Come and See

Come and See (1985)
Director: Elem Klimov

Someone was telling me once about those underground fences you can buy for dogs. You bury the fence just out of sight underground. If the dog goes beyond the fence their collars give them an electric shock; the trick is you have to explain to the dog first where the fence is and what is going on, otherwise it is just cruel because they will be getting electric shocks and not know why. That is the only thing I could think of when I watched this movie.

This movie is filled with horrific violence and Nazi brutality. The problem is that this film never makes an effort to explain what is going on. You just have people being killed and beaten, people being lit on fire, people being shot, screaming families dying, tragedy, atrocity etc. But you don’t really know what is going on. You don’t know who these people are, why they are doing this, or what they are trying to accomplish. “Come and See” is what would happen if you made “Schindlers List” as an art film.

From a technical standpoint they held a lot of shots WAY too long. You watch a vehicle drive on screen and the shot holds until it drives off into the distance. You could have shortened this film by a good ½ hour without loosing anything. And the little boy; I can only stand just so much horrified staring into the camera. That got old really quick and it comprised about a quarter of the film. Yes. We get it. The boy is horrified; he is scarred for life. Enough already. This film has all the subtlety of a cinematic sledgehammer.

War is horrible. That is all this film has to offer. Nothing else. Well I knew that already, but if a film is determined to tell me that anyway, I really wish it wouldn’t take 2 hours and 15 minutes. I did not like this movie at all.

My Rating: 2 out of 5