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The film begins with an ambiguous scene, as a man calls out commands to invisible others on a beach. Who is he? Who is he calling to? Why is he fed up with them? It's revealed that he's calling out to children who have concealed themselves among the reeds. They are playing games of war, and digging in the sand for weapons concealed or lost during some earlier conflict.

We meet them. Florya, perhaps 14, lives nearby with his family. It is 1943, Hitler's troops are invading the Soviet republic of Byelorussia, and Florya (Aleksey Kravchenko) dreams of becoming a heroic partisan and defending his homeland. He wants to leave home and volunteer. His family forbids him. But as events unfold, he leaves, is accepted in a fighting unit, forced to change his newer shoes with a veteran's worn-out ones and is taken under the wing of these battle-weary foot soldiers.

He is still young. He seems younger than his years in early scenes, and much, much older in later ones. At first he is eager to do a good job; posted as a sentry, told to fire on anyone who doesn't know the password, he challenges a girl scarcely older than he is. He does not shoot her; indeed, he never shoots anybody. They grow friendly. Glasha (Olga Mironova), innocent and warm, dreams of her future. Florya is not articulate and may be mentally slow, but he is touched.

The film follows him for its entire length, sometimes pausing to look aside at details of horror. He doesn't see everything. In particular, there's a scene where he and the girl, separated from the army unit, return to his family farm, where he expects a warm welcome. There is nobody there, furniture is upturned, but it seems they've just left. A pot of soup is still warm. He suddenly becomes convinced he knows where they're gone, and pulls her to run with him to an island in a marshland. Then she sees a sight that he doesn't.

Such a departure from his point of view doesn't let us off easy. All he sees is horror, and all he doesn't see is horror, too. Later Florya finds himself in a village as Nazi occupiers arrive. There is a sustained sequence as they methodically round up all the villagers and lock them into a barn. The images evoke the Holocaust. As he's shoved in as part of the seething crowd, Florya's eyes never leave the windows high above the floor. By now his only instinct in life has become to escape death. Parents and children, old people and infants, are all packed in. The Nazis call for any able-bodied men to come out. The fathers stay with their families. Florya scrambles out a window and watches as the Nazis burn down the barn, its locked double doors heaving from the desperation inside. This is a horrifying scene, avoiding facile cutaways and simply standing back and regarding.

This incident, and the story of the boy himself, are based on fact. Many Russian films have depicted the horror of Nazism, because Hitler was a safe target and a convenient stand-in for political allegory closer to home. This film is much more than an allegory. I have rarely seen a film more ruthless in its depiction of human evil.

The principal Nazi monster in the film, S.S. Major Sturmbannfuhrer, is a suave, heartless beast not a million miles distant from Tarantino's Col. Hans Landa. He toys with an unpleasant little simian pet that clings to his neck. He is almost studious in his murderous commands. His detachment embodies power, which is the thing Florya never for a moment possesses throughout the movie. It is possible that Florya survives because he is so manifestly powerless. To look at him is to see a mind reeling from shock. One would like to think the depiction of the Nazis is exaggerated, but no. The final title card says, “The Nazis burned down 628 Byelorussian villages together with all the people in them.”

It strains credulity to imagine Florya surviving all the horrors that he witnesses, but there was a real Florya, and Klimov's script was written with Ales Adamovich; Klimov told Ron Holloway in a 1986 interview, “Adamovich was the same age as the hero in the film. He and his family fought with the partisans and witnessed the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis on Belarussian soil.” Klimov added that his film was shot in Byelorussia (now known as Belarus) near where the events took place, and that he used no professional actors.

The film depicts brutality and is occasionally very realistic, but there's an overlay of muted nightmarish exaggeration. The swamp that Florya and Glasha wade through, for example, has a thick gelatinous top layer that seems like a living, malevolent skin. There's a sequence in which Florya becomes involved with some cows who will become food for starving troops. He and the cow are in a field obscured by a thick fog when machine-gun fire breaks out — from where, he cannot tell. The eventual death of the beast is told in a series of images that mirror the inexorable shutting down of life. The cow's life was doomed one way or another, but these suggest how utterly incomprehensible death is to the cow. The nightmare intensifies after Florya is too near an artillery bombardment and is deafened. The sound becomes muted, and there is a faint ringing, which makes the reality of sound frustratingly out of reach for him.

Is it true that audiences demand some kind of release or catharsis? That we cannot accept a film that leaves us with no hope? That we struggle to find uplift in the mire of malevolence? There's a curious scene here in a wood, the sun falling down through the leaves, when the soundtrack, which has been grim and mournful, suddenly breaks free into Mozart. And what does this signify? A fantasy, I believe, and not Florya's, who has probably never heard such music. The Mozart descends into the film like a deus ex machina, to lift us from its despair. We can accept it if we want, but it changes nothing. It is like an ironic taunt.

I must not describe the famous sequence at the end. It must unfold as a surprise for you. It pretends to roll back history. You will see how. It is unutterably depressing, because history can never undo itself, and is with us forever.

I learn from IMDb.com that the film's title, seemingly so straightforward, has a bleak context. It comes from the Book of Revelation: “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. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Come and See (1985)

Rated Unrated

136 minutes

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There’s No Other War Movie as Horrifying, or Vital, as Come and See

By K. Austin Collins

No one who has watched Come and See, Elem Klimov’s legendary 1985 anti-war film, can forget the horrors at its climax. The entire movie is memorable: a nightmare manifested into reality, or rather, history reemerging into the present as the nightmare that it always was. But the scene in question belongs to a category unto itself. It is distinctly unfathomable—awe-inspiring, in the original, terrifying sense of the word. You can sum it up in an image: a boarded-up farmhouse full of living, screaming people, barraged with Nazi bullets and set aflame.

The film, which is now playing in New York in a restored print (and will be touring through major U.S. cities through July ) is a classic—a blunt and unforgettable testament to the power of cinema. The conflagration at the film’s peak, which doesn't break the heart so much as render it completely without function, is hardly the only proof.

Come and See —adapted by Klimov, with Ales Adamovich, from the 1978 book I Am from the Fiery Village —is a war narrative about a teenage boy, Flyora ( Aleksey Kravchenko ), who digs a discarded gun out of a sandy trench with the intention of joining the Soviet partisans gathering in his village. The setting is Nazi-occupied Belarus, 1943. As a local man warns and as Flyora’s own mother pleads, merely digging up the gun is a dangerous idea; it will raise suspicions among the Nazis. Their fear is not abstract. Soon, the boy is conscripted into the partisan forces and launched, like a damned man supplicated to a foregone fate, into an encounter with unthinkable evil. Soon, most everyone the boy knows is dead.

The movie was a hit in its time for Soviet audiences, commemorating, as it did, the 40th anniversary of Soviet victory in World War II—a convergence of film and history that would not have played out so neatly if Klimov had been able to make the movie eight years prior, as he intended. (Soviet censors got in the way.) But what emerged was a masterpiece of war filmmaking: one of the rare war movies whose design, whose extreme attention to forms of violence that challenge and defy what we think film is capable of, surpasses mere depiction.

