Come and See is a movie I was scared of. This is in part due to the Youtube Video Essayist Industrial Complex but also because a lot of the conversation around the movie positions it as the number one antiwar film ever made, which is high praise, and maybe not a ranking I'd agree with.
Come and See was the closing film in my film group's Kill Yourself January series of the bleakest films you can think of, and it fully deserves this spot. The movie is a bleak reflection on the Nazi massacres that depopulated 20%-30% of Belarus, on the ravages of war, on what to do with your own countrymen who burnt your village to the ground. It's a beautiful, haunting reflection on WWII in the aftermath of extreme inhumanity, but nothing about this film made me not want to go to war.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that the movie intentionally does not put you the viewer in combat. The entire film is shot from the standpoint of Flyora, a young boy who finds a buried rifle and joins up with Belarusian Partisans to fight the Nazi occupation. He doesn't actually do much fighting, being the youngest member of the resistance, but through his eyes we see mostly the shattered remains left behind after Nazi atrocities. In some ways the movie is a lot like Jarhead inasmuch as combat is always distant or offscreen.
The lack of combat is what I think the poindexters latched onto with this film. It's overhyped as the most antiwar movie ever because it doesn't put you into the trenches but rather leaves you to walk around them after the smoke clears. And I don't blame them, it's a gorgeous film, and this hazy, avoidant portrayal of WWII is a purposeful, impactful strategy. It works really well.
I don't think the egghead video essayists are necessarily wrong about the combat angle. To reference Jarhead again, one of the most iconic scenes in the film is when the Marines are shown the Valkyrie helicopter attack scene from Apocalypse now, another film with an anti-war message, a move meant to rile them up for war and prepare them to kill using a movie focused on how pointless Americas foreign war du jour was at the time. How many times have you seen Full Metal Jacket (another patently antiwar film) touted for how cool the toughguy quotes in it are?
My point being is that both the youtubers and I can clearly recognize that guns and explosions are the coolest things on earth and a full auto burst fired in anger, no matter the conflict, absolutely rules. Come and See intentionally avoids all this (except for on distinct occasions) which I feel is the reason that people who talk about what war movies you should be allowed to like online really glom onto it.
Maybe it's my, uh, hot blooded heritage* or perhaps I'm just less of a weenie than other people who talk about film on youtube, but the message and portrayal of cold blooded massacres in Come and See did not turn me into some sort of pacifist. When I see Nazis dragging people from their homes this doesn't make me want to put down the rifle at all. And I think this is the issue I have with the greater conversation around the film as the *best* antiwar movie out there.
Regardless, you have to watch Come and See. I'm obsessed with the cinematography, the acting, the haunting soundscape of war. It's dreamlike and nightmarish at the same time. I can't stop thinking about it and not just because of the bridge scene. In fact, I deeply enjoyed it, which is a weird thing to say about the War Crimes In Belarus movie. Even if it isn't *The Best* of the antiwar movies, it's certainly up there.
A haunting film. A triumph of cinema. A movie that is also portraiture. Go watch it.
*Read: Italian and the grandchild/Great-grandchild of Italian partisans. Which is to say that this film was particularly up my alley. If you want me to hammer the sword into a plowshare there are other movies that function as pure distillations of how much war sucks no matter how cool the guns are.
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
janainaart
gummygunk
vaporwave
izzy806
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
