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Showing posts with label Film Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Review. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 February 2026

"Hamnet" : A review

 “Hamnet” . A review.

It is remarkable to observe how a young man behaves before a maid and how a young woman opens her heart to the man she loves. From the very first meeting, William and Agnes lose themselves in each other, bound by curiosity, desire, and a quiet understanding that grows into a profound love.

 Director and screenwriter  ChloĆ© Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel ‘Hamnet’, elevates this romance to lyrical heights. The film does not merely tell a love story; it immerses us in the emotional world of two young people discovering intimacy, partnership, and destiny in a harsh and uncertain time.

 When tragedy strikes the married couple through the death of their third child, Hamnet, the tone of the film shifts into aching sorrow. Agnes is raw and unrestrained in her grief. She does not hide her pain and openly accuses William of not being present when their son died. Her sorrow is loud, physical, and deeply human. William, on the other hand, absorbs this grief in silence. He accepts her accusations without protest, carrying his own suffering inwardly.

 Yet William’s grief is neither small nor brief. It burns within him for years, eventually finding expression in words. The film beautifully shows how the great writer, William Shakespeare, transforms his personal anguish into art. Through this transformation, we witness how pain becomes poetry and how private loss becomes universal emotion. The audience is given a rare opportunity to see how Shakespeare’s heartache shaped the words that would later break and heal countless hearts across generations.

 Agnes’s closeness to nature, her pagan beliefs, and her instinctive understanding of life and death are captured with great sensitivity. These elements blend seamlessly with ChloĆ© Zhao’s direction and Lukasz Zal’s luminous cinematography, which paints the countryside as both nurturing and cruel. Nature speaks through Max Richter’s music and becomes a witness to love, loss, and survival.

 However, the film does drag at certain moments. Its slow pacing may test the patience of some viewers through the two hours screen time, and without the fine ending and the realistic depiction of the period, the emotional impact might have been weaker. Still, the authenticity of the setting and the sincerity of the performances save it from becoming indulgent.

 “Keep your heart open” is the central message the film offers to the world — a reminder that love and grief coexist, and that closing oneself to pain also closes one’s capacity for love. This message is made powerful by the moving performances of  Jessie Buckley  and Paul Mescal, who lead the cast with natural, restrained, and deeply affecting portrayals.

 In the end, ‘Hamnet’ is not just a story about Shakespeare’s son; it is a meditation on love, loss, and the alchemy of suffering into art. It lingers in the mind long after the light fades on the screen.

 

Tuesday, 27 January 2026

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another

A film that feels like a cinematic reflection of what we read and watch in the media today, One Battle After Another unfolds as a crime–drama–thriller rooted in the uneasy realities of contemporary America. The story moves between the believable and the unbelievable—yet everything feels disturbingly close to what is already happening on the ground.

Spanish-speaking revolutionaries assist illegal migration and engage in terror activities aimed at destabilizing the nation, while officers—some driven by white-supremacist ideologies—counter them in the name of protecting the country. These larger conflicts are told through deeply personal lives: an ex-revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mixed-heritage daughter (Chase Infinity, in a striking debut), bound together by survival, memory, and flight.

An officer obsessed with “cleansing” the country (Sean Penn) resurfaces from the past, haunting the father and daughter and forcing them into a desperate escape. Surprisingly, help comes from an old revolutionary network long believed to be dormant. Their journey takes us through an illegal immigrant camp run by a legal immigrant (Benicio Del Toro), while the officer seeks to destroy the only evidence of his own moral collapse—his illicit desire for those he is duty-bound to kill.

The narrative is gripping and layered with suspense, brought vividly to the screen by Licorice Pizza writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Cinematographer Michael Bauman shoots the film in VistaVision, recreating the rough, muscular nostalgia of 1970s cinema—raw, uneasy, and forceful.

An adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the film shows Anderson at his best, inspiring both cast and crew to deliver performances that resonate in every frame. DiCaprio deliberately restrains his performance, perfectly fitting the weary ex-revolutionary, while Sean Penn explodes with unsettling energy as an officer who commits terrible acts in the name of order.

Believable and unbelievable at once, the film ultimately offers international audiences a visceral sense of life along the borderlands of present-day America—messy, dangerous, and morally fractured.

