Horror by Stedicam in this near-masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (2 July 2015)

Come and See comes off almost like a post-apocalyptic film, far more than what you typically may associate with a world war two spectacle. Of course director Francois Truffaut once said that you can't make a war film as 'anti'-war because of the excitement of the violence. Aside from many other examples refuting this, Come and See isn't simply anti-war, that would be too easy. Director Elem Klimov (in what turned out to be his final film) lays on the brutality and the barbarism so thick and with such force and magnified wrath that you'll never want to watch another war film as long as you live - and really, how can you go back to watching a regular ol' shoot-em-up-let's-kill-bad-guys war flick after this? You're basically put in the position as the audience member of the main character, the boy Florya (Kravchenko), and you are witness to see ALL of the devastation that the Nazis levy on the Belarussians. In other words, if you find this 'exciting', you may need to check your head.
I should note the filmmakers don't go right away into the horror and death. They do give a few moments at the start to show how Florya gets into this - he gets brought on to fight in the army (against his mother's wishes, and at this point Florya hasn't gone through anything yet to feel either way about it). He gets left behind by the troop to guard the base, what little there is, and we get a moment to know this character alongside a young woman named Glasha (Mironova). It feels like from this scene the doom is already pending - what do these two have really, at this moment, but each other - and characters address the camera head-on (think how Demme does it), and it's startling. But then come the bombs and explosions. For a good long while, Florya thinks he's deaf. It's just the beginning of his troubles.
No family (all dead), no hope, no future except for the struggle to survive. If one weren't thinking that this was set so squarely in 1943 Eastern Europe, one might confuse the backdrop as the bleakest post-apocalyptic drama ever made; The Road looks nearly weak by comparison to Come and See. Florya, as played by this actor, spends practically most of the rest of the film in a state of shell-shock - it also appears he's ages older as it goes on, looking like an old man by the moment he plugs bullets into a particular painting - and while it may not allow for the greatest 'character development' or whatnot (and early on a scene where he's cleaning a pot that'll be used to cook meat by the troops is a little on-the-nose metaphorically), we're with this kid all the way. He's meant to be us, and really if there's any purpose to something as unrelentingly bleak and punishing as this film it's to get us to feel SOMETHING from scene to scene.
And what makes the film so effective in large part is that the filmmaker doesn't, much as he can, look away from destruction with the stedicam. Shots can go on for a while if you got a good guy behind leading away on the camera, and in Come and See the epic vision of apocalypse comes thanks to a composition that doesn't waver to another cut when it doesn't have to. By following along we get caught up more in the action (think back to The Shining, which was another film that masterfully utilized the stedicam for such an effect). And what happens because of this is that when it comes time for the filmmakers to really unleash it all - a sequence that seems to last a half an hour in the second half of the film, where the Nazis gather up a village and, well, guess what Nazis do - the effect is tumultuous.
I had the feeling near the end of almost, just a tiny bit, being exploited by the filmmakers; not that I was looking for a ton of nuance with, you know, foot soldiers of a Jew-hating mass-murderer like Hitler, but the tone is so relentless in what it's set after it leaves little room by to be distraught. I found myself saying out-loud more than once, "Jesus Christ!" One may want to criticize a young actor like Kravchenko for having the same pained expression through much of the film, but can you blame him? Is it even acting after a certain point? The soundtrack, too, I should mention, adds to the uneasiness and surreal nightmare of the production, making moments like crawling through mud or watching a cow's last moments via its eyeball all the more horrific - it even brings in some Mozart, at one point sort of (I think) ironically, and then by the end it's just good ol' Requiem.
Come and See is not something you'll "Want" to watch, but as something to "Need" to watch, it's not dishonest about its intentions. It doesn't wave false patriotism, and through all of the images of the Nazi machine in the final reel (most notably a black and white montage of backwards propaganda film), this could be any people being subjected to murder and warfare. I don't know when I'd watch it again, but I'm glad I did for its artistry and the simple fact that it shows what 'Things That Go Boom' *really* do to people . 9.5/10