This is a film that argues for and thoroughly understands the urgent, present-tense, shifting surreality of war. It is not merely a narrative reimagining of that experience. Klimov, who was born in Stalingrad in 1933 and evacuated that city with his family in 1942—at the start of the notorious Battle of Stalingrad—knows the Eastern European experience of Nazi occupation firsthand.

It is clear that he grafted those memories onto this film, honoring them by resisting the temptation to manufacture a narrative. Come and See is rife with running Steadicam shots and deliberately unsettling compositions. Actors are constantly performing directly to camera, confronting us head-on with their terror. Only five months ago, Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins praised the film on his blog : “I think I am right in saying that 'Come and See' utilized Steadicam in a way than had not been done up to that time.” He has cited it as one of his favorite films.

Watching Come and See evokes the sense that the violence we’re seeing is alive, real—that the screen isn’t a barrier, and neither is historical distance. Kravchenko’s very face wizens as the film bears on and his initial travails spin beyond his control. You would never call this a documentary in the journalistic sense—yet few war movies made before or since have so accurately seemed the capture the feeling of being there .

Perhaps it helps that this is, in part, a tale about lost innocence, firmly rooted in the cowering perspective of a guileless teenage boy. But these are peculiar words to apply to Klimov’s film, in which that innocence—the cocksure smile of a kid ignoring the warnings of the adults of the room—feels grotesque from the start.

You could say, I guess, that the boy learns his lesson. You see it on his face by the end of the film—well before the end, actually, which is what upsets the easy through-line other directors would have wanted to draw in a film like this. Flyora is a character, but this film is not about his character, in the moral or personal sense—even as it sets him up to feel, distressingly, that his irresponsibilities have resulted in the deaths of others. To believe that would be to believe that atrocity is guided by consequence or reason.

This isn’t that kind of movie. I’ve seen the film more than once, and I still can’t accurately sum up its impact in terms of what I’ve “learned” from it, though Come and See has taught me very much: it has defined my sense of what Nazi occupation felt like in the realms other movies have tended to ignore. I can point to specific images that have shaken me to the core each time: a Nazi woman cracking open a crab leg as that farmhouse burns, for example, or a guilt-ridden Flyora sticking his head in the mud, or his companion turning, unexpectedly, to find a pile of dead bodies stacked up against a wall: Flyora’s family.

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Klimov was hardly the first survivor of WWII to make a film about it. But with Come and See, he became and remains one of its most worthy chroniclers. This film endures because it obscures nothing. Its title was inspired by Chapter 6 of The Apocalypse of John—an invitation to see what hell the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse hath wrought. You will want to turn away from this hell. But through Klimov, you are forced to live it.

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The Women Who Marched on Washington, in Their Own Words

K. Austin Collins

K. austin collins is a film critic for *vanity fair.*.

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By David Canfield

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Review: ‘Come and See,’ the most surreally devastating of war films, remains a must-see on the big screen

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“Come and See,” Elem Klimov’s 1985 masterpiece of hallucinatory realism, was originally conceived under the title “Kill Hitler,” and with good reason. Unsparing in its vision of the atrocities committed by Nazi forces in the Soviet republic of Byelorussia (now Belarus), and climaxing with its own indescribable Führer-murdering fantasy, it remains one of the greatest of war films and one of the most unshakably damning. The actual title, no less direct in its charge to the viewer, hails from the Book of Revelation: As the first four seals of God’s judgment are opened, one of the four living beasts declares, “Come and see.” The words beckon you with a chill; they’re like an invitation to the end of the world.

It’s an invitation you should accept. (A brilliant 2K restoration, courtesy of Janus Films, begins screening this weekend at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.) If you do, know that what awaits you is more than just another meticulously choreographed spectacle of war . This soul-scarring movie unfolds as though under a trancelike spell of its own making, one that disorients as much as it hypnotizes. What do we see in “Come and See,” and through whose eyes are we seeing it? The silent, off-screen deity invoked by the allusion to Revelation? Or perhaps Klimov and his cowriter, Ales Adamovich, who both drew on their memories of the Nazi invasion as young men?

It isn’t always clear. From time to time the perspective merges with that of the story’s young protagonist, Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a 14-year-old Byelorussian villager who becomes our increasingly traumatized guide to this circle of earthly hell. It begins, in 1943, with a scene of impish play, as Flyora and a friend search for weapons amid the remnants of an earlier battle while German warplanes soar ominously overhead. Flyora digs up a rifle, which enables him to join the partisan fighters defending their country.

But the sense of an elaborate game, of a fundamental disconnect with reality, persists later at home when the partisans arrive to cart him off to battle. “Come and See” is about what happens when a young man’s coming-of-age merges with the coming of war. Flyora grins and makes faces at his two adorable younger sisters, even as his mother (Tatyana Shestakova), horrified at being abandoned, thrusts an ax at him and demands that he kill them all on the spot. He may think it’s a joke, but she’s deadly serious; she knows what’s coming.

And in time, so do we. Explosions rip through the forest where the soldiers have left Flyora behind to keep watch. Hitler’s troops descend on parachutes, and their reign of terror commences. Flyora flees back to his home village with another teenager, Glasha (Olga Mironova), who becomes his partner in a kind of dance of madness, as they begin to grasp — but also try to deny — the evil that has been unleashed. What Flyora sees and doesn’t see is crucial; at one point Glasha confirms the absolute worst with a quick, sidelong glance, but Flyora doesn’t look. He could be willing himself into obliviousness.

There are entire set-pieces that seem predicated, visually and thematically, on the sheer impossibility of facing the inexplicable. You will not soon forget the devastating sight and sounds of Flyora dragging Glasha through a muddy bog, insisting that he knows where to find his family, even as she knows they are beyond finding. The chaos of human destruction — a field of landmines, an eruption of flares — throws the natural world into a kind of uncomprehending paralysis: A wandering bird and a shell-shocked cow are scarcely the least memorable of the movie’s many characters.

We realize, at a certain point, that we have arrived on a strange new plane of cinematic consciousness. The sound design screams and reverberates with otherworldly effects; the camera hurtles this way and that, sometimes pulling back in a futile attempt to make sense of it all, and sometimes plunging us headlong into terror and confusion. (The stunning, nearly square-framed cinematography is by Aleksei Rodionov.) Kravchenko’s silent scream of a performance is almost entirely reactive, and extraordinary; by the end of this ordeal, Flyora’s cherubic blond features seem to have aged an eternity.

“Come and See” is a paradox: a visceral freefall into barbarism, but also a controlled, sometimes contemplative descent. It doesn’t flinch from its own horrors, but it’s still sufficiently restrained, even distanced, for you to process them. And it builds, inexorably, to a conflagration that tests your limits and those of the medium itself, of what depths of suffering can and cannot be dramatized. Klimov draws out the tension, the anticipatory dread, to an unendurable degree. Perhaps the most ghastly thing is that at a certain point, you find yourself longing for release, for the terrible relief that only the finality of death can bring.

