+7
I think in regards to the talk some are having about realism in this thread (Come and See, which I've seen, Promising Young Woman, which I have not), I sometimes think people put too much emphasis on a film looking and moving like reality in order to be interpreted as 'real'. Sometimes, in order for a movie to properly articulate to a viewer what being in a situation feels like, in order to manifest the emotional reality of a scene, it makes sense that a director may rely on the affectations of exaggeration, the grotesque, camp, farce, stereotypes, absurdism, surrealism etc. None of these will make the movie we are watching look exactly as we expect it should. But it allows us to understand the impact of what is happening more clearly. Through a distortion we can actually understand the reality better. This is why something like Duck Soup remains one of the great indictments of politics, even if the Marx Brothers hardly resemble real people.
In the case of Come and See, we are witnessing the effects of war from the perspective of a child.It only makes sense for the world to seem topsy turvy, nightmarish, out of focus, incomprehensible from this view point. To portray this particular reality with any attention to real world details would in fact not do justice to what it is showing us about the trauma of the war on this particular individual. Does this make the film manipulative? Definitely. Does this make it propaganda? Questionable. I can see it being argued either way. But this is to act like it still doesn't have something to say, even if we do end up concluding it was conceived in order to perpetuate some Soviet agenda. It remains the single most powerful anti war movie ever made, regardless of what conditions created it. Or how much it deviates from supposed realism.
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