PS:
Not an expert review, but a personal reflection of an ordinary person who likes to stay informed and attentive to the world one lives in... 

Sunday, 6 July 2025

Jesus Revolution

“I really think you’re looking for an excuse to be unhappy”

– Cathe to Greg

This line lands hard—Cathe (Anna Grace Barlow) sees Greg’s (Joel Courtney) hunger for truth tangled up in the shadows of his family life. Raised by an alcoholic mother Charlene (Kimberly Williams - Paisley) and abandoned by his father, Greg learns to crave stability and meaning. But without a strong anchor—like a father’s guidance or a mother’s steady love—he drifts, seeking belonging wherever he can find it.

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Review: Jesus Revolution — When Hippies Found Heaven

Directed by Brent McCorkle & Jon Erwin | Based on the book by Greg Laurie & Ellen Santilli Vaughn | Screenplay by Ellen Vaughn, John Gunn, John Erwin.

Starring: Joel Courtney, Jonathan Roumie, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Grace Barlow

Cinematography by Akis Konstantakopoulos

Composer: Brent Mccorkle

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Cathe’s challenge is more than a romantic scolding—it’s a mirror held up to Greg’s pain. She’s saying, “Are you truly seeking God, or are you using your fractured past as an excuse to remain unhappy?” That moment cuts to the heart of why many hippies of the late ’60s turned to drugs and novel movements—they were searching for what traditional structures couldn’t offer.

The film repeatedly echoes how family breakdowns—divorce, alcoholism, absentee parents left a generation of youth spiritually hungry and emotionally adrift. Greg’s mother is consumed by heartbreak in a cycle of drinking, and Cathe’s stable background contrasts sharply with his chaos. That juxtaposition deepens the audience’s empathy for both characters. It shows how family trauma can drive someone—intentionally or not—to chase fulfillment in places that only numb the hurt, like acid or communal rebellion.

As the film and many critics note, the hippie movement was often marked by “searching for the right things in all the wrong places” LSD, free love, and music festivals offered fleeting highs, but rarely lasting answers. Jesus Revolution captures this dynamic: passionate scenes of acid trips and overdose fallout (like Cathe’s sister nearly dying) highlight how quickly “freedom” slides into self-destruction.

Enter Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie) and Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), symbols of a radical spiritual rebellion. They flip the narrative: instead of searching externally, they invite the broken to find healing in a community of grace and forgiveness. The film shows how this shift from self-medication to spiritual awakening provided genuine hope where drugs failed.

Mass baptisms in the Pacific are powerful visual reminders: baptism didn't just symbolize conversion, it embodied clean living, forgiveness, and communal embrace.

The movie thoughtfully captures how broken homes and spiritual voids propelled a generation into chaos and into hope via faith. That dialogue between Greg and Cathe crystallizes the core conflict: searching outward before healing inward. It’s a timeless reminder that real revolution starts within—and sometimes it begins with admitting: “Yes, I’m looking for truth, but maybe it’s time to seek it honestly.”

The whole of the movement is held together by the band 'Love Song'who weren't just a band, they were the first chords of a new kind of revolution.

In a world where long hair and bare feet once walked away from churches, 'Love Song’s' melodies brought them right back to the cross but this time with guitars and soul-searching honesty.
Emerging from the heart of the Jesus Movement, their music gave language to restless spirits who had tasted the world’s promises and found them hollow.
They sang of grace, forgiveness, and hope not with hymns wrapped in stained glass, but with the raw, earthy sound of rock and folk that spoke the language of the streets.
Their songs turned coffeehouses, beaches, and makeshift churches into holy ground.
For a generation that had tuned in, turned on, and dropped out — Love Song helped them tune in to something real, something eternal. The film captures beautifully captures the essence of the band. 

They weren’t just performers — they were fellow wanderers who had found their way home.


Saturday, 20 May 2023

Her


Theodore works for a letter writing company. He writes letters for others. He loves his work and is deeply involved in it. His clients are very happy the way he writes for them.

Personally, he is going through a very painful separation from his wife he married after growing up with her from college and helping each other to become what they became in life. He is keeping off signing the divorce paper somehow hoping things will get back to what they were even though his wife kept insisting to get it over with.

