One of the finest films of all time.

Rating: 10/10 (25 September 2017)

World War II in Belarus, in the region near the Polish borders. Compelled by patriotism and youthful idealism one young boy (Aleksei Kravchenko) leaves his village to fight with the Soviet partisan resistance against the Nazi invasion. Within minutes his innocence is stripped away and the premature knowledge of war is revealed to him. He gets away from his unit and returns home, only to find the whole village including his family slaughtered and their bodies stacked behind an old farm!
The horrendous depiction of war that Klimov creates is unique in the history of cinema. There is no plot, only a terrifying wandering in the nature, as the boy comes face to face with constant terrorizing and horrendous scenarios. Heroisms and sacrifices do not exist, nor inspiring speeches that excite the people to resist and fight the enemy. There is only the unexpected, death, violence and victims! A poem of a nightmare, relentlessly grim, deeply disturbing, and made unquestionably more dread-inducing by the fact that almost everything depicted really happened, it is a depressing but necessary reminder of one of the darkest chapters in human history. Idi i Smotri also manages to be both poetic and realistic and that is a supreme accomplishment on the part of the director.
The film depicts real and surreal images that only war can justify. Transporting us back to World War II setting with its aptly-chosen locations and era-appropriate set pieces Alexei Rodionov's documentarian cinematography incorporates a lot of steady-cam and captures the events without any interruptions by employing long takes, and stands as one of the best films to use it as extensively as this one does, while desaturated colour tones add an urgency and bleak feel to its aura. The imagery at times is darkly psychedelic and truly arouses a sense of fear within the viewer because Fliora's surroundings are often made to seem out of this world. Such an image is the one where a soldier of the resistance, using mud, pieces of wood and a Nazi uniform, creates a German soldier totem. The widows and the mothers attack the totem and destroy it in a primitive act of violence and catharsis. There are moments in which the film is depicted through the eyes of the protagonist, and all sounds collapse into oblivion, reinforcing his deafness after the bombs' explosions.
Come and See is one of the most affecting and confrontational war films ever made. The majority of war films claiming to be anti-war, show heroic acts with weapons and very capable soldiers that can save the day. Come and see does not offer such relief and comfort. It shows that in the war there are only victims. Though no one could possibly describe the experience of watching Come and See as a fun time, the film is nonetheless a masterpiece, worthy of consideration as not just the best war movie ever made, but also one of the greatest films ever made. Come and See is an enduring landmark of Soviet cinema whose potency and relevance will never be diminished by the test of time.