Come and See
In 2001, J. Hoberman of "The Village Voice" reviewed "Come and See", writing the following: "Directed for baroque intensity, "Come and See" is a robust art film with aspirations to the visionary – not so much graphic as leisurely literal-minded in its representation of mass murder. (The movie has been compared both to "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan", and it would not be surprising to learn that Steven Spielberg had screened it before making either of these.) The film's central atrocity is a barbaric circus of blaring music and barking dogs in which a squadron of drunken German soldiers round up and parade the peasants to their fiery doom ... The bit of actual death-camp corpse footage that Klimov uses is doubly disturbing in that it retrospectively diminishes the care with which he orchestrates the town's destruction. For the most part, he prefers to show the Gorgon as reflected in Perseus's shield. There are few images more indelible than the sight of young Alexei Kravchenko's fear-petrified expression." In the same publication in 2009, Elliott Stein described "Come and See" as "a startling mixture of lyrical poeticism and expressionist nightmare."