Part of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko — in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s JOAN OF ARC) — eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty — rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, COME AND SEE is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget anti-war film ever made.
Be warned: the horrors of war are on full display here. Approach with caution.
“I have rarely seen a film more ruthless in its depiction of human evil.” —Roger Ebert (1985) "Classic…. Taps into that hallucinatory netherworld of blood and mud and escalating madness that Francis Coppola found in APOCALYPSE NOW." —Rita Kempley, Washington Post "Unforgettable…. A film of great craft, courage, and a deep seated compassion." —Ian Nathan, Empire "The greatest anti-war film ever made.” —J.G. Ballard
