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? 

Secrets of the Tribe (2010, documentary) - Padilha's superb anthropology documentary

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1 Film Excess win:

Best Documentary   

1 Film Excess nomination:

Best Documentary (won)

 

An ominous poster for José Padilha's Secrets of the Tribe

 

Secrets of the Tribe looks into the controversy arisen by Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado (2000), which raises grave accusations against prominent Western anthropologists concerning their involvements with the indigenous Yanomamö people in the Amazon.

Secrets of the Tribe is a phenomenal example of how to make a documentary of this kind. It deals with relatively intellectual and complex content; scientific research conducted decades ago, ideals of science and research in general, references in many directions, a large gallery of subjects and their conflicts. From the dethroned, megalomaniacal Napoleon Chagnon, who stands out as resourceful and intelligent, - but also monstrous, - to criminal Jacques Lizot, through Claude Lévi-Strauss, Kenneth Good and more peripheral characters, Secrets of the Tribe presents a fascinating and quite disturbing look-in at the world of indigenous anthropology. It raises a critical and keen debate of the discipline to a higher level, where it is the legitimacy of modern science as a whole that is really up for debate.

Secrets of the Tribe is directed by Brazilian master filmmaker José Padhilha (Elite Squad/Tropa de Elite (2007)).

 

Related posts:

 

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

A still of Chagnon with a Yanomami Indian

LA Times critic Kenneth Turan sings his praise for the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Unknown

= Unknown

[Secrets of the Tribe premiered January 22 (Sundance) and runs 110 minutes. It was shot in Brazil, Venezuela and the US as a co-production between 11 companies and institutions. It was screened at 5 US festivals in total and at 1 Polish, as well as on various TV channels. 260 IMDb users have given Secrets of the Tribe a 7.5/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Secrets of the Tribe?

Embrace of the Serpent/El Abrazo de la Serpiente (2015) - Guerra's Amazon meditation is a towering gift to us all

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+ Best Psychedelic Movie of the Year
+ Best Colombian Movie of the Year
+ Best B/W Movie of the Year
+ Best Poster of the Year

An ethereal poster for Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent

Embrace of the Serpent is the third film from Columbian master co-writer-director Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys/Los Viajes del Viento (2009)), written with Jacques Toulemonde Vidal (Anna (2015)) and based on the travel journals of ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg and biologist Richard Evans Schultes.

A sick German ethnologist arrives with his native guide to an Indian hermit in the Amazon in 1909 in search of a storied plant. 31 years later, an American biologist returns in search of the answers that were not supplied by the earlier expedition.

Embrace of the Serpent is a film that defies words. And yet here I go, trying to write some words to explain a bit about it. From the first to last frame, it is a film that commands your attention and sucks you in as an audience member. It takes us on a powerful, immersive, meditative journey to one of the harshest and most fascinating regions on the planet: the Amazon jungle.
The film transcends the despairing stories of peoples, plants and animals going extinct due to human stupidity and evil, - which, however, also get related forcefully, - and interacts with keen intelligence and depth with themes such as knowledge, the cosmos, humans, nature and religion on a more universal level.

There are few films that compare to Embrace of the Serpent. It immediately joins an exclusive club of jungle adventure/human meditations such as Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now (1979). Serpent is more in line with the indigenous peoples' culture, losses and point of view than those films, however, and also bring to mind Jim Jarmusch's masterpiece Dead Man (1995). Guerro amazes again and again with evocative scenes, sparse scoring and elegant B/W photography (by David Gallego (Violencia (2015))) that give the story an eternal, timeless feel, and the film is on no accounts lagging behind any of the previously mentioned, grand films.
Awesome is also the acting in Serpent: Belgian Jan Bijvoet (Borgman (2013)) as Theo and Brionne Davis (Avenged (2013)) as Evans, a rational scientist fraught with a deep, recognizable wish to outcast his knowledge and Western luggage in lieu of newfound wisdom, are phenomenal. As are debuting Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar, who play Karamate at the two points in his life with extraordinary integrity and feeling, and Yauenkü Migue as the loyal, smart and good-hearted guide Manduca.
There's a true must-see film out there right now, and if you have any kind of a chance to see it in a cinema, you'd better grab it and fast. That film is Embrace of the Serpent.

Related posts:

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Estimated 1.4 mil. $
Box office: 2.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say (but as of yet a flop)
[Embrace of the Serpent premiered May 15 (Cannes) and runs 125 minutes. Filming took place in the Columbian part of the Amazon for around 8 weeks. The film won the Art Cinema Award in the Directors' Fortnight section in Cannes. The film opened #49 with a 50k $ first weekend in 3 theaters in North America, where it peaked in 93 theaters and has grossed 1.3 mil. $ (44.8 % of the total gross to date). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets are Columbia with 1.2 mil. $ (41.4 %) and Argentina with 121k $ (4.2 %). It was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, the first Columbian film ever to achieve that honor, but lost to Son of Saul. It was also nominated for the Best International Film Independent Spirit award and a host of other awards, many of which it has won. Embrace of the Serpent is certified fresh at 99 % with a 8.4 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Embrace of the Serpent?

