Its beautiful when they have got the cow and suddenly, all the tracer bullets that come across them which apparently were real. You leave the horror of the war and then you are going through this natural landscape. And you know that landscape that some of Come and See takes place in. There's a power, sometimes, in doing that. That sort of beauty, sort of counteracts in a way, what's happening in the frame. But they don't distract, they connect you somehow, the beauty of them. Some of the compositions are just mindblowingly beautiful. Some of the split dye up to shots and some of the scenes in the rain with the sun. There's some really stunning compositions and some stunning techniques (in Come and See). But you know how do you film something that is so brutal that engaged the audience with it? You know, he wanted to make ugly films that were beautiful which seems a total contradiction. And Conrad Hall used to say he was really trying to create beauty with ugliness. And it uses different techniques at different moments for different aesthetic reasons in trying to say something different with the way camera is moving. But what is bad and what is good? It feels right for the film. I mean, you wouldn't say it is badly lit, you wouldn't say it is badly composed. Some people say Come and See is ugly but it is brilliantly photographed. But it was the 1st world war so that doesn't really feel right to me. That's a funny thing about cinematography, isn't it? You know, I kind of, I worry when people say 1917 was so beautifully photographed. I think it should be a compulsory viewing actually because it's the film that nearest depicts certain aspects of the war that I don't think anything else has done really. I don't think there are so many now and that's probably why Come and See stands out even more today than it did when it was first made. I mean, even more commercially accepted films like Dr. You think of Peter Watkins' The War Game or you think of Ivan's Childhood or The Cranes are Flying. Put it this way, films used to be more challenging. It ( Come and See) is a very difficult film but then films used to be more difficult. The way they use the camera, the way they engage you with the subject and the characters within them. Certain films that challenge you, not just in terms of your perception of the world but challenge you creatively. Now, I revisit these films like Come and See or Ivan's Childhood. Here's what the acclaimed British cinematographer had to say about the Soviet film Come and See directed by Elem Klimov:
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