of Venus is pretty rough; it continuously uses jump cuts; perhaps due to time restraints, or clearly defined, alternative theory, opposition to Hollywood-film-making or just plain incompetence.
Still, the film is very interesting from a historical standpoint, although many questions about it cannot be answered now, like the one above. Another question would be about the internationality of the crew and particularly the inclusion of the almost pitch black African as a total equal on the mission; was this done as a provocation to the still blatantly racist US, as idealism on the film-maker's part, or is it taken from Lem's novel?
The film shows SPOILER a scary example of the effects of atomic explosions, as the inhabitants of Venus have annihilated themselves, only leaving, literally, their shadows. In this way, Venus seems to carry an anti-A-bomb-message. - Something that was also heavily prevalent in the American 'atomic-scare'-sci-fi-movies of the 50sand 60s. 
Mostly the film seems deeply humanistic in its viewpoint, but then again, perhaps the original version is different. So many questions.
In any case, this Forbidden Planet (1956)-reminiscent, minor science fiction gem is worth searching out for anyone interested in SF, history and 60s space exploration.

Related review:

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown - but it apparently sold more than 4 mil. tickets in East Germany, so there's a good chance it was a hit
= Unknown

What do you think of First Spaceship on Venus?
Can you answer any of the many questions from my review?
Have you seen other Stanislaw Lem-adaptations and if so, how were they?

Andrei Rublev/Andrey Rublev/Андрей Рублёв (1966) - Tarkovsky's undying epic of faith in Russia

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The Criterion Collection's vividly red DVD cover with one of the titular character's iconic paintings for their release of Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev is a religious biopic and a historical drama about the great, Russian icon painter, Andrei Rublev (1360s-1427/1430). 

Written by Andrey Konchalovskiy (Paradise/Ray (1966)) and its Russian master co-writer/director Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan's Childhood/Ivanovo detstvo (1962)) as his 4th film, it is an epic movie of around 200 minutes. It follows Rublev's life from the beginning of the 15th century, as he is ordered to leave by the great emperor. Later we witness mass death and despair, as Mongolian Tartar troops spread destruction and mayhem. Towards the end, the film is concentrated around the building of a massive church bell.
Andrei Rublev is a meditative and thought-provoking experience about God, creation, and life's inevitable tragedies. It was heavily censored and banned in its time, being made during the atheistic, repressive Soviet regime. Thank God the film has been preserved and is available today in all its splendor:
Tarkovsky's long shots, (cinematography by Vadim Yusov (The Black Monk/Chyornyy monakh (1988))), the universal themes that the film deals with and the Russian mud and rain spellbind the thinking viewer from first to last shot in Andrei Rublev, which ends in a mysterious, unforgettable horse scene. This is one of the weightiest masterworks of cinema.

Related post:

Andrei Tarkovsky: Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

Since production company Mos Film have made an effective ban on using their trailers and clips on websites like this one, instead I present here a documentary on Rublev's works

Cost: 1.3 mil. rubles
Box office: Unknown - but reportedly sold 2.98 tickets in the USSR
= Uncertain - but likely a box office success
[Andrei Rublev was first screened once in November 1966 (Moscow, USSR) and runs 205 minutes (original cut)/186 (director-approved second cut), and there have been also various other shorter versions released, which are not worth watching. Anatoliy Solonitsyn (Stalker (1979)), who plays Rublev, was an unknown theater actor, who read the film's script in a magazine and traveled to Moscow on his own expense, where he met Tarkovsky and declared that no-one could play the role better than him. Tarkovsky agreed and subsequently cast Solonitsyn in several of his films. Shooting took place in Russia, including Moscow, from May 1965 - May 1966. The small 1 mil. ruble budget required scenes be left unshot, and it didn't hold due to heavy snowfall. The studio and state demanded several cuts be made, disagreeing with its length, negativity, violence, nudity and historical accuracy and religion/ideology.  SPOILER The burning cow in the film was not harmed, but the horse falling down the steps was sacrificed for the film; it was shot after the scene and taken away for consumption. The film was shown at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, but only once on the last day, and at 4 AM, on the insistence of the reluctant Soviet officials. Its Soviet release didn't happen until 5 years after the film's completion, in 1971, as Tarkovsky refused to make more cuts to it. Tarkovsky reportedly remarked in his diary on the film's release that although not a single poster for the film had been put up in Moscow, all of its screenings were sold out: Rublev reportedly sold impressive 2.98 mil. tickets in the USSR. Details on its performance in other markets up through the 1970s are not available: It did gross 102k $ on its 2018 North American re-release. Tarkovsky favored the 186 minute version. The film is voted in at #203 on IMDb's user-generated Top 250, sitting between Before Sunrise (1995) and The Wages of Fear/Le Salaire de la Peur (1953). Tarkovsky returned with Solaris/Solyaris (1971). Solonitsyn returned in Anyutyna doroga (1968). Andrei Rublev is fresh at 95 % with an 8.84/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Andrei Rublev?