COME AND SEE

As you are aware, I am a big fan of Belarus, and of Soviet and Partisan triumphs during WW2 / The Patriotic War.

I found this incredible movie on youtube.com. Parts of it are dubbed into English, but from what I can tell it is the story of a boy who joins the Belorussian Partisans in their fight against the Germans of WW2.

I recommend that you visit this web page prior to viewing COME AND SEE. This page is the Belorussian government's official Katyn web page. This page will be self explanatory.

http://www.khatyn.by/en/about/

This film has great acting, great costumes, it is shot on location in Belarus, and is very relevant to my prior Jerzy Kosinski blog because the forested area and topography of this film is very likely exactly and precisely the type of area, if not near the exact setting of Kosinski's story The Painted Bird.

This film is highly relevant on its own accord, and I only mention its connection to The Painted Bird in that a reader and interested party of the Painted Bird can now see some very realistic costumes, sets, and topography of almost, if not EXACTLY the area that Kosinski was describing in his book.

This may be a little bit confusing to the reader, however Kosinski's book is very likely "docu-fiction" . The book is a combination of his lifes events, historical accuracies of the period, cultural markers, and plain fictionalizations on his part. If The Painted Bird were to be accepted as an accurate biography of Kosinski's ww2 experiences as a child in Poland, then it very likely took place on parts of what is now Belarusian territory. According to Kosinski, he was sent to the country on a dark adventure, that according to him, was represented in his book. Therefore, with the reference to a giant marsh land, and the fact he was sent away from the Nazis, or east, he would have been describing the marshes and forests inside the borders of present day Belarus. Portions of pre-WW2 Poland were incorporated into what are the modern borders of Belarus.(remember the yalta conference of 1945). Kosinski referred in his book to persons who spoke a dialect variant from the standard Warsaw Polish of the day. This dialect could very well have been a forest version of Polish, or it could have been a forest version of Belarusian. It is possible that these language dialects were intermingled in some regions of the deep forest on the border of what was pre-war Poland and pre-war Belarus.

If the reader of The Painted Bird chooses to accept this book as "docu-fiction" , then this book could have been set in multiple rural areas to include rural Poland, rural Belarus, Rural russia and Rural Ukraine. That is to say the peasant lives described took could have taken place in these countries. Some chapters of The Painted Bird specificly are set in Warsaw by name. One of the topographical clues as to the books setting, regardless of how you classify it is that the book describes of course thick forest, but also large marsh and swamp type areas. Modern Belarus has within its borders an area called the Pripyat Marshes, however these same marshes cross into parts of the Ukraine as well. Infact parts of pre-war Poland were close to these same marsh type areas.

The book largly describes wartime life for peasants living in an isolated and backwards slavic community. ( i am sorry if you are offended at this point, i acknowledge that many polish persons are offended over how Kosinski choose to portray them in his book, i choose to accept his book as "docu-fiction" and accept that there may be portions of the peasants characters and habits that are either under represented by Kosinski, or exaggerated for the sake of drama. ) There are not enough cultural or historic markers in the book to absolutely identify the peasants as being either easter slavic or western slavic.


come and see 1 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=RfQWxoJYwwY&mode=related&search

=come and see 2 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=0hMCKQDdLps&mode=related&search

=come and see 3 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=YXn0oSBv0Dg&mode=related&search

=come and see 4 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=qOvyR97n3Pc&mode=related&search

=come and see 5 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=RpbiuTr3lCw&mode=related&search

=come and see 6 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=38lQjdLajVU&mode=related&search

=come and see 7 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=S1PVbczaIJ8

come and see 8 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=WcO4lmhTDrE&mode=related&search

=come and see 9 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=SCMoVQQHoOc&mode=related&search

=come and see 10 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=NsSfRRRcxK4&mode=related&search

=come and see 11 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZxQEK8EQKTs&mode=related&search

=come and see 12 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vbzblw3MF6w&mode=related&search=

=come and see 13 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=scjUVBFjhlQ&mode=related&search

=come and see 14 of 14http://youtube.com/watch?v=c6P9P8VmB9k&mode=related&search=

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/20/come.htmlhttp://www.smart-popcorn.com/reviews/595/http://movies.go.com/come-and-see/d810426/foreign

The men that made this film obviously put their hearts and souls into its creation. Thank you for taking the time to watching this film via my blog and for being patient with my likely imperfect viewpoints published in this essay.

Mike Miller
Indianapolis
2007