Apocalypse Then

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2000)

In all fairness, this Belorussian-made World War II picture detailing Nazi atrocities, holds a special distinction in world cinema: it is by far the most brutal and emotionally draining of all - in fact, a viewer whose senses have not been properly trained would most likely find it unwatchable. Those brave souls willing to be put through an ordeal of almost 2 1/2 hours will find themselves deeply immersed in an absolutely horrifying experience that will not easily subside whether they want it to or not.
The title, "Come and See", taken from the frequently repeating lines of the book of Revelation, clearly dares the audience to assume the role of St. John, witnessing the Apocalypse, or rather one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind. What we are assaulted with, plays somewhat like a demented version of "Modern Times" transpiring across the panel of Brueghel's "Trimuph of Death", if such a combination is possible. The camera is consistently filtered through a murky, slightly unfocused gaze, and the sound is often heard through shellshocked ears. This tends to eirly distance the events, yet make them even more frightening and unsettling. Much of the dialogue lacks specific meaning or even concrete sentences - it is replaced by subhuman growling, wailing and other spine-chilling, gluttural sounds of the war. What the director prepares is something Spielberg would never even dream of - no sign of compromise with the audience. A crowd of civilian villagers locked up in a barn by Nazi soldiers is not spared at the last minute like "Schindler List's" Jews- they are burned alive, and we get to watch all of it.
Unlike most of the films in this genre, "Come and see" relies mainly on images and sounds instead of a coherent plot, which is not necesserily a weakness, since the sheer terror distorts time and space into a kind of hallucinatory blur, clearly intentional and understandable. But this incredible level of bleak intensity in the long run, has a negative effect on the film: the viewers have to desensitize themselves just so they can keep watching, so the most harrowing scenes are sat through in numbness.
Another questionable move on the director's part is his occasional use of surrealism. While some visuals are painfully believable, while others are simply baffling: crazed villages consructing an effigy of Hitler, a pensive German commander with a pet slender loris (a rare African primate) on his shoulder, a female Nazi eating raw red lobster, not even mentioning a bizzare final montage wich is both inexplicable and obvious, ending with a real-life photograph that is perhaps the most terrifying of all in its implications.
Yes, at times the movie overachieves its goals and seems almost like the footage in "The Clockwork Orange" that they made Alex watch to cure him of "ultraviolent" behaviour; yet other times it delivers the kind of jolts those accustomed to mainstream cinema could only wish they had. The face of a youth who had lost all sanity and aged many decades over several days, will be etched for an indefinite amount of time into the memory of anyone who has seen this film.