Come and See

One of the most powerful war films ever made, Elem Klimov’s Come and See is an overwhelming and unforgettable experience. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

A cinematic simulacrum of the overwhelming, discombobulating sensory experience of war that would have an influence on virtually every war movie made after it. And yet, in a crucial sense, there’s hardly a more clear-sighted or realistic fiction film about World War II. Klimov refuses to sanitize or sentimentalize the conflict.

Pat Brown, Slant

The film is a sustained act of looking, with a minimum of dramatic or character development, and these are sights that leave an indelible impression as strong or stronger than any antiwar film in memory.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

Klimov’s dramatic vitality, his control of shifting tones, and his mastery of surprise are what galvanize Come and See. Terrifying as this movie is, we always want to know what happens next.

Michael Sragow, Film Comment

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