Come and See (1985)
Few war films carry the weight of historical testimony quite as heavily as Come and See. Released in 1985 and set during the Nazi occupation of Belarus in 1943, the film is rooted in events that were still raw memory for many Soviet citizens at the time of its production. The German campaign in occupied Soviet territories resulted in the destruction of hundreds of Belarusian villages and the murder of their inhabitants, and Klimov drew directly on survivor accounts, most notably the writings of Ales Adamovich, to build the film's narrative. It is not, in any conventional sense, entertainment. It is closer to a document, a controlled attempt to put something genuinely atrocious on screen without softening its edges for the sake of audience comfort. That context matters, because it shapes everything about how the film was made and why it lands the way it does.
Elem Klimov had been working in Soviet cinema since the early 1960s, accumulating a reputation as a director willing to push against the grain of official taste. His earlier work ranged from satirical comedies to the biographical drama Agony (1975), a portrait of Rasputin that was shelved by Soviet authorities for nearly a decade before release. Come and See was a project he had been trying to get made for years, and the finished film bears the marks of that long gestation: every frame feels considered, every technical choice deliberate. Produced through the Belarusfilm and Mosfilm studios, it was one of the last major Soviet productions of its era and was submitted as the USSR's entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, though it did not receive a nomination. The budget was not remarkable by western standards, but the production achieved something that money alone rarely buys: a sense of texture and physical presence that feels utterly unmanufactured. Rodion Shchedrin's score and the extraordinary sound design by Viktor Minin give the film a sonic identity that stays with you long after the images have faded, and Aleksei Rodionov's cinematography shifts between a kind of blighted pastoral beauty and something much harder to look at. For an appreciation of how Soviet and Eastern European filmmakers of this era approached landscape and memory with similar seriousness, it is worth reading the site's coverage of Earth (1930) and The Color of Pomegranates (1969), both of which share that quality of cinema as witness rather than spectacle.
The film rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Aleksei Kravchenko, who was fourteen years old when filming began. His performance as Florya, a Belarusian teenager who joins the partisans and is then confronted with horrors his age gives him no framework to process, is the kind of acting that makes you forget you are watching acting. Opposite him, Olga Mironova brings an unsettling, almost feverish quality to Glasha, the girl Florya encounters in the forest. The supporting cast, including Liubomiras Laucevičius and Vladas Bagdonas, are vivid and economical in roles that do not allow for much nuance, by design. The German officers and soldiers are drawn with a coldness that verges on the allegorical, which is either a strength or a limitation depending on what you expect the film to be doing. Come and See is not particularly interested in explaining the perpetrators. It is interested, almost exclusively, in what their actions do to the people in their path, and specifically to one boy's face as it registers the progressive destruction of everything he knew.
Scrolling through Letterboxd and seeing Elem Klimov’s 1985 war epic Come and See sitting proudly as the fourth highest-rated film of all time, sweeping my friends' lists with 5-star and 4.5-star reviews, set my expectations impossibly high. But cinema isn’t just about consensus, and while I have immense respect for what this film achieves, I just don’t feel it deserves that absolute pinnacle of a score. It is a monumental piece of filmmaking, yes, but it’s also an endurance test that demands a level of emotional masochism I’m not entirely sure I possess.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a massive amount to admire here. Fair play to Klimov and his team, because the technical craftsmanship is undeniably strong. The cinematography is stark and unforgiving, perfectly capturing the bleak, mud-soaked reality of the Eastern Front. The sound design is particularly brilliant, especially the jarring, disorienting shift in audio perspective following the protagonist's "hearing loss" sequence, which puts you right inside his fractured headspace. Anchoring all of this is the absolutely amazing performance from a young, relatively unknown Aleksei Kravchenko as Flyora. Watching his face age decades in a matter of hours is a staggering piece of acting that carries the entire weight of the picture.
Where the film inevitably loses me, however, is just how relentlessly, unapologetically depressing it is. I know full well that this is precisely the point; Klimov wanted to present an unfiltered, raw, and realistic look at the absolute horror and devastation the Nazis wrought upon Belarus. I honestly do understand and respect that artistic intention. But any movie as deeply disturbing and unsettling as this inevitably leaves you feeling completely wrung out and knackered. It shares a lot of DNA with films like Requiem for a Dream or The Pianist, I know they are technically superb and super well-regarded, but I simply cannot in good conscience label them as "must-watch" cinema when the primary takeaway is sheer, unadulterated exhaustion.
Come and See is a harrowing, absolutely hopeless descent into the abyss of war that succeeds brilliantly at its own grim objectives. It is a vital, historically significant piece of art that everyone should acknowledge, even if they never actually want to sit through it twice.
Elem Klimov crafted a staggering, visually and sonically powerful experience, but the sheer emotional toll it extracts keeps it just a fraction shy of perfection in my book. It is a brilliant, deeply unsettling achievement, but one I’m perfectly happy to admire from a safe distance.
Come and See occupies a particular category of film that critics and programmers tend to describe as essential without always being honest about what that word costs the viewer. It sits in the same conversation as Viy (1967) in the sense that both films use their respective genres to articulate something about collective Soviet and Eastern European experience that straightforward realism alone could not carry, though the tonal distance between the two could hardly be greater. Whether you come away from Come and See feeling transformed, devastated, or simply relieved it is over will probably say something true about you as a viewer, and none of those responses is wrong. It is a film that does precisely what it set out to do, which is either its greatest virtue or the source of its only real limitation. Some works of art are easier to revere than to love.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 1985 | Watched: 2026-07-14
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Come and See (1985) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Stream: Criterion Channel
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