A young boy goes to war and struggles to hang onto his sanity and morality as he fights the Nazis.

Rating: 9/10 (7 February 2011)

Not often do I see a movie so visually arresting that it becomes impossible to unsee it. "Come and See" is a spellbinding tale of innocence shattered by the inexorable, mechanical cruelty of war. The protagonist, Florya, wants to become a Partisan, a guerrilla group bent on stopping the advance of the German Fascists at any cost.
He is barely of adolescent age when the decision is made for him, and he is whisked off to war. Lagging behind due to the heavy weight of his gear, he meets Glasha, a girl with a near-prophetic intuition. Her presence gives the film a psychological clout reminiscent of German expressionism; much of the full horror of war is experienced subjectively, through her eyes. When a Nazi plane bombs the forest, Florya is temporarily struck deaf, forcing Glasha to catch the exposition ball. Her face twists in abject terror, and her voice is distorted to a mechanical whir, as she seeks shelter from the mayhem. Later on, when the two find their way back to Florya's hometown, we find it deserted, except for the remains of a stale dinner and his two sisters' dolls--all swarming with flies. Florya never sees the bodies of his entire village piled against the back of a house--yet the camera does, through Glasha's eyes. Klimov is a genius at conveying the sheer power of subjective, emotion-laced scenes like these. A major theme of the movie is the dehumanizing effect of war. Animalistic imagery reinforces this. At one point, we see a single cow, alone except for Florya and his comrades, in the middle of a field. Suddenly, machine guns open fire, and the cow is hit. She bellows in agony and sinks to the ground, convulsing and bleeding, before dying a slow, painful death. This symbolizes the expendable soldiers on both sides, who are driven like cattle off to war and die like animals, with no trace of human dignity. Soon afterward, the Nazis invade the rural village of Perekhody and herd every man, woman and child into a barn, again like cattle. The adults are then removed, with the children left inside. They torch the barn, children and all. We hear their terrible screams, and the door stretches and strains as they struggle to escape. The camera stares paralyzed at this atrocity, just as I was, from its sheer brutality. The Nazis proceed to torch the rest of the town with zero regard for civilians. It is a far cry from most Hollywood movies, which romanticize war as an act of chivalry and patriotism. Not Klimov. War is hell, and he drives this fact home with a hand as heavy as an anvil.
Near the end of the movie, the outraged Partisans corner the invading Nazi unit and secure them to a wall, similar to the innocent people of Florya's village. They, Florya included, debate whether to burn them alive, as they did to many of Florya's neighbors. Suddenly, the movie shifts to formalism: the color becomes sepia, and we see a dramatic montage of scenes from Hitler's regime. They begin with the emaciated, living skeletons of the concentration camps, and run backward in time to propaganda posters, Hitler's rise to power, and finally Hitler as a baby. Suddenly, a pang of conscience strikes them--if they burn the soldiers, they would sink to the same level as their victims. They would be war criminals as well. Florya raises his gun, which he has not fired once in the entire movie, to shoot the image of baby Hitler--but freezes. We realize that some humanity remains in him. In true realist fashion, the core of the movie is not its plot, or its setting, or its visual effects--but the complex, deep emotions that make the characters believable and easy to relate to. Highly recommended!