This is not what war is like through this boy's eyes it is what war is like through his mind.

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2001)

WARNING! SPOILER!
I just got home from seeing the movie Come and See. It is the best movie of all time. The story of Florya Gaishun is told in a way I've never seen before. it cannot be compared equally to any movie I've ever seen (and being a devote student of film that's plenty). This is not what war is like through this boy's eyes it is what war is like through his mind. As he goes through his journey we come face to face not always with the images that the characters see but with every time with the emotion that the characters go through. This leaves the senses numb from trauma and the soul shaken but encouragingly resolved.
It begins with Flor in Belorussia Russia in WWII digging up a rifle from a shallow grave of a soldier to join the Partisans. He plunges into the ranks and at his arrival at base he drifts through camp greeting comrades with a smile that has never meet the grisly face of battle. As the Commander orders the troops out the boy's almost unconscious beam remains. But he does not get to march off into battle with the other men as he expected. He is ordered to trade his new boots with an older soldier and to stay behind to man the camp. Only during his patrol around the camp when drudging through a bog does his smile fade into a sobbing lips wet with homesick tears. He is crying but he is not broken. Not yet. He encounters the girlfriend of the Commander crying nearby and directs his longing into bringing a smile to her face. They enjoy a strange and intimate moment that ends at the sight of German paratroopers gliding from the sky. As they rush to the safety of the base the forest around them erupts into a deafening array of explosions that level their camp. It leaves the boy nearly deaf and dull to his surroundings. The girl frantically tries to guide them to out of harm shortly Flor regains his perception and he tries to make it back to his home village. His flawless image of war has been shattered. This is only the beginning.
During Flor's odyssey he ages from a naÃ¯ve romantic boy to a worn haggard and steeled man. Through what seems to be a life shattering experience after another his glorified idea of a war of brave heroes and the evil enemy is killed and then reborn, not as the polished luminous ideal it once was, but as a rough grim but necessary undertaking.
What makes this movie so harrowing yet wonderful is that it does not simply deplore the horrors of war. The terrors that crush Flor's senses and his world cast him into a soldier firm in his commitment to smashing the furiously racist imperialist system that is capitalism in crisis: Fascism. Though his newfound political convictions came from blunt experience and were born from the ashes of worn down emotions and not political struggle it does not weaken the message that the fight against fascism must be a mass armed struggle. It is for this reason that the movie is so remarkable and important. >