Come, see.

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2009)

Klimov's Idi i Smotri, or Come and See, is a unparalleled psychotropic anti-war film. It follows a boy through his induction into the partisans of Belorussia during WWII and their resistance to Nazi occupation. What is most effective about the message of this anti-war film is that there is not a single moment which glorifies or glamorizes violence. Instead, Klimov shows the actual effect of the war on one person in one village. Both are microcosms of the effect the war had on many people and places. To see this awful tale unfold, and then to know that this was but one of so many, is utterly haunting. Of course, to draw the viewer into the world of Florya, the young boy we follow, Klimov must tackle and take hostage our disassociation with the film.
To pull us into a suspension of disbelief, Klimov evokes the five senses, thereby, taking the viewer into the past. He manipulates sound to make us feel powerless, taste to disgust us, smell to perturb us, sight to horrify us, and touch to connect us.
From the moment it begins you feel unsettled by a young boy, with the raspy voice of an old man, helping another boy, Florya, to find a gun. The one he locates is still attached to a corpse. His grueling transformation leaves him like the young boy who helps him in the first scene, a boy with the literal and figurative wrinkles of the elderly.
I have seen this film four times and recommend it to every person who is interested in film. Albeit disturbing and morose, I cannot shake its effect. I find it difficult to use a word to describe it. It is a phenomenal picture, but to say it is wonderful is awkward. What it depicts is too atrocious to call it a wonderful film. It is a necessary film, one which should be watched. What I can say to complement it is that the techniques are groundbreaking and the rhetoric is flawless.