Come and See

12/6/19852h 22m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ The cruelest side of war. ~

Overview:

The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.

Director:

Elem Klimov

Status:

Released

Language:

Russian

Buget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$20,929,648.00

Key words:

nazi
war crimes
insanity
world war ii
surrealism
wehrmacht
teenage girl
atrocity
genocide
russian army
mine field
horrors of war
premature aging
byelorussia
disturbed
children in wartime

Cast

Aleksei Kravchenko

~ as ~

Flyora Gayshun

Olga Mironova

~ as ~

Glasha

Liubomiras Laucevičius

~ as ~

Kosach

Vladas Bagdonas

~ as ~

Rubezh

Jüri Lumiste

~ as ~

Obersturmführer

Viktors Lorencs

~ as ~

Sturmbannführer

Kazimir Rabetsky

~ as ~

Village Headman

Yevgeni Tilicheyev

~ as ~

Gezhel

Aleksandr Berda

~ as ~

Chief of Staff of the Partisan Detachment

G. Velts

~ as ~

Medical NCO

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

CinemaSerf
Written 2 year(s) ago
7
This has got to be the perfect antidote to the Hollywood treatment of a war film. It's bleak, grim and repulsive - and all in a great, intentional, cinematographic fashion. The thread centres around the young "Flyora" (a superb effort from Aleksey Kravchenko) who is taken from his Belorussian family farm at gunpoint (along with anything it's possible to eat) by the invading Nazi troops. What now ensues follows this young man as he escapes his captors, finds an old rifle and determines to join up with the communists who are fighting almost insurmountable odds to thwart their encroaching, heavily armed, foe. What really resonates here is the simplicity of the production. There are no specials effects, no CGI to create many when there are few - it tells the simplest of stories in a manner that is truly brutal at times, then truly evocative at others. Man's inhumanity to man and all that - but writ large and depicting an invading army devoid of any semblance of humanity on just about every level. The experiences of this young man are truly horrific, but the presentation here is not especially graphic - though it's not for the faint hearted. We are shown what is happening, but Elem Klimov leaves plenty of scope for our own imagination to augment, if that is actually possible, the true grotesqueness of war, of random killings and destruction and all quite possibly exacerbated by the fact that the conquerors had no real idea what they were doing, or why - the film almost imbues them with the characteristics of the wildest of animals who enjoy their regime of torture and malevolence for the sake of it. The ending has a certain degree of vindication about it - but oddly enough it's not especially satisfying. The emotional exhaustion of the viewer has long since set in, and the true fate of what I can only really call these uniformed bullies is just, yet somehow inadequate. The film is gently paced, it could almost be a video diary as young "Flyora" meets and hides from those he encounters and we share his fears and risks en route. This is really well worth a watch but it's not an easy one.