COME AND SEE directed by Elem Klimov (Soviet Union, 1985)
The original title of this movie was Kill Hitler which doesn’t win points for subtlety but makes the director’s point of view crystal clear.
By the end our young hero shoots at a framed picture of the Führer and each shot coincides with a newsreel sequence played backwards. History is wound back to before the Hitler’s birth; the dream being that Nazism would not have existed without his leadership.
Hitler is the personification of evil yet the fact that there were so many willing accomplices to the fascist atrocities reveals the sad truth that human wickedness never begins or ends with just one man.
Scenes in the movie of German soldiers laughing and joking as they carry out unspeakable acts highlights the depths of depravity human beings are capable of. You only have to see the recent footage of American soldiers pissing on the bodies of Iraqi corpses to realise that war legitimizes this descent into barbarism. Continue reading
