Come and See is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film set in the region of Bylorussia in 1943, a boy is recruited in a Soviet army unit and witnesses the first-hand effects of war and the cruelty of it. It manages to do this beautifully, frighteningly almost by destroying everything that comes in it’s path in sometimes sudden shocks as the bombs fall on our characters or in an effective extended sequence which fires the systematic extermination of a Bylorussian village and it’s inhabitants.

War kills everything, the people just following orders commit crimes against other people that shouldn’t ever have happened but it is all too real, it has happened too many times and it is still happening. The lose of innocence caused by the fraction of a young boy’s reality as he discovers for the first time just how horrifying and terrible war can be and how easily one person can bring about the death of many.

The movie is set in a forested backdrop, it’s gorgeous and doesn’t flinch from destroying it’s own beautyto showcase the brutal destroying nature of man. Everything that has ever been built, was real and has been the norm for our main character is shattered and he is helpless as people die around him. It makes you feel as helpless as him, as terrified and as useless.

The ending is one of the best ever, a symbolic shooting at the history of this war which ends with a meaningful final confrontation with Hitler himself.

An unflinching almost surreal and cruel war film that everybody must see atleast once. It is more a experience than a narrative but a damn good one