Firstly, the greatest war movies ever made include these:
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aliza_tvito — 11 years ago(March 30, 2015 09:24 PM)
//You thought the barn scene was tedious and procedural??? /// - I guess the OP expected to see the close-ups of the human beings being burned alive, and thus was gravely disappointed. Sure his perception barriers are too high to let him feel the sheer horror of this, and preceding episodes.
Listen to your enemy, for God is talking -
welsh_dragon_roar — 11 years ago(March 20, 2015 01:28 PM)
To be honest, I think it's the 'dirty' feel that it carries along that made the biggest impact on me; that feeling of people almost becoming subhuman during a period where events are completely out of their control, and they lose that certain 'something'.. elements of sanity.. elements of civility.. elements of those little day to day things that make society what it is.
This film gave me a similar feeling as when I watched 'Threads' i.e. just the sheer despair of having to adapt oneself to events outside of one's control, with no nice warm room and happy family at the end. -
Ashley Pomeroy — 10 years ago(July 25, 2015 04:00 PM)
Again, you're another one of these people who have been on the IMDb for over a decade - eleven years - and in that time you haven't managed to work out paragraphs, punctuation, coherent argument, grammar, wit, simple basic stuff. Unless you joined whilst at pre-school you're now a grown adult. And this is the best you can do. This is your end state, this is how you ended up. Posting rubbish on the IMDB about grown-up films you don't get.
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In contrast, "Come and See" figuratively stinks of effortless implausibility and incalculably banal diatribe!
" - you've seen those words, haven't you? You've seen them somewhere, and you like them. You want to use them yourself! You don't know what they mean, or how to use them in a sentence, but that's not going to stop you. You're going to ferociously use them in a dynamic balustrade of duplicitous coherencies!??!!!?! In order to masticate the retrograde zeitgeist??!??!?!?!??!!! There are eleven-year-old schoolchildren who can write better than you.
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Otherwise, please explain to me, in the most intellectual way if you must, why I'm wrong, and moreover what exact elements of this movie are unsurpassed by other movies?
" - You're writing about an emotive art work as if it was flat pack furniture or a sports match. What exact elements of this movie are unsurpassed by other movies? The totality of the film is the definitive telling of this story; it is fundamentally, thematically not the same as Schindler's List or The Deer Hunter.
Whatever you do for a living, it doesn't involve authority over other people. If you're not a native English speaker, you need a tonne of practice before you can debate effectively on an English-speaking website. -
GuyOnTheLeft — 10 years ago(November 06, 2015 07:19 PM)
Nice takedown. I thought of responding to the OP, but I don't think I can explain why this film was so powerful to me. You either feel it or you don't, I guess.
My top 250:
http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250 -
alfa — 9 years ago(January 16, 2017 06:25 AM)
Yep. Nice work.
It hits so hard because for almost 4 years, the triangle between Kiev, Hamburg and St Petersburg was the worst place to be alive in the whole of human history. Come and See, it's title taken from the Book of Revelations, depicts this period with a truthfulness unrivalled anywhere in cinema. The closest thing to it are the Do Long Bridge scenes in Apocalypse Now Redux.
It has little in common with films about the Holocaust featuring a Nazi hero and a happy ending. -
keremk — 9 years ago(October 01, 2016 03:57 AM)
Just watched it and couldn't agree with the OP more. The viewing experience of this movie feels like browsing through various youtube clips. Every scene is extremely detached from every other part of the movie. At least there are clips in youtube that are nice to watch.
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Chronic_Johnson — 6 years ago(January 06, 2020 04:38 PM)
This film may lack a particularly interesting narrative, and its structure is quite unconventional, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I also don't expect 1980s Soviet countries to have fantastic Hollywood level filming equipment and budgeting. Even so, because of the unconventional plot structure, it does have a somewhat surreal atmosphere and flow which assists in instead reeling you in with the horrors of war. Which it very much so succeeds in with incredible acting, especially in a character's reactions to the events they witness or experience.
There are long, lingering shots of characters going through something unpleasant (which is an understatement), and then in the brief moments where we get rest from this, I begin to notice that we get less of those lingering shots and more conventional jump cuts. The camera staying on a particular scene without cutting can sometimes go on so long in this film that it becomes unsettling. You can feel at an unease simply from the cinematography, and that is an achievement to be respected. You're there with them, with no escape, in the middle of a war, and experiencing it all.
A moment that comes to mind isn't necessarily an incredibly shocking one. But when the main protagonist and a girl are slowly walking through the deep mud immediately after
leaving behind the home where the protagonist's entire family were killed by the Nazis.
The sound editing in that scene where you just hear their muffled cries and screams(?) and the camera following them in one long panning shot until they get to the other side is quite intense.
That's not even mentioning the several scenes where we get close up shots of the main protagonist's tortured and traumatized face just staring directly into the camera. It can be quite haunting at times. I'm not surprised that it's been used on some of the posters for the film. And it's moments like that that truly make it a war film. Because it is very convincing of how awful the experience might have been, even if they do take some creative liberties with what happened.
I can understand someone not liking the film, overall I think it's just fine, but not much better than that. It has impressive acting and an unrelentingly bleak tone that fits the war setting. But outside of that it's not a great film. 6/10 for me.
Recommended if: you want to watch a constantly depressing war movie with imagery that will stick with you for long after you finished watching it. But can also tolerate its various flaws and unconventional plot structuring.