The definitive anti-war film!

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2002)

Theodor Adorno in an instructive essay titled "Education After Auschwitz", claims that all education should be geared towards identifying and understanding the social causes that led to the immense catastrophe of WWII. In other words, through critical theory he wishes to negate in a determinate way the Holocaust in order to both avoide a similar event in the future, but also to create the conditions for the emancipation of humanity from barbarism. Elem Klimov's film points to this direction. The Nazis are portrayed as total beasts for the reason that these collective atrocities transcend individual character. Cyclical camera - movement creates appropriate disorienting effects that match the inferno of war, while hand-held camera gives this horrific experience an immediacy that most films lack. Klimov celebrates in a lyrical way the power of nature and innocence in contrast to the Nero-like scortching of the Byelorussian village. The dialectic between terror and visual splendoour in not resolved in favour of the latter. Rather, Klimov uses superb visuals in order to emphasize the political dimension of the film without resorting into a sterile aestheticization of war and violence, a vice that permeates most Hollywood productions. Overtly influenced by Bergman's "The Shame", "Come and See" keeps the memory of these atrocities alive; that in itself is the most noble political function that great art can offer!