In Darkness/W Ciemności (2011) - Holland's grueling Holocaust masterpiece

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2 Time Film Excess Award Winner:


Best Director: Agnieszka Holland
Best Supporting Actress: Agnieszka Grochowska

6 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Film (lost to The Descendants)
Best Director: Agnieszka Holland (won)
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Wieckiewicz (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Supporting Actress: Agnieszka Grochowska (won)
Best Cinematography: Jolenta Dylewska (lost to Phedon Papamichael for The Descendants)
Best Costumes: Jagna Janicka, Katarzyna Lewinska (lost to Mildred Pierce)

+ Best Polish Movie of the Year
+ Best War Movie of the Year

Two strong photos are spliced together on the poster for Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness

We are in the then Polish town Lvov during World War II, as the Jews of the town are being killed or driven away. A group of them manages to buy entrance into the town's sewer system, where they for months live through extreme trials, while the war rages above.

This authentic story works as simultaneously a horrific WWII document and a tremendously compelling survival drama. It strikes hard at once and grips its audience with its very potent, visceral strength until the last frame. Jolenta Dylewska (Made in Poland (2010)) conducted the great cinematography.
In Darkness is impressively big, detailed and emotionally harrowing and overwhelming. Robert Wieckiewicz (Walesa: Man of Hope/Walesa. Czlowiek z Nadziei (2013)) is eminent as the sewer worker who helps the Jews, and Agnieszka Grochowska (Child 44 (2015)) is striking as the pregnant woman among the group.
In Darkness inspires inevitable comparisons to Steven Spielberg's masterpiece Schindler's List (1993). This film is just as good, but has less Hollywood to it, - none, that is!
In Darkness is written by David F. Shamoon, based on Robert Marshall's In The Sewers of Lvov, and directed by Polish master filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa (1990)).
Don't miss this important masterpiece!

Related posts:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
Top 10: The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Robert Wieckiewicz gives one of the year's top performances in Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness

Watch the trailer for the film with English subtitles here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 9.9 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[In Darkness was shot in January - April 2010 as a Polish-German-Canadian co-production. The only remaining survivor of the Lvov sewer Jews is Krystya Chiger, who has written of the experience in her memoir, The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow (2008). The book was published too late to be a source for the film, but Chiger has since met with and lauded Holland for her portrayal. In Darkness was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Film, losing to A Separation (2011). It grossed 1 mil. $ (10.1 % of the total gross) in North America. Its biggest two markets were its native Poland (6.4 mil. $/64.6 %) and Peru (1.8 mil. $/18.2 %). In Darkness is certified fresh at 88 % with a 7.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of In Darkness?

The Look of Silence (2014) or, The Violence of Indonesia Part II

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+ Best Danish Movie of the Year

The transfixing poster for Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence is the second chapter in the immense documentary endeavor of covering the repercussions of the 1965-66 genocide in Indonesia today, which started in The Act of Killing (2012).
While The Act of Killing followed some of the executioners of the mayhem and mass-killing, in which the country's supposed approximately 1 mil. Communists were rooted out by militia death squads with the Indonesian military's support, (as well as, it is indicated, the then Communism-warring US government), as they reenacted their torture and killings for a surrealistic film rendering, which they themselves were in charge of, The Look of Silence puts a reversed focus on the story:

Adi is a middle-aged man, father and husband, who has carried the burden of the genocide with him for all of his life, as his big brother Ramli was killed then as one of the approximately 1 mil. people that were murdered in the 'purge'. Now, Adi seeks answers from some of the responsible executioners who are old men today.

SPOILER The method of introduction which Adi uses to get to sit down with these aging individuals and talk about their dark past that most of them are against shedding fresh light on, is truly ingenious; through the man's profession (I suppose) as a traveling salesman of glasses, he measures their eyesight while bringing some measure of the clarity they all struggle against to the table, through his unflinching questions, his story, and, as the brilliant title captures, his look of silence.
While some of the executioners still feel guiltless and even (outwards) proud of their 'accomplishments', Adi's incriminating, just stare is impossible to escape, once they sit down with him, and it seems to point ahead to some of the coming, unavoidable divine justice that Adi's old mother also looks forward to. The bitter trauma of losing one's child to an act of unusually bestial and cruel violence has an undiminished range as a wound in her soul, and the footage that lays this and her still simmering anger bare is truly remarkable.
The Look of Silence is, like The Act of Killing, made by American documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1998)), who resides in Denmark. Unlike on the preceding film, Oppenheimer has sole director's credit on The Look of Silence.

