Sacrifice safety and ethics for the sake of cinema?

Over the past week or so, I have been doing a spot of research on movies set during World War II. And although most of the titles were familiar to me, though I may not have seen them, there was one film that seemed to crop up on lists everywhere; 'Come and See' (1985).

I'd never heard of it. But the more I read about it, the more eager I was to seek it out. And I finally got to see it yesterday evening.

The film follows a teenage Belarusian boy named Florya. Excited by the prospect of joining the Soviet Army, the ensuing two hours depict his descent into madness as he experiences first-hand the tyranny of war.

You really do get a sense of the change in the character going into the final third of the movie, and various scenes throughout are quite vividly presented. I often found myself thinking about the actors themselves, as they must have gone through quite an ordeal to achieve what they did. And it is in this that lies the issue proposed in the title of the post.

In order to create a realistic atmosphere and performance from the actors, live rounds were used during filming of the movie. Aleksey Kravchenko (Florya) comments in an interview how these real bullets were flying just mere centimeters above his head, and that the crew also attempted to use hypnosis on him to induce a shellshocked state. Additional to this are a number of scenes which seem to suggest that some animals were harmed, and although there is no statement to clarify this it is clear to see in one instance that a horse is seemingly struggling on the ground.

So it does beg the question of how far the bounderies should be pushed for the sake of an authentic film experience. It's probably hard to imagine in the current state of cinema, and perhaps we'll never see films as gritty and dark as this one again, but those risks certainly paid for this production. I wouldn't particularly call 'Come and See' a great film, but I think it is one that will certainly stay with me for a long time.