Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7480 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-04-24
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Dubbed, PAL
• Original language: German, Russian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 137 minutes

Synopsis
Elem Klimov's stunning COME AND SEE is a relentlessly brutal condemnation of war hidden in the guise of a surrealistic coming-of-age nightmare. A physically and emotionally draining viewing experience, the film follows Florya (played brilliantly by Alexei Kravchenko), a 12-year-old boy living in 1943 Byelorussia. When he digs up an abandoned gun, Florya gleefully signs up with the Russian Army, looking forward to life as a soldier. But that fantasy rapidly deteriorates when the reality of the situation confronts him head-on. Abandoned by his fellow comrades, he stumbles across the weeping Glasha (Olga Mironova), a pretty teenager who has also been left behind. Together, the pair returns to Florya's village only to discover that everyone has been slaughtered Florya's mother and younger sisters included. The journey continues as Florya embarks on a mission to find food for the stranded inhabitants of a neighbouring village. He eventually lands in the middle of another German massacre, where the animalistic Nazis stuff the Russians into a barn and torch it, obliterating Florya's innocence completely. Klimov's unflinching masterpiece is all the more affecting because of the beauty of its imagery. Working on a variety of levels, COME AND SEE speaks both as personal statement and broad metaphor, making it a timeless, unforgettable achievement.

Customer Reviews

Deeply disturbing tour de force into the abyss of the Eastern front
Once you've seen this 1985 movie by Elem Klimov, you'll never be able to forget it. The reasons for this are to be seen both in the aesthetic quality of the realisation of the script, to which Ales Adamovich contributed as well as the director, and in the extraordinary sujet, the brutal elimination of a Belorussian village and its inhabitants at the hands of the SS in 1943, something that happened to 628 villages in Belarus alone between 1941 and 1944.

Partisan warfare behind the frontlines forms the background of this profoundly shocking and deeply moving drama. The pubescent protagonist of the movie, the 14 year-old Flyora, against the will of his mother stubbornly and somewhat naively insists to be allowed to join the ranks of the Soviet partisans operating from the relative security of the impenetrable woods in the area of his native village. The partisans, however, don't think young Flyora to be of much use, and therefore give him only minor tasks like standing on guard. At the partisan encampment he meets Glasha, a girl romantically linked with Kasatch, the leader of the partisan unit. In the course of the film, the almost extra-terrestrial beauty of the girl sharply contrasts with the ever-increasing brutalities of war. After an air raid on the partisan camp, Flyora and Glasha decide to make it for the boy's nearby home village. However, the villagers have all been executed, quite likely because despite all precautions it must have become known to the German occupiers that a boy from the village had joined the guerilla forces. Their bodies can be seen for the fraction of a second piled up like culled cattle behind a wooden house.

Flyora feels guilty for what happened and heads back to his fellow partisans, leaving behind Glasha. Shortly after that, the boy tries to steal a cow from another village in order to support his unit, yet Flyora is spotted by the German troops that happen to be in the place at the same time. With difficulty, Flyora manages to escape and to disguise himself as an innocent farmboy, but his actions trigger off an unimaginable act of revenge on the part of the SS men.

The following part of the movie will definitely make some viewers TURN OFF their TVs, as it realistically depicts in great detail the slaughtering of the village people by sadistic and partly intoxicated SS troops going on about their deadly 'business' in what seems to be unscrupulous routine fashion, standard procedure. At the same time, the movie's aesthetic foundation undergoes a radical change: After the poetic, neo-expressionistic start to the movie which in many respects like its heavy symbolism is typical of 1970s and 1980s Soviet art cinema, the director switches to a purely naturalistic mode of presentation which lets the horrible facts speak for themselves. Those who manage to endure this part of the movie right to the end at least are rewarded with the almost cathartic arrest and subsequent execution of the SS unit's leaders and their Belorussian accomplices responsible for these horrific atrocities. At the end, it becomes clear that the experiences of the boy have deeply etched themselves into his soul and his face, which is disfigured by wrinkles making him look like an old man by the end of the movie.

All in all, this is a true masterpiece which delineates the dreadful historical truth in an adequate artistic fashion bare of propagandistic tendencies.

A journey of darkness.
I have only seen this film once, when it was broadcast on Channel 4 (U.K.) quite a few years back, but it has stayed with me and has haunted me for a good 10 years or so.

I remember it as being a terrifying and brutal portrayal of a Belarussian youth's struggle to survive on the Eastern Front in World War II as he is forced to join hardened partisans and marauding German troops. The actor playing the young man gives a fantastic performance as a soul who has to witness and participate in the madness and do whatever he can to survive.

I'm surprised that it's only a 15 BBFC rating because I thought that it was really strong stuff. Perhaps I'm a wuss. Anyway, forget the Holllywood videogame war films, take up the invitation of the title and prepare to be shocked.

come and see the best war film of all time
A feature by Elem Klimov made from the script by Ales Adamovich. It was released in 1985 and ranks among the most horrifying war films of all time stalingrad,saving pte ryan, cross of iron, comes now where near. It`s not only about the war of 1939-1945, but about any war, its devastating force sweeping away the natural course of things. The film is based upon documental facts and `The Khatyn Story` by Ales Adamovich. The authors describe the place and events which became a symbol of national tragedy. The hero of the film is Flyora, a sixteen-year-old boy that turned to the woods to help the partisans. At the beginning he is just a kid. Then he lives through the horror of the Nazi executions and becomes amazingly grown-up, and even old. The war had distorted the once tender childish facial features - it`s all wrinkles now. The altered face of Flyora is the face of War. The authors were so true-to-life, uncompromising and austere as to portray in the centre of the film not some grown-up man, but an unexperienced kid with his childhood still here. remember this was made in 1985 and russia was in a crip of a conflict in afganistan. east west relations where not to good as the US,UK where helping the afghan fighters, had it been made today a copy of the film would be far easy to get hold of as you can only seem to get it in the states with English Subtitles but it was worth it