Adi's mother and father add a human aspect and an aspect of love to Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence that raises the film to hallowed ground

The film consists of electric scenes of quiet confrontation with the murderers as well as intimate footage of Adi's own family; his ancient father and old but fresh-minded mother, his wife and his two wonderful kids. We witness the political horror stories that his kids have to listen to as the country's depraved official account of the killings in their school, which have become part of the country's polished, false historical narrative.
While the great, Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing lingered in the basest darkness in the souls of the executioners and bled out in surreality, The Look of Silence balances its gruesome annecdotal material with some lightness and humor from Adi's family, and remains in a totally sober and starkly realistic fix on its story throughout. The film has confrontation scenes that are magnetic and explosive like nothing I've ever seen before, as well as humorous and deeply touching scenes of the love, spirit and compassion that characterize Adi's family. Each confrontation ends differently, and one is especially a standout, as SPOILER the daughter of an executioner asks for forgiveness for her father's sins, while he is sitting next to her. Apart from this scene, the poor memories that characterize just about all the people in the film is staggering: Though many years have passed, and much is probably forgotten naturally, it seems certain also that a huge amount of detrimental denial and lying is present in the Indonesians we get to know in The Look of Silence.
The film is even visually stunning, with a great eye for nature and life in all of its forms, as well as for the sometimes menacing stillness of eternity.
Oppenheimer and Adi are men of incredible courage and spirit, and The Look of Silence deserves to be seen widely and win all the acclaim it can. It is a work of the highest possible integrity and profoundest value. - Don't miss it!

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Joshua Oppenheimer: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Act of Killing/Jagal (2012) or, The Violence of Indonesia Part I

Joshua Oppenheimer with Adi Rukun at a screening of The Look of Silence

Watch the trailer for the film with English subtitles here, and then do your best to get to see this film in a cinema, please!

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown

What do you think of The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing?
If you are Indonesian or know Indonesians, please tell of your/their experience of the film/s

The Act of Killing/Jagal (2012) or, The Violence of Indonesia Part I

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A colorful, absurdist poster for Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing

This review is based on the 159 minute director's cut version of the documentary, which also exists in a 122 minute theatrical version and an even shorter version, (which is naturally best avoided.)

In 1965-66, Indonesia's new military regime demanded the country's Communists executed. The society's strata of gangsters thereupon carried out 1-2.5 mil. more or less mandated killings, and the group are to this day praised for this genocide. The film documents some of the prolific executioners from then, as they reconstruct their crimes for the camera today.

This hair-raising, deeply unusual war documentary contains despairing and incredible material, e.g. a happenstance real extortion, (the commonality of how it occurs underscores Indonesia's monstrous problems with governance, violence and morality), and morbid reconstructions of torture and murders as well as heart-wrenching testimonials.
By mostly focusing on the executioners, The Act of Killing also becomes a study in the flexibility of the human psyche and its propensity for the most heinous crimes imaginable. One of the film's most troubling qualities is the fact that it accomplishes a portrayal of the killers as humans instead of monsters. Indonesia, on the other hand, as a country, stands out as singularly perverse and despicable to me at least.
The film is a collaboration between Joshua Oppenheimer (The Entire history of the Louisiana Purchase (1998)) and co-directors Christine Cynn (The Globalisation Tapes (2003)) and Anonymous, ('Anonymous' appears 49 times during the credits and cover crew members who cannot be publicly known, because they fear retaliation from the death squads in Indonesia). The Act of Killing takes an at times surrealistic approach to its material and can come across not unlike a bad fever dream, and it is as stirring as it is provocative and oppressive, not a film that goes down easily, but certainly one that burns itself into the memory of those who see it.
Oppenheimer reserved his next documentary, The Look of Silence (2014), to the other side of the story; that of the millions of victims in Indonesia's bloody history.

The film's lead figure, the mass-murderer Anwar Congo here demonstrates how he used to strangle men to death with a metal wire, in Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and Anonymous' The Act of Killing

Same Congo here in a reconstruction scene towards the film's end, in which he starts to come apart about his past sins, in Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and Anonymous' The Act of Killing

Watch the trailer with English subtitles here

Cost: Approximately 1 mil. $
Box office: 0.4 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[The Act won the BAFTA as Best Documentary in February '14, where Oppenheimer in his speech called for the American government to acknowledge its co-responsibility for the killings. At the Oscars in March '14, The Act was Oscar-nominated as Best Documentary, but did not win. (The happy music documentary 20 Feet From Stardom (2013) did.)]

What do you think of The Act of Killing?
If you are Indonesian, how do you feel about the film and the portrayal of the frightful events in it?