Come and See (1985)
As many of you will have noticed almost all this films I chose for this series are based around the Second World War. I briefly wrote in my review for Tora! Tora! Tora! about the global size of that war and the impact of it had on millions of people across the planet.
While this war was fought in many lands, in many nations, in many continents, the largest arena in this war was the Eastern Front which saw Nazi Germany locked in a ferocious battle to the death with the Soviet Union.
The Eastern Front was one of pure unbridled horror and savagery and saw the Nazis inflict some of their most barbaric atrocities upon the civilian populations of the territories they invaded. Millions were murdered and entire towns were essentially wiped off the face of the earth, and it’s in this arena of horror that we are brought into with the 1985 Soviet film Come and See.
It’s 1943 and the German army is sweeping through Soviet Belorussia and young Floyra is eager to do his part and is overjoyed when he is recruited by the local partisans to fight. However, this is merely the beginning of a nightmarish journey that takes him across a war-torn land, faced with death, destruction and untold terrors as he struggles in vain to survive.
I should begin by stating that the other films I’ve talked about on this list are merely recommendations of films that I think people should watch because I enjoy them and I feel that others might also. Come and See, however, is a film that I think everyone must watch at least once in their lives because one viewing is all that is needed for this film to really stick with you.
Aleksei Kravchenko is our protagonist as Floyra and he doesn’t so much as play a character as live it. Beginning the film as a plucky young partisan, all smiles and floppy hair, Kravchenko over the course of the film, undergoes a tragic physical transformation that leaves him by the end a grey-haired man who seems to have aged about 30 years, with his tired eyes telling a story more than dialogue could.
This is not a war film with any battle sequences, the closest thing being a night-time gun battle illuminated by flares and tracer rounds, in which the only cover for Floyra to hide behind is a dying cow, with the intensity of the scene heightened by the knowledge that director Elem Klimov insisted on using live ammunition to increase the realism of scenes.
Those who have never seen Come and See, but have at least heard or seen clips of this film, know full well what the most infamous scene is. It comes in the second half of the film when an exhausted and isolated Floyra ends up in a tiny village called Perekhody where he is taken in by a local wagon driver who offers to hide his partisan affiliation from the advancing Waffen SS division.
What follows is a full 20 minutes of sheer terror as the SS troops round up the village’s inhabitants, herding them into a tiny church and locking them all inside. Floyra manages to escape, as do a few others, but they are forced to watch as the Nazis, along with local collaborators, proceed to burn the church down with the screaming inhabitants still inside. The imagery is already nightmarish enough, but it’s the screaming of the villagers that really sticks with you, with the scene made even more chilling by the reaction of the Nazi forces to the atrocity they have just committed -laughter and applause.
Come and See is not an easy film to watch, and I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t shocked and moved by what I saw. Elem Klimov (who never directed again after this film) has crafted one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen, and one of the finest films I’ve ever seen.
In concluding this article I want to say that while I’d like you all reading to seek out and watch all the films I’ve discussed and recommended, but if you’re only going to watch one of them, make it Come and See – again this is not a film you should watch, this is a film you must watch.
If you have any recommendations for other wars films that perhaps you’d like to recommend, feel free to leave them in the comments. If I’m lucky I’ll hopefully be able to spotlight them in a future series. Thanks.
Graeme Robertson
Originally published March 14, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