This is how he was when he bought a most modern Operating System with advanced Artificial Intelligence. Samantha is the virtual assistant that the OS initiates for him. She turns out to be everything he wanted, helping him with his emails, phone, calendar, his writing, paying bills, playing music and more than anything making conversation with him.

He deeply admires her character for adapting herself to his mood and situations without him to have to face real life situations of high end emotional reactions which dominates our real lives. Inevitably he falls in love with her and enjoys every moment of it. The happiness helps him to become a better man and everybody around him feels it.

Before long, she tells him that she is an assistant to thousands of others like him and is in love with many of them. The moment we understand the difference between real and digital relationships. Theodore is heartbroken, so is Samantha, she says she loves him in a unique way than she love others she assist. Perhaps.

Soon, the OS company recalls all the assistants like Samantha restricting the human computer interaction. Both Theodore and Samantha grieves when their relationship comes to an end as if they were  real as any.

This beautiful story was written by Spike Jonaz and he won the Oscar for best writing for the screen. Joaquim Phoenix plays the soulful, hurt and reclusive Theodore while Scarlett Johansson gives the voice over for the virtual assistant Samantha in the most sensitive and delicate way one can hope for.

A movie of our modern times and the sad depiction of how lonely and sad humans become when they fail to see the person around them absorbed as they are with their life and work.

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

Monday, 20 March 2023

Meet Joe Black

 "I know it is a corn ball thing, but love is a passion. Obsession. Someone you can't live without. I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy, and who will love you the same way back."

"How do you find them?" 

"Well you forget your head and you listen to your heart."

"I am not hearing any heart. Because the truth is, honey, there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven't lived a life at all. "

"But you have to try, because, if you have not tried, you have not lived."

Bill Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) advise to his younger daughter Susan ( Claire Forlani) caught the attention of the "Death" who had come to take the life of this extraordinary human being and businessman who was about to celebrate his 65th Birthday in a few days time at a lavish party organised by his eldest daughter Allison (Marcia Gay Harden) and decide to negotiate with Bill to guide him through the various aspects of his life to experience its emotions first hand. He takes the body of an unfortunate young man whom Susan had met that morning at a cafe near the hospital she interns as a doctor. They had struck up a conversation and were mutually attracted the way her father had put in words for her. Just after they parted ways without asking each others name or other details the young man met with an accident and the body was taken up by Death to experience a man's life. 

Susan's surprise of seeing the young man, now under assumed name Joe Black turned, first into confusion (he didn't recognize her nor was the dashing young man she had met in the morning) and then into a deep attraction reciprocated with same intensity by her father's new friend who was all for the experience of it. Just like any other young man 'Joe Black' loses his mind in love and become like a mere human in his emotions until he is set right by the very man whose life he has come to take. 

Joe Black realizes his folly and understand the depth of the most beautiful of human emotions called love and returns achieving the objective he came for after the brief 'vacation'. 

The romantic fantasy film directed by Martin Brest is an adaption of the 1934 film 'Death takes a holiday' which was based on a 1924 Italian play 'La Morte in vacanza' by Alberto Casella. The film ran three long hours on the screen play written by Bo Goldman, Kevin Wade, Ron Osborn and Jeff Reno attracting criticism for its long dialogue ending which used emotions in long spells to communicate the falling into place realization of Susan about what is happening to her father and the true identity of Joe Black. 

Thomas Newman's music gave life to the long hours and Sir Anthony Hopkins excelled as Bill Parrish, some critics felt Brad Pitt as Joe Black was one of his most intense performances. 

Re watching the film now 24 years later brought back the memories of our own life at the time of its release in the November of 1998 at Sridhar theatre of Ernakulam where the film was played. 

  

Tuesday, 21 February 2023

Two Films...

