Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (5 February 2020)

There's a moment in 'Come and See' when director Elem Klimov directly references Tarkovsky's classic 'Ivan's Childhood' - it's when the boy peers down into a well and sees his reflection in the water - and there are probably all sorts of other parallels as well, such as that beautiful scene when he's in the forest shaking the tall trees with the girl to make the water splash down. It really made me want to see the films back to back and compare them in their imagery, camera technique, and what they tell us about the Russian experience during the war. This film is certainly darker (much darker, my god), and a part of me thinks that Klimov was building on the great Tarkovsky's work and saying that this was Ivan's real childhood, a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions.
I don't think anyone who watches the film can ever forget the horrifying images of the German army running amok over a Byelorussia village and burning its people alive. That it's accurate - and just one of 628 such atrocities - is truly mind-numbing. But Klimov also gives us indelible visuals earlier in the film, such as the when the boy and girl run down the muddy road in search of his family, and she looks back to see a pile of corpses against the house, or later when they wade through the muck of a bog that comes up to their chests and looks like it might drag them down to their deaths. The scene in the fog on the farm as they scavenge for food and steal a cow is memorable too. The German army is distant for much of the film, bombing from above in the forest scene (for which the audio effects are extraordinary), shooting from afar, and driving troop trucks by in the mist. They're distant, that is, until they're not, and then it's overwhelming.
The Soviet Union made some tremendous films about the war ('The Ascent', a film from Klimov's wife, the great Larisa Shepitko, also comes to mind), and this is certainly one of the very best; it has to be on a short list for greatest war movies of all time. There is a patriotic feeling to the film in the stern look the partisan leader gives the Germans and a pride in the perseverance of the Russian people, but mostly this is a sorrowful film about the horror of war coupled with a desire to never let what happened be forgotten. It certainly succeeds in that, because that's what this film is - unforgettable.
Quote, from Revelation 6:7-8:
"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."