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Elem Klimov (1933 – 2003)
by Ronald Bergan

The Russian film director Elem Klimov, who has died aged 70 after being in a coma for six weeks, was able to make only four features in his lifetime, including Come and See (1985), among the most devastating war films ever made. It is one of the tragedies of world cinema from a country which seems to generate so much tragedy.

In fact, Come and See was the last work he did as director, 18 years ago. There are various reasons for this. The rapidly changing political climate in Russia, and its repercussions on cultural policy, buffeted Klimov, who became First Secretary of the Soviet Filmmakers’ Union during a noisy congress in May 1986. The old guard were replaced by a younger, democratically elected contingent, most of whom, like Klimov, had had problems with state censors; filmmakers in the vanguard of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's perestroika. But though films were freed from the yoke of state control, Klimov, hindered at every turn, failed in his attempt to establish a new vibrant cinema as well as his desire to reissue the great films of the Soviet era. As a result, Klimov, who was always known for his unshakable idealistic convictions, resigned his post two years later.

He was also frustrated in his attempts to make a film based on The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov's fantastical satire of life in Stalinist Russia despite financial propositions by American producers. He also had a project for a film on Stalin, and for an adaptation of Dostoevski’s The Possessed. Finally, at the age of 67 in 2000, he declared, ‘I’ve lost interest in making films. Everything that was possible I felt I had already done. I think of lines written by Andrei Platonov to his wife, “Toward the impossible our souls fly.”'
But there was also a deep wound that he carried, the pain of which he tried to assuage with alcohol. In 1979, his wife Larissa Shepitko was killed in a car accident aged 40 while working on a film called Farewell. A week after her death, her grieving widower was finishing the work. Sheptiko had made only four features, including The Ascent (1976), a powerful film about Soviet partisans during World War II which depicted cowards and collaborators as well as heroes.

Klimov and Shepitko made a splash among Moscow's film intelligentsia in the 60's and 70's. He was tall and elegant; she stunningly beautiful. They shared a Russian sense of irony, black humour, and soulful introspection. They met at the State Film Institute (V.G.I.K) in Moscow in the early 1960's, when directors were trying to move away from Socialist Realism towards more intimate tales concerning the role of the individual in society.

Born in Stalingrad into a Communist family – his first name is an acronym of Engels, Lenin and Marx – Klimov graduated from Moscow’s Higher Institute of Aviation in 1957. At the time of Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’, he then switched to journalism before entering V.G.I.K where he studied under Efim Dzigan, the director of the acclaimed We Are From Kronstadt (1936). His graduate work was a 20-minute comedy called The Fiancé, which was projected on the walls of the Institute.

Klimov’s first feature was Welcome, or No Trespassing (1964), a satire involving a troublesome boy at a Young Pioneers summer camp who is expelled by the martinet camp director. He hides out rather than go home and face his granny, who'd probably have a heart attack from shame and worry. As Granny was a dead ringer for Khrushchev, the film was not shown at first. However, Khrushchev later saw the film, loved it, and authorised its release.

Klimov's whimsical The Adventures of a Dentist (1965) was also blocked from release for a while by the Soviet authorities who saw the story of a young dentist who has the magical gift of extracting teeth painlessly, and thus becoming an object of derision by his less-talented colleagues, as being critical of how ‘special’ Soviet artists were treated. It was during the shooting of the film that Klimov became a good friend of Alfred Schnittke, who wrote the music for two of his films.

His third feature, Agony, a forceful epic set during the final days of the Romanov regime, when the ‘Mad Monk’ Rasputin wielded power at court, took nine years to make then spent ten more on the shelf until it was released in 1975. This was because the pre-glasnost Soviet authorities baulked at the orgies and at what they saw as a sympathetic portrayal of the doomed Tsar. However the latter is seen as a man completely out of touch with the people and political reality. To demonstrate this, Klimov cleverly intercut the action with contemporary newsreels. Although the direction is somewhat feverish, it befits the character of Rasputin, a startling performance by Alexei Petrenko.

Farewell (1981), which was begun by Larissa Shepitko, reflected on the dilemma of the price that has to be paid for progress when an old village in Siberia is to be destroyed and its peasant community, locked into ancient ritual, resettled in a development of faceless apartment blocks.

Come and See (1985) has been described as ‘an epic of derangement’. During the harrowing 142 minutes of the film, we follow teenage Florya (Alexei Kravshenko) who is taken off by a group of partisans fighting in the woods of Byelorussia in 1943. They disappear and he is left to wander, gun in hand, until he rejoins them at then end as a hardened active participant. His ordeal turns his hair grey and puts wrinkles on his young face.

Klimov drew on his own childhood for the film. ‘As a young boy I had been in hell,’ he explained. He and his mother and baby brother were evacuated on a large raft across the Volga River during the Battle of Stalingrad. ‘The city was ablaze up to the top of the sky. The river was also burning. It was night, bombs were exploding, and mothers were covering their children with whatever bedding they had, and then they would lie on top of them. Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it.’ Come and See was Elem Klimov’s last work and testament.

Ronald Bergan

This obituary appears
by kind permission of The Guardian.

Elem Klimov, film director; born July 9, 1933; died October 26, 2003.

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