Klimov, who died in 2003, never made another film after this one, though not for want of trying. You can understand why. The closing passage, like much of what we see, is ripped from the ravages of history; at the end the film tells us that the Nazis burned 628 Byelorussian villages. The statistic defeats the imagination even as this movie reawakens it.

‘Come and See’

Not rated (In Belarusian, Russian and German with English subtitles) Running time: 2 hours, 26 minutes Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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Come and see, common sense media reviewers.

Unforgettable, horrific, essential anti-war movie; violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

While it's an extremely difficult watch with its d

Flyora is a young teen boy who finds a gun on a ba

Airdropped German flyers use the racist term "Yids

Violent and disturbing scenes, footage of real-lif

A young girl kisses a boy.

Infrequent language includes "bastards," "shite,"

Empty alcohol bottle is dropped out of a plane. So

Parents need to know that Come and See is an unforgettable and almost unbearable Soviet anti-war movie that uses human horror to show the devastating effects of fascism. The movie follows young teen Flyoria (Aleksey Kravchenko) who joins a resistance group in Belarus to fight against the invading Germany army…

Positive Messages

While it's an extremely difficult watch with its depictions of war, there is a very clear anti-war message. Harrowing, realistic, and horrific, the movie tries to get close to the reality of war to show how bad it is. An older man scolds children for playing as soldiers, so they understand the seriousness of war. Fascism is shown to be utterly corrupting and dehumanizing. Some characters show courage in helping others.

Positive Role Models

Flyora is a young teen boy who finds a gun on a battlefield and joins partisans to fight the Nazis in Belarus during World War II. After his village is slaughtered and he witnesses the atrocities carried out by Nazi soldiers he is forever changed, disturbed and broken. Flyora's mother is furious and heartbroken that he wants to go to war and is driven to despair by grief. Glasha is a young woman who accompanies Flyora at camp. A character helps a boy hide his military clothes to make him appear as a civilian and gives him a family to join so he won't be persecuted as a soldier. A Nazi general watches his soldiers destroy a village and massacre its people. When captured, he claims to be innocent and a good man and denies all blame. A Nazi officer shows no remorse and says that the villager's nation doesn't have the right to exist and calls them an inferior race.

Diverse Representations

Airdropped German flyers use the racist term "Yids." Characters carry off a man and beat him, calling him "Yid" and "Jew bastard." Nazi soldiers in the movie are cruel, heartless killers who enjoy inhumane and heartless acts. The film is shot in the former Soviet Union with cast and crew from the region. Main parts are mostly filled by White males with some females in supporting roles. Languages spoken include Belarusian, Russian, and German.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Violent and disturbing scenes, footage of real-life horrific acts from WWII, and animal cruelty. Soldiers enjoy intimidating and attacking villagers. Hundreds of men, women, and children are forced into a barn church by soldiers. There are prolonged scenes of mass panic and terror before they are shot at. Soldiers throw petrol bombs at the barn church to burn everyone inside alive. They clap and cheer as it burns and the people inside scream. It is then fired on with machine guns and flamethrowers. People are kicked and beaten. A woman is dragged across the ground by her hair. Soldiers pose for a photo with a gun to a terrified prisoner's head. Captured Nazi soldiers are covered in petrol and shot dead. Slaughtered people are piled up against a building. A character overwhelmed with grief strangles a companion. A person with severe burns all over their body tells how soldiers covered them in gasoline and lit them on fire. Soldiers discuss torture. A character is deafened by bomb blasts. A foot is found after an explosion. A dead body is driven around with a sign that says "I insulted a German soldier this morning." A mother drags young children out of bed and asks son to kill them with an axe to show the impact of him going to war. A young woman has blood down her legs, it's implied she had been sexually assaulted and beaten. Soldiers drag a woman off by her hair and bundle her into a truck, where she is grabbed at, with an implied sexual purpose as the reason she's been spared death. Some real animal violence: a cow is shot and killed by machine gun fire. A horse with bound legs struggles on the ground. Pigs are kicked and chick eggs are stamped on.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent language includes "bastards," "shite," "s--t," "goddammit," and "a--hole." Antisemitic slur "Yid" is used.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Empty alcohol bottle is dropped out of a plane. Some soldiers are drunk while they invade a village and attack its inhabitants. Two characters smoke cigarettes.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Come and See is an unforgettable and almost unbearable Soviet anti-war movie that uses human horror to show the devastating effects of fascism. The movie follows young teen Flyoria (Aleksey Kravchenko) who joins a resistance group in Belarus to fight against the invading Germany army during World War II. Flyoria is forced to face the horrors of war and is changed forever, left aged and haunted. The violence and situations are disturbing, which include German soldiers rounding up villagers and tormenting them before burning them to death in a barn church. Other violence scenes include people being killed with machine gun fire and explosives, and strong threat. Sexual violence is also implied. The movie shows animals being injured in real life: a cow is shot to death with machine guns, a bound horse struggles on the ground, and baby chicks are trodden on in their eggs. Despite being a tough watch, the movie is artfully made and effective in showing the effects of war. Real-life footage of emaciated dead victims of the Nazis is shown at the end of the movie, cut with clips of Adolf Hitler and devastation during WWII. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In COME AND SEE, young teen boy Flyoria (Aleksey Kravchenko) joins resistance fighters in Belarus to defend his country against the occupying German army during World War II. Soon he is forced to face the horrifying reality of war as the Nazis move through his country.

Is It Any Good?

This 1985 Soviet anti-war drama is one of the best movies ever made. Come and See is also one of the most disturbing and upsetting films out there. Writer-director Elem Klimov's final movie is a harrowing, unflinching account of Nazi atrocities. The scenes of brutality don't rely on gore or action to get across its horror. Instead the its key scenes of mass horror show the human side. When an entire village is rounded up and burned alive, the terrified and tormented men, women, and children are exterminated by gleeful Nazis. Characters sometimes face the camera in unforgettable shots that the viewer is forced to endure. Audiences are confronted with the horror that unfolds in front of main character and child soldier Flyoria. Near the end, Klimov shows real-life footage of dead, emaciated victims of the Nazis and wartime footage and clips of Adolf Hitler. This devastating final blow shows that however hard the movie has been to watch, its depictions of war aren't even close to the real thing. Heartbreaking and harrowing, Come and See is nevertheless essential viewing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Come and See . Did it feel like an action movie or something else? Was it there to be exciting or serve a different purpose? Does exposure to violent media desensitize kids to violence?

How did you feel seeing the real-life footage from World War II at the end of the movie? Did it give you a better understanding of the real-life impact of fascism? How to talk to kids about violence, crime, and war.