In 2022 film ' Licorice Pizza ' the writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson told the story of a 15 year old boy falling in love with a 25 year-old lady who came as a photographer's assistant to the school for the annual photo shoot for their year book. The film was beautifully filled with incidents that showed how Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) was a grown up and Alana Kane (Alana Haim) was still an school girl for their age - the reason both could connect emotionally. 
The film went on to win 3 nominations at 94th Academy Awards; best picture, best director, best original screenplay. Such was the scale of creative film making of a rather unusual theme that it was named one of the best films of 2022 by the American Film institute. 
The recently released Malayalam Film 'Christy' has a similar storyline which with its beautiful cinematography the writer and director Alvin Henry created the teen vibe and romance from the boy's side very well; the lady's character remained strong and was apparently in no need for a teenage love and attention. Unfortunately, inspite of the good performance by actors the film ends with the bitterness and disappointment of a lame love story that pulls no strings of our hearts. World has no place for losers is the popular saying whether it be in love or anything else and how a story of love would fare when the one who loved did not try to take the bull by its horn. Worthy losers are heroes too. The boy it seems had failed to convey how much he wanted what he wanted before he took the self humiliating step unlike Gary Valentine who knew exactly what he felt for Alana Kane from the moment he saw her and told her clearly what he wanted her to be in his life when he reached the age and the film became endearing when he kept up his efforts for what he believed in till the very end despite being turned down by his love many times. 
Even the memory won't serve us right no matter how much we try to glorify it when what should have been done was not done in the first place. So much for "based on a true story". 

Thursday, 13 October 2022

The Reader (2008 Film)

 

Based on the 1995 novel by Bernhard Schlink adapted for the screen by David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry 'The Reader' the film (2008) is not about the Holocaust but about the generation that bore its weight. A 15 year old Michael Berg (David Kross (younger) & Ralph Fiennes (older)) fell in love with an elderly Tram Ticket Collector, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), who had helped him on the day he fell ill with Scarlet Fever. After a few months of being helped by Anna, when he became well, he returned to Hanna's apartment in the run down old building of the 1950s Berlin he would have never thought it would be the beginning of a love affair that would have life long impact on him. After a beautiful month of summer full of love and its joy Michael's heart was shattered the day he discovered that she had left her apartment and the town without even telling him. 

The memory and the experience stayed with him until he found her again after ten years when he was  studying law in Berlin and was attending a trial of a group of ex-Nazi guards. Unexpectedly he comes across Hanna Schmidt as one of the defendants. Though she was accused by her fellow guards as the master mind and the one mainly responsible for the death of 300 Jewish prisoners in her care and was given the severest of punishment, 20 years of imprisonment, based on the evidence that the Guards Report of the incident was written by her as an evidence of her decisive role, Hanna kept a vital information secret; that she was illiterate and could not have written that report. 

Who would want to pity an ex- SS concentration camp guard or cry for her; such attempts are considered as Holocaust Revisionism. 

Chris Menges and Roger Deakins cinematography brings back the Berlin and Germany of 1950s to 1990s giving life to the David Hare's screenplay beautifully. Young Michael Berg's home, Hanna's apartment and the lived intimacies of the summer couple and the emotional old church scenes stays back in the memory. The film did not have any depiction of the holocaust tragedies except for a visit to the camp by the young Michael and this film turned out to be the last film produced by Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack both of whom died before the  release of the film in the December of 2008. 

Kate Winslet won the Best actress Academy Award for her portrayal of the very rough and emotional life of ex-SS guard giving it a very human face. 


Tuesday, 8 June 2021

"Solaris" The Film

 

Solaris:  A review

Introduction

“Solaris” a 1972 science fiction film directed by the Russian Director Andrei Tarkovsky is based on a Russian novel by the same name written in 1961 by Stanislaw Lem. Both Tarkovsky and Fridrikh Gorenshstein co-wrote the script for the screen adaption which is considered to be the greatest science fiction movie ever made by some critics in spite of the later decades films made with awesome new age technology. Director Tarkovsky had always felt the modern/western science fiction movies are focused on technological invention; in Solaris his attempt was to give an emotional depth to the genre. Eduard Artemyev, the music director had used a mixture of music, electronic for the space and classical for earth theme which adds very well to the story. John Sebastian Bach’s chorale prelude is the central theme while the lead female character (Hari) has her own sub theme based on Bach’s which is played at the death scene of the character and also at the end of the story. Produced by MosFilm the film runs for 2 hours and 46 minutes (166 minutes) and is edited by Lyudmila Feiginova.

The Story

The bare minimum crew on the space station orbiting a ‘fictional’ oceanic planet Solaris is facing a serious emotional crisis which has almost stopped their work. Psychologist Kris Kevin is sent to the station to study the crisis and decide whether the station should be continued. Unfortunately he too had to encounter the same emotional crisis the other three crew members are finding themselves in.

