After seeing Come and See I feel that I have to re-evaluate every war film I have ever seen. I liked Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, etc. but never has a war film affected me like this. I’m actually thinking about rewatching all of those films since this film has set a new, unprecedented standard for me. Come and See will literally have a psychological impact on you, wiping away the dirt and tearing straight into your soul. There were moments where I felt like crying because what I was watching was so horrible.

I’m one of those people that, when I watch a film, I imagine myself in the situations presented on screen. I wonder how I would react to those scenarios, how I would go about doing everything. Perhaps that’s the reason why I felt so horrible and loathing because no one would EVER want to undergo what this young boy had to endure. Imagine Tarkovsky’s lamentable Ivan’s Childhood being remade by Sam Peckinpah at his grittiest, most cerebral zeitgeist.

It’s funny, because there is blood spilled on screen, but that’s not what’s so haunting about this picture. It’s the atmosphere that really adds to the degradation of the human psych. Throughout the first half of the film we hear non-diegetic noises in the sound track that can only be summed up as, “some really weird fucking sounds.” Imagine the most haunting track you can from a David Lynch film and multiply that by ten and maybe then you might know what I’m writing about. When the young boy and girl are traveling through the bog and that sound is playing overhead it is absolutely unnerving. I literally felt dirty.

This film shows you the true horrors of war. Whether if it’s from the lone plane flying overhead or the pile of bodies behind the log cabin, all of these scenes are meant to stick in your head forever. I will never forget the infamous scene where the Nazis invade and ransack that poor village . . .

So this isn’t really a review, it’s more of a reaction piece. Needless to say, this is one of the best films I have ever seen, and one of the most scarring. Come and See is an extremely important anti-war film that you should seek out. Go and see Come and See (that was my lame attempt to brighten up this piece).