This film has been described as an anti-war movie. In what ways do you feel this to be true? How did it differ from other war movies you've seen?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 6, 1986
• On DVD or streaming : January 28, 2015
• Cast : Aleksey Kravchenko , Olga Mironova , Liubomiras Laucevicius
• Director : Elem Klimov
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studios : Criterion Collection , Seagull Films
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 144 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : April 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Come and See Reviews

This 1985 Soviet anti-war drama is one of the best movies ever made.

Full Review | Apr 17, 2024

The movie is terrible and pitiable. Klimov manages, as I say, to convey the authentic relentlessness of nightmare.

Full Review | Mar 15, 2023

Come and See is as harrowing and horrifying a war film as I've ever seen. It may well be a masterpiece, in fact.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2023

Rare is the film that successfully blends intoxicating visual images with unrelentingly grim material, but Russian director Elem Klimov's phenomenal Come and See is such a movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 14, 2023

The movie is a succession of brutally sincere "art" assaults, jammed together like the poorly articulated cars of an old freight train.

This is filmmaking of enormous power and feeling even if the film's length mitigates against it.

The power of Come and See principally derives from the inspired performance by Kravchenko as Florya, in what must be the ultimate loss-of-innocence role.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 14, 2023

A compelling, harrowing, absurdly beautiful account of the little known holocaust in Byelorussia.

Very few war movies from any country -- including our own -- pummel our insides like Come and See.

Director Elem Klimov keeps the human drama of the ordeal in sharp, clear focus at all times, while still giving the story the sweep of an epic unfolding -- an impressive balancing act.

It's apocalypse caught in the act, a spellbinding, dangerous "excursion into hell."

There's passion and exuberance in Klimov's work, but the essential crudity of his sensibility undermines it. At times, especially when the camera angles veer into grotesquerie, it suggests a Soviet Ken Russell movie.

An overwhelming statement on the horrors of war, Come and See takes an unusual tack in relating a story of World War II. This is a psychological drama -- a harrowing, grueling journey into a young boy's mind as he tries to survive a very real nightmare.

It has a raw, primitive force that makes you realize how much of our own horror of the last war has been diminished by Hollywood heroics or simply box-office co-existence with the enemy.

These hysterical histrionics would put me off in any circumstances, but especially when emphasizing horror that speaks for itself.

The film is a sustained act of looking, with a minimum of dramatic or character development, and these are sights that leave an indelible impression as strong or stronger than any antiwar film in memory.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 14, 2023

Come and See is a stirring, unremittingly powerful war drama that has the rare double virtue of constantly engaging both the eye and the emotions.

142 minutes of lushly photographed Nazi obscenities. While the movie is technically excellent, and the director's point is well made, Come and See takes way too long a look.

By telling the story from a child’s perspective, Klimov gives the horrors of war a new kind of immediacy. Not one born from stern men turned tragically hollow, but from a pure spirit prematurely drained of their innocence.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Mar 14, 2023

Klimov’s dramatic vitality, his control of shifting tones, and his mastery of surprise are what galvanize Come and See. Terrifying as this movie is, we always want to know what happens next.

Come And See Review

01 Jan 1985

146 minutes

Come And See

Properly considered one of the most powerful and disturbing war movies ever made, Elem Klimov's hallucinogenic journey into the vile inhumanity of war, especially as perpetrated by the Reich as they invaded Russia, this is a film of great craft, courage and a deep seated compassion. Although made under the auspices of Soviet controlled cinema, the film rages against oppression, the terrible price that is paid by the humble and poor in the face of political conflict. It is a vision of hell on earth, contrasted with moments of unearthly beauty, that spiral of haunting majesty and lunacy of Apocalypse Now, but with its own deterministic grit.

Rumours abound that Klimov used hypnosis on his fledgling actor Aleksei Kravchencko, the twisted soul of his story, to extract the emotional, even existential, shock of reaction to unknowable things. Whatever the case, it must stand as one of the greatest child performances. Through a series of intense close-ups, reactionary shots to death's myriad forms, Kravchencko's face is a map of terror and incipient madness, but there is a gradual closing up, a sealing off from horror. It is one of the film's pressing themes - how humans become inured to extremity, how the annihilation of innocents can become the norm.

The physical representation of war, not of battle but of the Nazi's genocidal sweep across the pastoral plains of Byelorussia, is shot with a raptured precision like a netherworld from a Grimm Brother fairytale. But none of their moral nightmares, for all their trippy gloom, could compare to the carnival of abhorrence as the Nazis hound an entire village into a barn ready to burn them alive. Spielberg for Schindler's List borrowed their clapping, deranged, subhuman enjoyment of the process. Klimov's guile is to offer up, all-too briefly, moments of emotional connection as Florya escapes in the company of a luminous peasant girl, played with a mild delirium by Olga Mironova, through those desolate woods - they shower by shaking sodden tree branches and when she quicksteps on his case top it is like a moment stolen from a dream. War's unbearable reality forces humanity into surreal pastures, and this landscape, fogged and unending, feels like nowhere on Earth.

Unforgettable and deeply traumatic - while never forcefully gruesome, the death rent across the screen tests you to the limits - Come And See is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. More than that, though, it is a cry of indignant force: how could something so indisputably wrong ever come to pass?

Related Articles

Movies | 29 09 2016

Come and See

• Blu-ray edition reviewed by Chris Galloway
• June 29 2020

See more details, packaging, or compare

This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

Picture 10/10

The Criterion Collection presents Elem Klimov’s  Come and See  on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 on a dual-layer disc. The 1080p/24hz high-definition encode is sourced from a new 2K restoration performed by Mosfilm and scanned from the 35mm original negative.

The restoration looks incredible and Criterion’s Blu-ray does a magnificent job presenting it. Fine object-detail really dives off of the screen in every shot, from fine hairs and wrinkles found in the numerous close-ups throughout the film, to the trees, vegetation, and debris presented in longer shots. The close-ups on the protagonist throughout the film are especially something, as it becomes far clearer how his face is aging as the film progresses. The last couple of close-ups on him are just stunning in the amount of detail now present there.

The film has a drearier look and colours can be muted, though they seem to take more of a teal-like tone with this presentation, and I don’t doubt this is how the film is supposed to look. At the very least it suits it in giving the film a beautiful yet bleak and cold look. There are pops of colour found in some fires that occur, and there is a gorgeous shot involving bullets flying overheard, which streak the sky with red lines. Black levels look astounding as well, rich and deep without crushing out detail, allowing those details in the shadows to still come through. Similar to  Stalker , this restoration drops the tint that was placed over black-and-white sequences (archival footage in this case) and it is presented in simple black-and-white. ( Correction:  I was thinking of  Solaris , not  Stalker , in relation to tinting. Criterion's  Solaris  Blu-ray removed a blue tint while their edition of  Stalker made a sepia tint more prominent.)

Grain is very fine but is still visible and rendered cleanly, and I didn’t note any artifacts on screen. The restoration has also done a fantastic job in cleaning up damage: outside of the archival footage at the end of the film there is nothing to speak of, and even that archival footage has obviously gone through a process all its own, so that it ends up looking sharp and clear itself.

