Idi i smotri

Bilder des Todes und der Apokalypse wachzurufen, das war die Absicht von Elem Klimov, der als Kind in Stalingrad die Brutalität des Krieges erlebte, und seines Co-Autors Ales Adamovich, der als Partisan in Weißrussland kämpfte und Zeuge der systematischen Vernichtung wurde. IDI I SMOTRI sollte anlässlich des 40. Jahrestages des „Großen Sieges“ die Welt an den faschistischen Völkermord erinnern, der in Weißrussland über eine Million Menschenleben forderte. Qualvoll, erschütternd, instinktiv, hyperrealistisch und dennoch zugleich lyrisch: die Höllenfahrt aus der Sicht eines jungen Partisanen.

A partisan film to end all partisan films, IDI I SMOTRI is downright biblical in its depiction of Nazi atrocities, comparing them to the mayhem caused by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that also served as an inspiration for the film’s title. “And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see! And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” Invoking Death and Hell was precisely the intention of Elem Klimov, who experienced the brutalities of war as a child in Stalingrad, and his cowriter Ales Adamovich, who fought as a partisan in Belorussia and witnessed the systematic burning of hundreds of villages and the massive extermination of civilians. To mark the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory, they wanted to remind the world of the fascist genocide in Belorussia that resulted in over one million deaths, and did so in the most visceral, hyper-realistic style possible that is nevertheless graced with a strange, terrible lyricism. Their harrowing journey through hell, as seen through the eyes of a teenage Belarussian partisan, exploded like a bomb upon its release both in Soviet Union and abroad, and quickly gained fame as one of the greatest antiwar pictures of all times.