Come and See (1985)
I am joining everyone else here in that this is the best anti-war movie so far. There have been plenty of exceptional good movies showing how young men - or boys - are lured into joining the war and realizing what it really is, as well countless of depictions of nazis being horrible. But not like this. Took me a while to tune into the unusual techniques like the frontal shots where they speak directly to the camera, but once I left behind my Hollywood-influenced expectations of what a war film should do, I was swept away to the forests of Belarus.
With a few exceptions, it is not a very bloody or gory film compared to many other depictions of World War II. It doesn’t need to though, because it is way more effective to have a constant underlying fear of what could happen any second or just show the effect the atrocities have on the survivors. Like we don’t see any rape, but we see the young woman running horrified around with blood down her legs. Alekseis thousand yard stare tells more than actually seeing bodies being burnt alive.
It barely feels like a movie sometimes but more like a found footage. It feels like real people in those villages. The sound editing and various POV shots puts the viewer directly into the head of Flyora. When the lights turned back on in the cinema everyone was dead silent for a good while. The last time I had a cinema experience like that was with Utøya 22. juli.
As a war movie there isn’t a whole lot of military combat going on, but unlike most other war movies I have seen which mostly focuses on the soldiers, this shows the consequences for the civilian population. Of course the final act showing the ugly end result of the total dehumanization effort from the nazis, but I also found the middle act of the movie to be very effective with the constant fight for food and survival for regular families.
I can’t help but think of Putins war in Ukraine which has the same sort of dehumanization and war crimes against the civilian population. That of course doesn’t detract anything from this movie made in 1985, but sadly shows that history repeats itself.
Rating: 5