Overall it’s a stunner of a presentation, just as pleasing as what  Stalker  offered, and it’s an enormous improvement over what was available previously.

(NOTE: This release has been encoded for regions  A and B , so while Criterion has not officially released the film in the UK, this disc will play in region B players. I checked it on my own region B player it played perfectly fine. I did check on another player that I can set to region C and it gave me a region error so it does appear to be only limited to those two regions, though I will note that I’ve had issues with that player in the past. It did play when I set that player back to B, though.)

Criterion includes the film’s original Russian monaural presentation in lossless PCM. Criterion has not ported over the 5.1 surround remix that was found on the previous Kino and RusCiCo DVDs.

Despite the soundtrack being a single-channel mono presentation it manages to pack an incredible punch to it. The film’s sound design and mix are both remarkably elaborate and it seems to get more intense as the film progresses. Though it makes use of a number of classical pieces, the film’s main “score” makes use of the sound of a droning plane (I always assumed it was a reference to that ever-present threat hanging over the film’s protagonist) and it’s mixed at various levels, depending on what’s appropriate at the moment, and it can pack an incredible punch at times. The sound design gets elaborate in other ways, like muffling out certain sounds at times while enhancing others, and it never comes off screeching or weak. The level of range between the highs and lows is also impressive, and the more action-packed sequences, involving explosions and gunfire, are mixed louder but they never come off harsh and do sound clean and natural, delivering incredible fidelity. Dialogue may be the only weak element: in comparison to the everything else it comes off incredibly flat and does stick out compared to every other aspect of the track.

It’s  almost  a shame that Criterion didn’t port over the 5.1 sound track, because it would fit the film just fine since it seems determined to put you in the middle of this hell the film presents, but RusCiCo’s surround remixes were pretty spotty at best.

( Addition:  Interestingly, I learned through members of our forum that the film was released with a 3.0 or 3.1 stereo soundtrack. As to why Criterion didn't include it here I can't say. Considering the film's sound design, it's an absolute shame they didn't.)

Extras 10/10

Outside of some archival material found on previous DVDs Criterion does appear to have ported everything over from the Kino/RusCiCo discs, which included three interviews: one with director Elem Klimov (21-minutes), actor Aleksei Kravchenko (14-minutes), and production designer Viktor Petrov (8-minutes). Petrov goes into getting the film’s more documentary-like look, from sets to cotumes, while Kravchenko talks about his casting (which he fell into) and the experience of working with Klimov and filming certain scenes. Klimov’s is the more in-depth interview, the filmmaker giving a history to the project (born out of a desire to show a true representation of the war after most films had been action-adventures) that spanned about 7 years because of censors and such having issues with the subject matter (his original title,  Kill Hitler , was also a no-no).

Criterion then packs on several new features, which includes a couple of exclusive interviews. First they have recorded an excellent 10-minute interview with director of photography  Roger Deakins . Deakins lists  Come and See  as one of his favourite films and he explains why he is so awe-struck by the film’s visuals and framing and how it has inspired him, really gushing over it and its use of the Academy ratio and the Steadicam in a few shots. It ends up making for a great analysis of the film’s visuals and what makes them so striking and impactful.

The director’s brother, German Klimov, also records a new interview, running 27-minutes. He covers some of the same ground that his brother did in the other interview (including how the title  Come and See  came about, though it differs a bit here) but expands on many details, like the events that led up to the film finally being made, and then production specific things like filming the barn sequence, where they ended up using locals who were probably around when the actual events happened. He then closes off discussing his brother’s heading of the Soviet Filmmakers Union.

The best feature on here, though, are three films from a five-part series about the atrocities Belarussians faced from the Nazis during the war, directed by Viktor Dashuk and called  Facing Memories . The three films are  Handful of Sand  (10-minutes),  Mute Scream  (11-minutes), and  Woman from the Killed Village  (28-minutes), and all were filmed around 1975 according to the notes here (looking them up online suggests different years for each). Each film features one or more participants recounting the horrors they witnessed and survived during the war as the Nazis made their way through, burning down villages and murdering the villagers. Some of these stories are similar to what occurs in the film, so I assume that’s why these films were chosen specifically, but I’m unsure as to why Criterion didn’t include the other two. At any rate, even though they’re primarily interviews the films are not easy to watch, the participants recounting such horrors as being buried alive or gathered into a church with the knowledge of what was going to follow.  Woman from the Killed Village  may be the toughest one, and not only because it has flashes of archival footage around the atrocities committed, but the interviewee’s account in this case covers what happened to her, her husband, and the entire village, and there was one regret that still haunted her to that day that is incredibly devastating. But with this one, she also talks about how she got her life back together after the war, showing how one can still work to move on.

They can be hard to watch but they’re important to have and I’m happy Criterion found it worthwhile to include them. They also look to have been restored (to an extent) and are presented here in high-definition.

The disc then closes with a  trailer  touting the new restoration, along with a 10-minute production featurette from 1985 called  The Story of the Film “Come and See,”  featuring interviews with Elem Klimov, a young Kravchenko, and writer Ales Adamovich. The interviews are pretty brief but some behind-the-scene footage of Klimov rehearsing a scene makes this a worthwhile addition.

Criterion also includes a booklet featuring an essay on the film by Mark Le Fanu, but I was more struck by the second piece, written by Valzhyna Mort on writer Ales Adamovich. Adamovich gets a lot of mention throughout the features (and shows up in the archival featurette), but otherwise doesn’t have any material devoted specifically to him. This essay, covering his career, work, and impact fills in that gap nicely.

In the end, Criterion has put together a satisfying collection of supplements, covering the film’s production, it’s subject matter, those behind it, and it’s visual style.

Criterion has put together a fantastic special edition for the film, loading on several supplements around the film’s production and its subject matter, while also giving the film a superb audio/video presentation. A very highly recommended edition.

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Criterion Review: COME AND SEE (1985)

The horrors of war achieve an astonishing new clarity in criterion’s new 2k restoration.

My inaugural piece for Cinapse just over a year ago was covering Elem Klimov’s Come and See for my Catching Up with the Classics project. It’s a disturbing, brutal film, one that felt like wholly necessary viewing but one I doubted I would revisit again.

Ever since I first watched the film, though, Come and See has made an indelible impact on me — as it has with many audiences since its 1985 premiere. Borne of the oral histories of the Belorussian massacres of World War II collected by Ales Adamovich and writer-director Elem Klimov’s own incendiary wartime experiences, Come and See was produced and released at a time when European powers began to more deeply reckon with their conflict-ridden pasts at the twilight of the Cold War. Stripped of the justifications of nationalism and patriotic duty, Klimov and Cinematographer Aleksey Rodionov turned the forests and fields of Belorussia into an unending hellfire, dictated by a cruel, dreamlike non-logic filled with humans and demons indistinguishable from one another. Throughout, preteen partisan Flyora struggles to maintain his sanity as bullets and brutality strip him of his family, his freedom, and eventually his spark of life. His deadening eyes remain a riveting, yet fraying connection between us and the boy he increasingly used to be — capturing the soul-draining and senseless nature of war in such a way that newsreels, propaganda, and statistics can’t. It revives the anger and fury of the past in a feverishly contemporary way, ultimately urging its audience to recognize what choices can be made in our present to prevent such atrocities from ever occurring again.

