Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely best film on the horrors of war
Review: I still remember the first time I saw this film about 15 years ago in Kiev. I was shocked, shocked at the film's honesty that was so rare in Soviet cinema. Come and See was there before Saving Private Ryan and Thin Red Line. I do not think it represents the Germans as evil beasts but rather it shows the view of a young boy trapped in the evils of Hitler's New World Order. With the seeing of this film I hope people can realize what the Great Patriotic War during the fateful years of 1941-1945 was all about, how different it was from the gentlemanly Western Front, and how savage it was in its conduct. Besides in the Republic of Belarus, it is well known that 25% of the population perished during the war.
Rating:
Summary: Come and see
Review: I watched this move about 15 years ago. I think it is the best film about II Wold War, even comparing with modern films.
Truth, depth, naturalism show the war in very striking way.
It is not a movie which can be created by Holywood, and people would watch for fun. It is 20 times stronger then Pianist and
must to watch if you want to know about II Wold War .
Rating: 
Summary: A great film...A must see for All Americans in 2004!
Review: I'm not giving this film 5 stars because the transfer, while decent, still leaves something to be desired. However, if you'd like to see (see really isn't the right word) a truly disorienting and brutal WWII film, this is your film. The film is pretty decent throughout, but once the boy is taken to the barn, and the Nazis really unleash the beast(s), this film becomes a masterpiece. Simply put, it's lascerating. And the matter-of-fact approach with which Kravchenko deals with the really atrocious stuff is praiseworthy. It's a fine line between sensationalism, exploitation, "showing it as it is", but the director handles the issue well. There's a great scene toward the end where some of the Nazis are hearded under a bridge and questioned about their atrocities. They deny resposibility or claim to be "simply following orders", raising in effect the issue of personal responsibility & cupability in times of war. I highly recommend this film to someone wishing to see what war really means, stripped of its CNN-Honey gloss and glamour.
Rating:
Summary: COME AND SEE (Elem Klimov,1985) released by RUSCICO
Review: In 1943 Byelorussia, Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), a 14-year-old boy who is eager to fight the Germans, goes off to join the Russian army, against the pleadings of his mother. But the regiment makes him stay behind at the camp, and he wanders off on his own, joined by a peasant girl (Olga Mironova). Rendered partially deaf by aerial bombardment, and evading capture from German paratroopers, he tries to return home, but fate guides him to a band of partisans, after which his journey leads him ever deeper into the inferno of the Nazi invasion.
The picture's rigorously subjective style, hallucinatory imagery, and refusal to soften or glamorize the realities of war, makes it something of a milestone in the Soviet World War II film, a genre distinguished, at its best, by a sense of grief over the great tragedy of that conflict, which killed an estimated twenty million Russians. In Byelorussia, the Germans systematically wiped out hundreds of towns, rounding men, women, and children into barns and burning them alive. By depicting these horrific events through the eye of a naive boy, Klimov gives them immediacy, elevating them above the mere recounting of historical fact into the heightened realm of an actual witnessing, where they appear strange, grotesque, and unbearable.
Kravchenko's almost wordless performance is riveting. Over the course of the film we see his face become aged beyond his years, hardening into a mask of fear and trauma that reflects every atrocity he has seen and endured. The film is constantly directing our attention to people's faces, their expressions, their stares and glances, which visually emphasizes the fact that all these horrors are happening to people, to someone, the unutterable limits of inhumanity experienced in the souls and feelings of living beings. Klimov doesn't let the viewer detach to contemplate psychology or motivation, but brings us down to the stark level of survival, where his young protagonist lives.
Sometimes the images are lyrical, as in the brilliant sequence in a forest where Florya and the girl are hiding. The girl dances in the rain, a stork wanders through a clearing -- the beauty is tinged with fear and ominous foreboding. When Florya is deafened, the movie's soundtrack is muffled, and the music and sound effects express his disorientation and maddening inability to connect with what's going on around him. At key moments, Klimov always chooses an unexpected image or shot, startling us out of ordinary perception and keeping us on edge, as in the scene when Florya and a partisan are stealing a cow and come under fire, and we suddenly see a close-up of the cow's eye, another uncomprehending creature subjected to the merciless insanity of this world.
Come and See (even the title alludes to our role as witnesses, willing or not) is a deeply unsettling experience. This is a film designed to shake you to the core of your being, a vision of what life looks like when all we know and cherish is savagely uprooted, when love and morality are ripped away and humans turn into beasts. In one of the film's most daring flourishes, Florya vents his rage on a symbol -- a picture of Hitler -- and with each gunshot Klimov moves the newsreel images of history backwards, undoing in fantasy what can never be undone, until we are left with the haunting face of a child. The shooting stops; we can never go back, but we will never -- should never -- forget. P.S. To watch the movie preview video clip you can on russianDVD.com website for free.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much....