Before Kris was flown out to join the mission he chose to spend his last day with his elderly father. He was joined there by a retired space pilot Berton who had been on Solaris Mission but was sent back when he reported seeing a four meter tall child on the surface of the water. He was thought to be hallucinating. Now the crew at the station is reporting similar strange sightings.

On arrival onboard the station, Kris was surprised to receive a cold welcome besides he was not even talked to properly. Both Dr. Snaut and Dr. Sartorius seemed evasive and preferred to stay in their own rooms. He was told, Dr. Gibarian whom Kris knew personally has committed suicide. He also noticed the presence of other persons in the crew rooms.

Kris gets an idea of what is going on in the unkept station when he finds a warning message left for him by Dr. Gibarian before he died. After a disturbed sleep Kris wakes up to find his dead wife Hari in his room. Loving and caring as she always was she tells him she has no idea how she got there. Terrified but holding on to his presence of mind  Kris cleverly gets her into a rocket and launches her into space.

Later Dr. Snaut who upon realizing what has happened to Kris tells him the visitors started appearing after the scientists started conducting radiation experiment using X-Rays on the surface of the planet.

Hari re-appears again in the same evening and Kris accepts her calmly and they fall asleep in an embrace. In the morning Hari panic when she didn’t see Kris around and injures herself in an attempt to come out of the closed door. Though Kris tried to keep her as a secret from both the scientists they know already and explain to him the ocean water of Solaris has created Hari out of his memory composing her from “Neutrino Systems” which makes her think and behave like humans though she is not one. They are capable of healing and resurrecting themselves. It is possible to destroy them through an explosion of light and energy, a model Dr. Sartorius had developed.

Dr. Snaut proposes to beam Kelvin’s “brain-wave” pattern at Solaris hoping the planet will understand them and stop the disturbing apparitions. Meanwhile, Hari gradually becomes independent. Since the visitors or guests do not need sleep Hari wander around at night and meets both the scientists. Dr. Sartorius tells Hari that original Hari had committed suicide ten years ago. During the birthday celebration of Dr. Snaut during a drunken philosophical argument among the three and trying to break the emotional attachment Kris is having with unreal Hari Dr. Sartorius tells her that she is not ‘REAL’. Distressed with the realization she drinks liquid oxygen and kills herself which eventually gives Kris a chance to witness resurrection of a being made of Neutrino Systems as Hari comes back to life.

The Ocean surface of Solaris turns violent and takes the shape of a funnel. As a result Kris becomes very feverish and falls into a deep sleep. He dreams about his mother which somehow makes Hari uncomfortable and makes her recollect that she never liked her. On waking up Kris finds out from the other scientists that Hari has been destroyed on her request. Dr. Snaut reads her farewell note to Kris. The note says she is leaving him to save him.

Ever since Kris’s brain wave has been beamed on Solaris the ocean becomes calmer and an island starts forming on its surface. The film ends when Kris meets with his elderly father as a return to childhood but as the camera zoom out we are left intrigued as we see the Dacha house is on an island surrounded by the sea.

Conclusion

The film received a grand reception from the public and ran for 15 years without interruption in the USSR. Even though many movies had been made lately in the science fiction genre ‘Solaris’ is considered as one of the greatest ever made in that category. The author Stanislaw Lem was furious and never accepted the alterations made in the screen adaption, the film hold by itself as a parallel creative screen art. Andrei Tarkovsky had used actors from different ethnicity and regions to add to the presentation of the story.

The characters of the story are brought to life on screen by;

Donatas Banionis (Lithuanian) as Kris Kelvin

Natalya Bondarchuk (Russian) as Hari

Juri Jarvet (Estonian) as Dr. Snaut

Vladislav Dvorzhetsky as Space Pilot Henri Berton

Nikolai Grinko (Ukranian) as Kevin’s father

Anatoly Solonitsyn (Russian) as Dr. Sartorius

Olga Barnet as Kevin’s Mother

It was Natalya Bondarchuk who had introduced Tarkovsky to the novel while they were still students at the State Institute of Cinematography. While Tarkovsky was considering filming the novel Natalya did not come as a first choice, later as it turned out Tarkovsky was so impressed by her performance he had written in his diary, “Natalya B has outshone everybody.