I naturally approached Criterion’s new restoration of Come and See with a marked trepidation. While I greatly appreciated the film, my prior experience with Come and See was limited by the low-quality transfer the film had received. Sound and dialogue was washed-out, and picture quality varied between sublime and unintelligible. In short, as immersive as the film was, there was still the occasional distance between myself and the work. It was a historical document, one rooted firmly in the past as much as its lessons proved timely and current. However, given my initial reactions to the film, what better opportunity to revisit a seemingly unrewatchable film than to see it as originally intended?

As a result of restoration efforts taken by Mosfilm in 2017, Come and See feels wholly resurrected, from its delirious, hallucinatory sound mix of bullets and windy forests to the grisly, gritty textures of Belorussian fields and piling corpses. The experience of watching the film is seriously augmented by this new transfer — and the equal dedication and care Criterion has put into their supplements provides necessary and enriching historical and artistic context to one of cinema’s most memorable nightmares. Ranging from the laborious efforts of the crew to not just get the film made, but past the Russian censors before and after production, to Come and See ’s role in navigating the increasingly political landscape of acknowledging Wartime atrocities in Cold War Europe, Criterion has done justice to Come and See and its well-earned place in film canon.

Ultimately, Come and See is worth multiple revisits in this brilliant new restoration — as well as Criterion’s impressive complimentary collection of sobering archival material.

Video/Audio

Criterion’s release of Come and See is presented in 1080p HD in the original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, sourced from a 2017 2K restoration by Mosfilm from the original 35mm negative. The 1.0 Monaural track of Belarusian, Russian, and German was also restored from the original 35mm track. English Subtitles accompany the main feature, as well as the non-English-speaking sections of the Blu-ray’s special features. In a rarity for their releases, Criterion’s Blu-ray is accessible by both Region A & B Blu-ray players.

In much of the world, Come and See ’s predominantly existed in VHS-quality, ramshackle transfers from unrestored elements from when DVD was in its infancy. For better and for worse, the breathtaking depravity of Elem Klimov’s film is now restored in Mosfilm’s 2K restoration. The beauty of nature and the bloodshed within it is brought to life in all of its grimy detail, from the fraying patchwork on the characters’ clothes, to the bubbling muck of a Belorussian bog, to the wiry veins of a dying cow’s eyeball. The sound design is also razor sharp for a monaural track — the static and muffled gunfire of past transfers has been digitally cleaned up and restored, creating a hellish aural landscape that at times reflects Flyora’s increasingly damaged hearing.

Part of me wishes that this transfer of the film didn’t exist — so that the horrors of Come and See could feel more distant and locked to the past. To see it in such stellar quality is to reflect on how close to our present these depicted atrocities truly are.

Special Features

• Roger Deakins: In a 2019 interview, the legendary cinematographer reflects on how the film influenced his body of work, notably his latest Oscar-winning 1917 . Deakins also discusses the responsibility of filmmakers when telling stories of war, and balancing the natural instinct of finding a beautiful shot with the disturbing contents within it.
• German Klimov: A 2019 interview with director Elem Klimov’s surviving brother and frequent collaborator, in which he discusses his brother’s overarching film career and motivations for creating Come and See .
• Flaming Memory: Three 1975–1977 shorts by Viktor Dashuk in collaboration with Ales Adamovich, the author of Come and See ’s inspiration, Out of the Fire . Each film is an extended interview with firsthand survivors of the Belorussian massacres, and are just as harrowing as the disc’s main feature.
• Elem Klimov: A 2001 archival interview with the film’s writer/director where he discusses his own World War II experiences, how he came across the film’s source material, his experiences training star Alexei Kravchenko, and the overwhelming physical response by audiences as a result of the film.
• Alexei Kravchenko: A 2001 archival interview with Come and See ’s lead actor. His initial frustrations with Klimov’s non-direction give way to his appreciation of how his first film production was a fiery formative experience for him as an actor.
• Viktor Petrov: A 2001 archival interview with the film’s production designer, discussing the stop-and-start nature of Come and See ’s embittered pre-production process against Russian censors, the mechanics of shooting in remote forest locations, and creating a historically-faithful, gruesome world for Come and See.
• The Story of the Film Come and See : An archival featurette from 1985 documenting the film’s production for Russian State TV.
• Theatrical Trailer for Janus’ stateside release of Come and See ’s restoration.
• Orphans of the Storm: An essay from film professor and frequent Criterion contributor Mark Le Fanu, in which he discusses the traumatizing dedication of the film’s creatives, its role in contextualizing Wartime history for modern audiences, as well as Come and See ’s complicated role in acting as potential propaganda to rationalize Russia’s own actions during World War II, all while recognizing the film’s deserved canonization as a masterpiece.
• Read and See: An essay from poet and professor Valzhyna Mort, contextualizing the work of Ales Adamovich (whose novels Khatyn and Out of the Fire provided the initial basis for Come and See ) within Adamovich’s own origins and traumatic wartime experiences, as well as the greater historical reckoning of Belarus and Russia as further records documenting the razing of Belorussian villages increased in public knowledge.

Come and See is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection, as well as on The Criterion Channel.

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Movie Review: “Come and See” the “Great Patriotic War,” Soviet style

The newly-reissued “Come and See” is a crash course in Soviet cinema history.

Here it is, from Eisenstein until the Iron Curtain parted (briefly), a 1985 summary of Soviet acting, directing, technique and the obsessions of the culture, all in one sweeping epic.

It’s shot in old Academy aspect ratio, features actors staring straight at the camera, grim reality blended with romantic idealism in a movie repressed and controversial at the time because it dared to puncture the official State myth about the common heroism of Soviet resistance to the Nazi invaders.

Set in Belarus in 1943 as the tide of the war is turning, it’s about a boy of about 14 ( Aleksey Kravchenko ) who revels in playing war games with a younger friend, digging in the abandoned trenches for treasure from the abandoned defensive positions there.

Then he digs up a rifle. That’s his cue to join the partisans, still fighting the Nazis on this fringe of the front lines.

But Flyora’s plans send his widowed mother ( Tatyana Shestakova ) into understandable hysterics.

“Think of yoursel f son,” she cries, when she means “Think of US.” She has a few farm animals and twin little girls to cope with — in a war zone. She needs help and even the unlikely protection of her little man. “Have you no HEART?”

Apparently he doesn’t. He’s got the recruiters at the door, ready to take him away. Her cries fall on deaf ears, his partisan comrades barely bother reassuring her — “ We’ll keep him warm.” They take the family cow, and a turkey. And they’re off to the forests.

