a great film, but not a pleasant one.

Rating: 8/10 (14 November 2015)

A rough estimate of the content of Come and See is 30 minutes of irony and strangeness, and an hour and a half of surreal and nightmarish, suffering and cruelty. Come and See contains no enjoyment or relief for any of the characters until the final few minutes where by shooting a picture of Hitler we see footage of the war in reverse and get to briefly fantasize that none of it ever happened. And then the audience sees the movie end with tragic classical music that allows distance from the events and claustrophobia-inducing sounds that we've been experiencing for the past two hours.
Watching this movie leaves your emotions and senses drained from the sheer quantity of content intended to convey distress and misery, through the imagery, the sounds and the events portrayed. One of the most dense moments in the film for this is when the main character and a girl he's met are wading through water. This scene occurs some time after a bombardment leaves Flyora's hearing damaged, and a buzzing sound reappears here simulating near deafness. As Flyora drags himself and a girl through the thick swamp covered in a layer of mud thicker than skin, his voice and movements can scarcely be heard through the droning sound of birds, violins, and horribly dissonant piano reverb. And then after emerging from the swamp covered in mud, the thick surface of the swamp disappears, almost as if it was there only for him.
On a slightly related note, it's interesting that whenever a character tried to keep him stationary to avoid going out into further suffering, the place where he would have stayed, and in another case did stay, suffered a much worse fate.
In summary, this movie does a fantastic job on many levels of dragging the viewer into a place filled with misery. So whether that's something you want to experience should be considered before watching, because this is a great film, but not a pleasant one.