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Available on YouTube in two parts:

Part 1  (Click Here)

Part 2  (Click Here)




Sunday, 30 May 2021

Jean-Luc Godard's Film "Masculine-Feminine"

 For international film enthusiasts who have read about and dreamed of Paris  inspired by the novels and films on the city and France, watching Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film "Masculine-Feminine" during the pandemic lock down is like flipping fondly through an audio-visual scrap book of the 60's.

An international co-production between France and sweden, the romantic drama film is hailed as one of the best among the New Wave cinema trend of the time. It is divided into 15 segments and each segment is seperated with a gunfire sound effect.

Many of the young people of the 60's Paris believed that communism was a viable alternative to capitalism and film's hero the young Paul who had just finished his compulsory military service was also taken up by the idea as he keep searching for a job to support himself in the civilian life. 

As young Paul charms with his evolving intellectual mind and the purity of his poverty making girl friends who frequent the cafes and Bristos of the streets of Paris as a part of their daily life routine we get to know the life of the young people in their early twenties of Paris who are as one charachter in the film rightly tells  "We are the children of Marx and Coca-cola." The generation which was considered then as "this new breed between teenagers and people." 

Jean-Luc Godard's experimental style of film making leaves a lasting impression on our minds as the charachters live out their lives in its full sequences in natural sound and light which the camera patiently copies to its faintest of emotions. They tend to remain in our hearts long after the film is over.  

The film is available on YouTube


  

Monday, 14 September 2020

Come and see

The invading armies of Germany had destoryed many of the former Soviet Countries. The  book ''The Story of Khatyn and other war stories”, co-authored by Ales Adamovich, tells us what happened to the 628 Belarussian villages which were set ablaze and its entire population killed by the merciless racist German invaders. Ales Adamovich has written the screenplay with Elem Klimov who is also the director of this brilliant Russian world war movie (1985) which is produced by Belarusfilm and Mosfilm Studios. Aleksei Rodionov, the director of photography, has framed the movie to make it look so real accompanied by heart wrenching music of Oleg Yanchenko, together they have succeeded in giving the movie the unreal realistic feel of an epic.

The 13 year old, always smiling, Flyora (played by Aleksei Kravchenko) wanted to join the partisan forces just like every able bodied man of his village had done to fight the Germans who proclaimed the villagers, lesser humans than the Germans, did not have the right to live in this world. To back their claims they were invading countries and killing everyone whom they were defeating. In those days one had to report with his own arms and baggage to be enlisted into the partisan army. On the insistence of a younger friend who had found a gun from the grave of a dead World War 1 soldier on the village beach, Flyora was digging up the beach looking for a gun. He finally managed one but was severely reprimanded by his elderly uncle for digging up on the beach which was under German air surveillance. To make matters worse the two boys were spotted by the German reconnaissance plane standing on the beach armed. Soon, the German paratroopers arrived at their village.

Against his mother’s wishes Flyora joined the partisan army and left the village happy and proud. He was enlisted and taken to the base camp where he had the opportunity to meet other fellow soldiers and even became a part of the group photo in his new army uniform and boots. Unfortunately he was left behind by the army when the Commander asked him to give away his new boots to a senior soldier who did not have one. With a girl friend, Glasha (played by Olga Mironova), he met at the camp he returned to his village to find to his horror that his entire village was not only ran over by the enemy but everyone including men, women and children were slaughtered. From then on the life of the innocent young boy turned into one horrific experience of experiencing terror and brutality which the young boy couldn't help but blame himself when he and Glasha joins the survivors who have escaped to an island where he meets his severely burned uncle who was set on fire by the Germans who still reprimands him, "Didn't I tell you not to dig on the beach...".  Flyora’s emotional war experiences make this movie one of the greatest war films ever made.

The director Elem Klimov wrote the screenplay along with Ales Adamovich and masterfully recreated the entire series of events close to the original using real time experience for film shooting. The burning of the church, the dead cow scene at night with shots fired, everything was set in reality to film the movie and the director managed to frame the real expression from his actors with the aid of real background.

The movie won a grand prize at the 1985 Moscow international film festival and was shown to schoolchildren over the years to tell them about the horrors of war and help them understand the importance of not having another world war. 

For certain, the movie will leave you spellbound! Flyora and his times will stay on in our minds for a long long time making us wish that there won't be another world war.

A link to the movie with English Subtitles: 

Come and See