Flyora finds himself in a tougher, rougher version of the partisans we saw in the Jewish resistance drama “Defiance.” Their leader ( Liubomiras Laucevicius ) reminds the veterans, and indoctrinates “the new recruit” as to what is expected — a reckless, patriotic disregard for you own safety — and what they’re up against, “total war” a fight to the death against an enemy bent on extermination.

This isn’t “playing war.” Flyora has to give up his boots to a more experienced fighter and finds himself left behind with the camp as the company-sized force marches off. It’s just him and nurses, including the teenage one ( Olga Mironova ) whose heart the commander just broke.

German paratroops and an accompanying air raid has Flyora leading Glasha to his old village because he knows “the perfect place to hide” (in Russian, with English subtitles).

Bombs chase them into the swamp, machine gun fire splinters the trees all around. There’s barely time for a rainy day reverie before they get to the village and Flyora takes her to his house where he insists they eat the meal left on the table.

“They’re not around,” he says of his family and the villagers. Glasha figures it out long before she distracts him to prevent Flyora seeing the pile of bodies behind the barn.

His mother was right. And this is but the beginning of his unhappy odyssey through a war zone, taking on mentors ( Vladas Bagdonas ), barely surviving every miscalculation, meeting the enemy in the flesh.

Stylistically, the images are grey, muddy and realistic in the extreme. Did director Elem Klimov (he did a well-regarded 1981 “Rasputin”) use “live fire” to get the bombing/machine-gunning effects?

The voices sound looped (dubbed in off-set), common in much of European cinema but generally abandoned by in the rest of Europe by the late 1960s.  And the acting is Noh Theater-broad, tending towards over-emotive declarative speeches.

Visually, “Come and See” still has a whiff of “State of the Soviet Art” in its gloomy, over-saturated colors and analog effects.

But even if the acting and sound make it dated, they don’t blunt the provocative anti-war message Klimov and his crew were getting across. “The Great Patriotic War” was Stalin’s last lie. Heroic, fatalistic partisans preyed on everyone to stay alive, and were encouraged to do that by The State.

Helpless civilians struggling just to keep themselves alive and their elderly parents or their children safe long enough to reach adulthood were held in contempt.

And there’s nothing romantic about “total war” — losing it, or winning it.

MPAA Rating:unrated, graphic violence

Cast: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius, Vladas Bagdonas and Tatyana Shestakova

Credits:Directed by Elem Klimov, script by Ales Adamovich and Elem Klimov. Janus release.

Running time: 2:23

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10 Reasons Why “Come and See” Is The Best War Movie Ever Made

Released in 1985 to critical acclaim, Elem Klimov’s “Come and See” is not an underrated film – those who see it are quick to recognize its excellence. It is, however, a criminally underseen one, most likely because of where and when it was made (more on that later).

Additionally, it has no big stars or familiar faces to speak of, and no sweeping score characteristic of your typical Hollywood spectacle. It is long, but not prohibitively so (at 142 minutes, it’s certainly shorter than other respected films in the genre, and even many of today’s blockbusters). It’s an undeniably well-made movie, featuring unmistakably high production values, but not a particularly beautiful one (not that it was trying to be).

The plot is simple: In 1943, a young teenage boy in the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia (modern-day Belarus) sets out to join the partisans in the fight against the Nazis during the occupation. His harrowing but sadly all-too plausible experiences make up the rest of the film, resulting in one of the most shocking and powerful chronicles of war and its effects in all of cinema.

Relentlessly grim, deeply disturbing, and made unquestionably more dread-inducing by the fact that almost everything depicted really happened (and then some), it is a depressing but necessary reminder of one of the darkest chapters in human history. That it also manages to be both poetic and realistic is a supreme accomplishment on the part of the director.

Not all movies are meant to be enjoyable, and some fall more obviously into the category of art than entertainment. Though no one could possible describe the experience of watching “Come and See” as a fun time, the film is nonetheless a masterpiece, worthy of consideration as not just the best war movie ever made, but also one of the greatest films ever made PERIOD. The following are just ten of the reasons why its legacy should be so honored:

1. A Sympathetic Protagonist

One of the major keys to the film’s success is its main character. The entire story is told from the perspective of Florya, an idealistic peasant eager to join the resistance. Played by newcomer Aleksei Kravchenko, who was only fourteen when the film was made, Florya becomes the surrogate witness through which the audience experiences the brutality of war.

By casting such a young actor, Klimov sets up one of the basic themes of the film: the death of innocence. While hardly a unique message for a war movie, the striking and totally believable transformation Florya undergoes over the course of the film is haunting and unforgettable. We watch as the boy literally ages before our eyes, gaining wrinkles and losing hair color as he faces one trauma after another.

It’s impossible to be unaffected by watching the ongoing emotional scarring of a person, especially one so young, and Kravchenko lives up the task by delivering a completely convincing performance. By the film’s end, he’s been rendered nearly mute by all he’s seen – a reaction that audiences will easily understand, if not briefly share.

2. Surrealism

The stylistic choices Klimov makes here separates the film from any other in the genre, none more so than his use of surrealism. The opening scene finds Florya and another boy digging in a sandy field. The reason isn’t immediately clear, though we soon find out they’re looking for rifles accompanying the bodies of soldiers buried in shallow graves. The strangeness of the scene establishes the consistently ominous and nightmarish tone that Klimov maintains for the duration of the film. The effect is extremely unsettling.

Though there are multiple examples of unexpected and upsetting details throughout, such as the moment early on when Florya unintentionally tramples on a nest full of bird eggs, the most jarring surrealistic moments are reserved for the film’s most horrifying sequence, in which an entire village is massacred by the Nazis. Amidst the chaos, an SS officer is seen playing with his pet loris (a rare and exotic primate).

A beautiful German woman listens to opera music and eats lobster in her car while the village burns around her (perhaps a visual mockery of supposed Aryan “civility”). It’s the bizarre touches like these that help burn the scene into our memory, as if showing just general mayhem would be too basic. What Klimov is after is something more impressionistic, punctuating the atrocities with images so weird and inexplicable that they almost come off as obscene, given their context.

Furthering that point, after herding the villagers into a wooden church and setting it on fire with grenades and flamethrowers, the Nazis indiscriminately open fire on the building, an action that’s not just overkill, but unnecessary to the point of absurdity. The spontaneous self-congratulatory applause they give themselves is the chilling topper to the carnage.

Though the film stays inherently committed to its realistic portrayal of the war, the occasional artistic flourishes Klimov includes work without robbing the film of its verisimilitude. Still, the frequency of these odd occurrences make it seem as though Klimov decided to shoot his war movie as if it were a horror movie, which brings us to the next point…

3. Music and Sound Design

If the strong imagery is the most memorable aspect of this movie, then its soundtrack comes in at a close second. Instead of a traditional score, a cacophonous mix of animal noises, droning hums, occasional excerpts of classical music, and of course, the expected terrible sounds of war are used.

This unorthodox approach succeeds magnificently in emphasizing the intensity onscreen, such as in the practically unbearable scene in which Florya and a young girl he’s befriended named Glasha wade across a quicksand-like bog in their search for fellow survivors.