Review: It is easy to blame Germans for everything and show them as a bunch of beasts but I want to see the truth not some kind of horror movie. I haven't seen any believable Russian movie about
WWII yet. By the way, I grew up in Russia.
Rating:
Summary: best film I ever saw
Review: It's about 20 years ago when I saw this film in East Germany. I've never seen such an impressive film again. The story is about the suffering and the heroic fights of the Belarussian people during the the terror of the Nazi-occupation in the WWII. This film is a monument of the peacefullness of the Belarussians. The film reminds us: let's never, never have a war again!!!
Rating:
Summary: A powerful war movie
Review: Made in the last years of the Soviet Empire, this 1985 study of the horrors of war by director Elem Klimov is a frank and brutal account of a kind difficult to find in the film libraries of Hollywood. The story is of a young boy caught up in the Nazi invasion of rural Byelorussia. Despite its provenance, the film is not at all propagandistic. While it does not touch on the shortcomings of the Soviet side, these are in fact outside its scope and what it does cover has an entirely truthful air. Western war movies often show war as a stage for heroism or tragedy, in which, however horrible the backdrop, the moral lives of the protagonists still take the foreground. This reflects not only the nature of the entretainment industry but perhaps also the character of the shorter and smaller war on the Western Front. The Eastern Front was different. Simply put, it was the most destructive war ever waged, running for four long years over an enormous area between two totalitarian regimes whose overriding goal was to totally exterminate each other. The savagery of this merciless struggle and the scope of its catastrophic casualty levels has never been fully acknowledged in Western popular culture. The young hero in this film is no a hero at all, but rather a shocked witness to the almost unimaginable degree of brutality which Nazism represented. One feels that this film shows what the Eastern Front must really have been like. Unfortunately, those most likely to see it probably already have some understanding of what it depicts while those for whom it might be an eye-opener will probably never hear of it (this film currently has 23 reviews on Amazon; Saving Private Ryan has 1,068). The film is well-paced, the cinematography is good, with lyrical and beautiful moments away from the carnage, and the colour is excellent. The DVD does not have too much in the way of extras, although it does include an endorsement by Sean Penn - a pointed comment on the relative merits of this film against the usual Hollywood product - which may make some viewers interested in checking it out.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best Russian films ever made
Review: Make no mistake about it, this is a great film. It is painful and harrowing, funny and quite numbing. It is also beautifully directed. It is interesting to note that Elem Klimov ended his directorial career with this film - he clearly felt he could not better it. I won't go on at any length about it's virtues and qualities, as plenty of other reviewers have. What I did want to make clear is that it is a Region 0 DVD and not a Region 1 release. So, if you live outside the US you can order with impunity. This release is part of the Russcico programme, which has seen Solaris and Stalker released in similar format, and I personally think it is a great success. Apart from the achievement of having this great film on DVD, there are also interviews with key personnel, documentaries, etc. It is a great job - not done by Kino themselves, but at least they deserve some credit for releasing it. Buy it now and ditch your copy of 'Saving Private Ryan'....
Rating:
Summary: A few distractions, but a very powerful film..
Review: OK, so modern sci-fi can do better special effects, and the seemingly endless ear ringing audio of the post bombardment scenes conflict with the standard Hollywood method of making a point. On the other hand, the entire (bizzare by Hollywood standards) first half or so locks the viewer into his first real understanding of what people had to deal with on a daily basis during that part of the war. This film will help dispell any sympathy for the Nazi troops and their collaborators during their march of destruction (or retreat of destruction) through the borders of others. After all is said and done, most people are left stunned by the brutality and lack of truly fair turnabout of this movie, but since Russia lost more than all other peoples in ending Hitler's advance, it seems appropriate that the film does not attempt to mask the incredible horror of Hitler's plan for the new world by focusing on the glory of his defeat. This is an unusually realistic movie. You should have a copy.
Rating:
Summary: The best
Review: Please, dont pay any attention to the review of "Too much" customer. Yes ,it is film about horror of the war, about nazi atrocities . And i am shure you will be feeling down after watching this film,and this is true . So if you dont want to be sad , go see Disney cartoons. One more about "Too much", creator of the film, have to cut some scenes , because he can not do it like it was in real history, that would be a really to much. And yes, partizans did horible things to germans too( by today, peace time standarts), but you know what? I am o'k with it, see the film, and you understand why.
|
