^{www.camerastylo.com}

^{Come and See (Kino International) 
At Film Forum until March 13} 

Apocalyptic visions of war don't come much more devastating than Elem Klimov's 1985 masterpiece, a child's-eye view of the Nazi atrocities in the German invasion of Byelorussia.  Less graphic vérité than expressionist horror, Come and See derives much of its power from intense close-ups of its young actor (13-year-old Alexei Kravchenko), his face often grotesquely contorted in fear or agony, as well as an overall visual imagination that borders on the surreal (a strategy matched by the film's equally stylized soundtrack of low rumblings and other subjective effects).  If at times Klimov's coups come across as crudely effective (a nightmarish crawl through an imagined bog is accompanied by ghostly echoes of a Strauss waltz), and an unconvincing scene involving captured German officers threatens to take viewers momentarily out of the film, these are really niggling doubts.  The indelible pathos of what is effectively the film's last shot – a vestige of innocence glimpsed through unremitting, incomprehensible horrors – carries with it a cumulative impact matched by few, if any, other entries in the canon of great war films. 

^{Platform (no distributor) 
At the Walter Reade, March 8, 1 & 7 pm} 

Charting an entire decade (from 1979 to 1989) in the lives of young performance troupe members in remote Shanxi, Jia Zhangke's three-hour plus Platform registers the seismic shifts in China's cultural landscape during Deng Xiaoping's era of reform via carefully placed cultural artifacts throughout its episodic narrative.  With an eye on the liberalization of sexual relations as China opened up to the West (one girl who speaks coyly of kissing finds herself, a few years later, having to deal with an abortion; a son ultimately urges his long-suffering mother to divorce his adulterous father), Jia has his ensemble cast go from singing about Mao Zedong's birthplace to break-dancing to Leslie Cheung's "Monica."  Subversively ending his portrait in 1989 (the year of the student demonstrations and June 4th), Jia signals the time through an apposite clip about fleeing Hong Kong from John Woo's The Killer, playing on an off-screen, barely noticed TV.  Beautifully shot by Yu Lik-Wai (himself director of the estimable Love Will Tear Us Apart) and staged largely in static, long takes, the film, like Jia's debut, the remarkable Xiao Wu, confirms a talent whose sensitivity to the minutiae of everyday life, coupled with a rigorous, observational film style, may well make him one of the master filmmakers this side of the millennium. 

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^{All written material (c) 2002 by Derek Lam}