Disturbing, vivid depiction of Nazi atrocities, without being gratuitous

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2019)

A pre-Glasnost Russian movie about one of the 628 (SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT) villages in Byelorussia alone that were annihilated by the Nazis' 'Dirlewanger Regiment', a unit comprised of criminals released on condition that they simply executed the 'final solution' in Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. The regiment was commanded by notorious alcoholic sadist, murderer and pervert Oskar Dirlewanger, who was (probably) beaten to death by his guards in 1945.
Mainly from the POV of Florian, a twelve(?)-year-old boy who digs up a rifle in order to join the Soviet partisans. We follow his journey from greenhorn to traumatized veteran. Over a week or so.
'Come And See' isn't very explicit in its depiction of battle; the worst you actually see is a cow being hit by machine-gun fire; but the sense in which you are a witness to the insane, drunken, vicious roundup of a village into a barn which is then torched and machine-gunned is very real. What's left to your imagination - including the obvious multiple rape of the young heroine Rose, destroying any idea Florian had of a heroic partisan romance - is more than enough.
Towards the end, we see the rise of Hitler in reverse, which owes something to its Soviet propaganda origins, but this doesn't detract from the sheer emotional power of the whole film. Makes Saving Private Ryan look like Hogan's Heroes.