A relentless masterpiece, and a brilliant study of the cause and effect nature of brutality.
Come and See (1985)
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work ![]()
Reviews Counted: 15
Fresh: 14
Rotten:1
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 22 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
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... 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 neighboring 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. [More]
Starring: Alexei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Lauciavicius
Starring: Alexei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Lauciavicius
Director: Elem Klimov
Director: Elem Klimov
Screenwriter: Elem Klimov, Ales Adamovich
Composer: Oleg Yanchenko, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Studio: Kino International
Reviews for Come and See
A disorienting and undifferentiated amalgam of almost lyrical poeticism and expressionist nightmare.
This is a real horror film -- it's painful to watch and there's no escape through thinking it's only a movie -- and it's correspondingly impressive.
A highly charged, emotionally exhausting indictment of war and the inhumanity of the Nazis, set in Byelorussia during the 1943 Nazi invasion.
I suppose that never forgetting has its place, but not when it insists on such narrowly righteous fantasies of revenge.
Come and See, the last and most notable film made by the former Soviet director Elem Klimov, is another fusion of popular and vanguard styles, albeit put to more civic-minded use.
In Klimov's unshakable vision, death is casual, safety is impossible and beauty is backwards: this is peerlessly gorgeous filmmaking about absolute ugliness.
Occupying territory somewhere between Ivan's Childhood and Fateless, Come And See is an intimate epic in which all the promise of adolescence is perverted by war.
This Soviet-era Russian film displays the horrors of World War II in a manner that makes The Deer Hunter look like The Green Berets.
Scene for scene, Mr. Klimov proves a master of a sort of unreal realism that seeks to get at events terrible beyond comprehension.
Come and See succeeds through its use of nightmarish un-reality -- how we might see these events not through a documentary objectivity, but through an uncomprehending gaze of horror.
Come and See sounds like an invitation to a child's game. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Related Forums for Come and See

by: HAMMEROGOD 5/19/04
More DVDs
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| Iron Man | |
| Forgetting Sarah Marshall | |
| Sex and the City - The… | |
| Leatherheads | |
| Made of Honor |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| Indiana Jones and the … | |
| 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days | |
| Mongol | |
| Standard Operating Procedure | |
| War, Inc. |
What’s Hot On RT
Other News
Around The Network
- Come and See at Rotten Tomatoes
- Come and See at AskMen

Top Critic



