HonkWatch #045: Idi I Smotri

If you think war is glamorous, then watch Elem Klimov’s Idi I Smotri.

The Nazi invasion and occupation of Belarus here is one long, terrifying, sickening, depraved carnival of venality.

We see through the eyes of an impressionable young peasant boy, Florya. We follow him as he desperately tries to join up with the partisans. We endure bombings, executions, dispossessions, humiliations, massacres. We are scared, numbed, shocked. This is film as total immersion: movement, colour, shapes, sounds, all conspire to drown us in a growing nausea.