less violence is more film

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2011)

Come and See was unlike any other "war movie" I've ever seen. There was no gratuitous and glory-filled banquets of violence dripping down the screen, in fact, considering this is a WWII film it's shocking that Klimov could create this film with such a minimalist approach and yet still have it be so powerful and shocking. Instead of just making your average war film stuffed with violence they fill this film with emotion, which one can clearly see in the lines etched into our protagonist's face by the end of the film. When a violent act is happening, like in the case of the barn being burned with the town's children inside, we don't even see what's happening. All we get is the view from the outside, which when taking into account the joyous time the Germans are having, has the atmosphere of a light hearted social occasion, a birthday perhaps. What makes the scene horribly all-too memorable is the shrieks and cries erupting from within, along with the urgent shaking and banging on the door one could only imagine would be the product of children being burned alive. Even when stacked up against the most gruesome of cinema's war scenes, for instance when the American troops rush the beaches of Normandy in "Saving Private Ryan" and blood is running in rivers down the beach, "Come and See" manages to leave a more deeply penetrating effect, really driving the message of humanity's potential for incomprehensible atrocity towards the darkest depths of our psyche. I couldn't forget those cries and small clenched fists banging on the wooden doors if i tried precisely because Klimov left what was going on behind those doors to the viewers imagination, something two dimensional images projected on a screen can never compete with.