Come and See

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"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." —Revelation 6:1-8, shown in the titles.

Come and See (Russian: Idi i Smotri) is a 1985 Russian horror movie about World War Two that won several awards. Since it was made in the Soviet Union, it's not as famous in America as it deserves to be.

We follow Florya, an adolescent Belorussian villager, on a dark journey set in 1943. He dreams of joining the Soviet partisan resistance, and one day he finds a rifle buried on the beach near his village. As the war continues, the partisans come around and collect him from his home, much to the dismay of his mother. Florya's dreams are shattered when he's branded "the new kid" and forced to do odd jobs--and worst of all, he's left behind as a reserve when the partisans march off to battle. But then he is befriended by Glasha, an attractive young peasant girl who is sleeping with the partisan leader. They form a friendship, but the peaceful tranquility is broken by a German bombing attack that leaves him deaf. Florya and Glasha manage to return to his home village, but they find it strangely deserted...

It's a rare anti-war film without many actual war scenes, but it shows the darkest horrors of war. If any movie isn't saying Do Not Do This Cool Thing, this one is it.

The movie is sometimes called Kill Hitler, due to its most famous scene (and, indeed, that was its original, pre-censorship title). Roger Ebert has added it to his Great Movies list.

You can watch Come and See here.

Tropes used in Come and See include:

• Adult Fear
• Armies Are Evil
• As the Good Book Says...: The title of the film comes from Revelation, chapter 6, where the phrase is repeated by the Four Living Creatures when the first four of the Seven Seals are opened and the horsemen of the Apocalypse released.
• Brown Note: Infrasonics and low-frequency sounds were used during the more disturbing scenes.
• Child Soldiers
• Les Collaborateurs: There's one of these in the village of Perekhody. The Nazi-collaborator is treated with entirely appropriate contempt by his German masters, and we see the soldiers pantsing him and scrawling big swastikas on his helmet.
• Crapsack World: Eastern Europe during WW 2.
• Creepy Child: The adolescent protagonist Florya, already a bit mentally slow, begins aging unnaturally fast when he's caught up in the horrors of war. His hair has gone gray at the end, and he looks like a twisted old man.
• Doomed Hometown: Florya's home village, where his mother and sisters are killed. Glasha sees the corpses but never tells him about it, and he insists that they've gone to a nearby island. The illusion doesn't last long. There are indeed survivors on the island, but Florya's family isn't there.
• Downer Ending
• Enforced Method Acting: The director Elem Klimov fired live gunshots over the heads of the actors, to make their terror look genuine in the battle scene.
  • The movie was also Backed By The Kremlin, and Klimov even got to borrow the military hardware of the Reds with Rockets.
• Evil Is Hammy: The fat German who guffaws with laughter when he's done roasting the poor civilians with his flamethrower. The uniformed Nazi girl who smiles lasciviously and slowly eats lobster while watching the horrific massacre.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The title itself is a reference to the Horsemen's arrival. During the movie, there's no lack of scenes dealing with illness, violence, hunger and, obviously, death.
• Magic Realism: Several sequences are implausible and downright surreal, and intentionally so.
• Mind Screw: By the end of this movie, the viewers are likely to feel like this.
  • Special mention to the final and most famous scene. Florya finds a framed photo of Adolf Hitler in the mud, and shoots it. Each time he shoots, there's a Back to Front montage that regresses in time, showing the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany as a backwards newsreel--corpses at an extermination camp; Hitler congratulating a boy; Nazis burning piles of books; 1930s Nazi party rallies; Hitler as a soldier in WW 1; Hitler as a young schoolboy--and finally a photo of the baby Adolf on his mother's lap. Florya doesn't shoot at the last one.
    • In the commentary, the director said he wanted the audience to ask themselves: "Would I kill Hitler as a baby?"
• Misplaced Wildlife: A weird example, since it's done intentionally. Such as tropical pelicans wandering around in a Belorussian forest.
• No Ending: In the end Florya rejoins the partisans in the forest, and the camera rises to the sky, indicating the war will go on forever. Also qualifies as a Downer Ending.
• Orchestral Bombing
• Orphan's Ordeal
• Quicksand Sucks: Florya and Glasha sinking in the swamp. Which then turns into a lake.
• Rape as Drama: Happens to Glasha in the end. When she meets with Florya for the last time, the Nazis have raped her until blood is pouring down her thighs. She is a catatonic vegetable.
  • The woman at the end (with the whistle) is the mother who was dragged away from the barn, not Glasha, who is last seen on the island saying goodbye to Florya. Although when Florya sees the rape victim at the end, he repeats Glasha's earlier lines ("I want to love...") with their meaning now horribly subverted.
• Rape, Pillage and Burn: The MO of the Nazis.
• La Résistance: The Belorussian partisans, led by a Red Army veteran who Glasha is sleeping with (and has a crush on).
• Sadistic Choice: When the Nazis herd the poor Belorussian villagers into their church and shut them in, the SS Sturmbannfuhrer then calmly gives the male villagers a choice--climb out of the open window if you can, but leave your women and kids behind to die. Most of the men answer only with stubborn silence and stay where they are. The church is burned down.
• Scenery Gorn
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: By the middle of the movie, twelve-year-old Florya is one himself.
• Shell-Shock Silence: One of the longest examples in cinema history, after Florya is caught in a German artillery bombardment.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Used in several scenes.
• Soviet Russia Ukraine and So On: The film takes place in the Belorussian SSR, now renamed Belarus.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Nazis let loose on the village church with phosphorus grenades, a volley of machine-gun fire, and finally with long-range flamethrowers. Then they exterminate the whole village. It's the only way to be sure.
• Trippy Finale Syndrome
• Violence Is Disturbing: Is it ever! Possibly a subversion, though, because surprisingly, for a film like this, there is not much actual violence shown onscreen. Instead we're shown the reactions to violence, the aftermath of violence, or it cuts away before the violent act takes place.
• War Is Hell: So very much.
• What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: As said before: this film is surreal, nightmarish, and very hallucinogenic.
• World War Two: Or did you not read the rest of the page?