The movie is terrible and pitiable. Klimov manages, as I say, to convey the authentic relentlessness of nightmare.

| Mar 15, 2023

The movie is a succession of brutally sincere "art" assaults, jammed together like the poorly articulated cars of an old freight train.

| Mar 14, 2023

This is filmmaking of enormous power and feeling even if the film's length mitigates against it.

| Mar 14, 2023

The power of Come and See principally derives from the inspired performance by Kravchenko as Florya, in what must be the ultimate loss-of-innocence role.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2023

A compelling, harrowing, absurdly beautiful account of the little known holocaust in Byelorussia.

| Mar 14, 2023

Director Elem Klimov keeps the human drama of the ordeal in sharp, clear focus at all times, while still giving the story the sweep of an epic unfolding -- an impressive balancing act.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2023

It's apocalypse caught in the act, a spellbinding, dangerous "excursion into hell."

| Mar 14, 2023

There's passion and exuberance in Klimov's work, but the essential crudity of his sensibility undermines it. At times, especially when the camera angles veer into grotesquerie, it suggests a Soviet Ken Russell movie.

| Mar 14, 2023

It has a raw, primitive force that makes you realize how much of our own horror of the last war has been diminished by Hollywood heroics or simply box-office co-existence with the enemy.

| Mar 14, 2023

The film is a sustained act of looking, with a minimum of dramatic or character development, and these are sights that leave an indelible impression as strong or stronger than any antiwar film in memory.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 14, 2023

Come and See is a stirring, unremittingly powerful war drama that has the rare double virtue of constantly engaging both the eye and the emotions.

| Mar 14, 2023

By telling the story from a child’s perspective, Klimov gives the horrors of war a new kind of immediacy. Not one born from stern men turned tragically hollow, but from a pure spirit prematurely drained of their innocence.

| Original Score: A | Mar 14, 2023

Klimov’s dramatic vitality, his control of shifting tones, and his mastery of surprise are what galvanize Come and See. Terrifying as this movie is, we always want to know what happens next.

| Mar 14, 2023

A product of the glasnost era, Come And See is far from a patriotic memorial of Russia's hard-won victory. Instead, it's a chilling reminder of that victory's terrible costs.

| Mar 14, 2023

"Come and See" is a paradox: a visceral freefall into barbarism, but also a controlled, sometimes contemplative descent.

| Mar 9, 2020

This is a film that argues for and thoroughly understands the urgent, present-tense, shifting surreality of war. It is not merely a narrative reimagining of that experience.

| Mar 2, 2020

It suggests that a war's horrors were the ultimate unassimilable experience of the shadowy depths of the human mind.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 17, 2020

I have rarely seen a film more ruthless in its depiction of human evil.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 21, 2018

I suppose that never forgetting has its place, but not when it insists on such narrowly righteous fantasies of revenge.

| Oct 15, 2007

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.

Full Review | Oct 15, 2007