War, What is it good for?

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2011)

"Come and See" was one of the most difficult movies to sit through that I've ever seen. Cinematically and story wise it pulled absolutely no punches. The director Elem Klimov chose to show us the most horrible aspects of war and does so in such a way that mentally our senses our assaulted by the gritty depictions of war time horrors. The constant buzzing of the flies I immediately understood to be a tell-tale sign of death and their constant buzzing became a harbinger of sadness and heartbreak. In this film death often comes suddenly and without warning. Just the way it does in a real war. Throughout the film we see the main character Florya go from a wide-eyed boy filled with optimism into a haggard shadow of his former self, seemingly aged decades from the horrors he's forced to witness and survive through. Ironically these hardships forge him into very type of soldier that the Nazi's wanted to snuff out. Those with the will to fight, but more importantly a reason.