Filmed in long takes that look as uncomfortable to have filmed as they are to watch, the audio in the scene consists mostly of unseen bird chirps and a low-frequency whir. The sudden appearance of waltz-like classical music creates a juxtaposition that puts the scene somewhere on the border between satirical and tragic.

Much of the infamous massacre scene goes un-scored, the sounds of screaming villagers, barking dogs, gunfire, and Nazi laughter being more than sufficient to supplement the visuals. Klimov knows well when to let the images speak for themselves, and also when silence is appropriate. In an early scene of a German bombing raid, Florya temporarily goes deaf. The audio takes his subjective point of view, resulting in us hearing the same ringing noise (the same technique was used years later in “Saving Private Ryan”).

Finally, the film’s last scene fittingly uses one of the saddest and most mournful pieces of music ever written: the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The piece has been used in countless other movies and TV shows, but Klimov absolutely earns the right to employ it here, given all that’s preceded it.

Despite the use of surrealism, the film as a whole remains thoroughly grounded in reality. Much of the realism is due to specific decisions made by the director, some of which sound questionable at best in retrospect.

In addition to filming on location in Belarus, in chronological order, and with dialogue spoken in authentic Belarusian, Russian, and German, live ammunition was used in several scenes instead of blanks, sometimes missing the actors by mere inches. Many of the uniforms seen in the film are not costumes, but genuine originals from the war itself. Most impressively, no professional trained actors were used, making the compelling performances and Klimov’s directing of them all the more praiseworthy.

By keeping the action restricted to Florya’s point of view, Klimov gives us a child soldier’s eye view of the destruction, with no flashbacks or outside cutaways to offer relief. And even though elements such as subjective sound and non-diegetic music are utilized, the uncompromising you-are-there feel of the film is never abandoned.

5. Historical Importance

If nothing else, “Come and See” offers a sobering history lesson, illuminating one of the lesser known episodes of World War II: the Nazi occupation of Belarus. While most films about the Nazi treatment of civilians understandably focus on what they did to the Jews – the minority that was indisputably singled out to receive the worst of the Nazi’s policies, culminating in the genocidal slaughter that was the Holocaust – there were many other religious, ethnic, and regional groups that were also selected for extermination.

In a 1986 interview, Klimov stated that the film was intended to be anti-war and anti-fascist, but not anti-German. That said, the movie’s narrow focus on the plainly despicable actions undertaken by the Nazis in the BSSR leaves little room for debate that, though the film aims to illustrate the horrors of war in general and fascism in particular, its main target is quite specific. The original title was “Kill Hitler,” and its change was thankfully the only one Klimov had to make from his vision.

From the opening scene, the film announces without ambiguity the nature and identity of the enemy. As the boys dig for weapons, they spot a German plane. The unmistakable voice of Adolf Hitler then fills the soundtrack, transitioning into the infamous first verse of the Deutschlandlied (the national anthem of the Third Reich) as the opening credits begin.

Later, Florya’s displaced fellow villagers, perhaps seeking a tangible object on which they can unload their collective outrage, construct a grotesque effigy of the Nazi leader. And of course, there’s the use of Nazi footage in the brilliant climax of the film (to be discussed later).

Unlike in some other war movies, the enemy is far from faceless here – the notorious massacre scene at the end of the film features plenty of German dialogue and swastikas galore. By being explicit about who the film is about, Klimov is better able to make his point about war in general (as any true artist knows, tragedy is almost always more moving when it focuses on the small to make a point about the large, rather than trying to be too thorough and comprehensive).

And just to make sure there’s no doubt about why this particular army of murderous soldiers commits the actions it does in the film (as if it could hypothetically be some hideous anomaly), the Obersturmführer bluntly evokes Nazi ideology (even after being captured, no less), confidently stating that the Byelorussian partisans are members of an inferior race that has no right to exist. This important bit of dialogue proves that his and his men’s actions directly stem from official orders.

Some may wonder if it’s really necessary to continue making films showing just how bad the Nazis were, while others may take offense at the very question. A more intriguing thought would be whether or not the film would still be great if it weren’t based on true events, though reality may render this a moot point.

Of course, it would still indeed be exceptional, but probably not as disquieting, most likely. That it’s unabashedly political and anti-Nazi is of course not controversial, as the text and images at the end of the film give us a stark reminder of why films like this need to be made.

56 Replies to “10 Reasons Why “Come and See” Is The Best War Movie Ever Made”

The fact that more people have not seen this makes me want to not live in this world any longer. To even put things like Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan – even Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket – next this work is to insult the loss of life it depicts.

Platoon and Full Metalk Jacket are masterpieces, you twat !

I didn’t say they weren’t… but they aren’t this film, and they don’t compare.

You compare apples with oranges.

No, he is comparing the Tree of Life with beautiful apples and oranges. That’s it.

Just because this movie has weird frames and weird acting it doesn’t make it a good war movie. It’s just a propaganda/art movie done by the Soviets. Paint Nazies as animals and Russians as angels. A good war movie with a strong message would be All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) or The Thin Red Line (1998).

Weird for you. Klimov never made a movie after this. And if it was propaganda shame on him as an artist. No, the Nazis weren’t animals, they were just human beings, that’s all. I don’t think Russians are depicted as angels here. Not for me.

you just went full retard.

*Says the pseudo-intellectual*

The Thin Red Line sucked.

Well done, you cunt ! You made a logic and well constructed argument.

I would argue that this film isn’t just some blunt piece of soviet propaganda.Why? Because it hasn’t been approved by the the party for 7 years before it has finally been made in 1985 and at one point its production has been halted. After the end of the WWII Ales Adamovich (the scenarist) and another prominent belarusian writer made a tour of the republic in order to gather a collection of village stories about Belarus during german occupation which later was published as book “I come from the burning village”, much of what is seen in the movie comes from those first hand experiences of peasants. Of course it is worth mentioning that what NKVD or some partisans did to the villages that were on German side was equally horrible.

During the war Belarus was divided in 3 parts, one part had at one point a Belarusian nationalistic governement under supervision of Wilhem Kube, the middle under German military control and the far east under soviet. And as far as history is concerned the part under German military control was as brutal as the film shows. For example, did you know that in Nawahrudak out of 10 000 jews who lived there only 550 survived nazi’s occupation? Surely you know that nazi’s viewed slavic as an inferior race. So you can imagine how the belarusians were treated during the war, most of which were peasants in 1940’s BSSR. Some village were burnt two or three times, 209 of 270 belarusin cities were anihilated and as it shows in the credits of the film 600 were annihilated with all the villagers…

Now Platoon and Full Metal Jacket ARE masterpieces! But what makes Come and See particular is the fact that Klimov and Adamovich had personal experience with the subject matter. For example, Klimov as a kid was leaving Stalingrad with his mother at night while the whole city was in roaring fire. Also one interesting point is that the main actor almost went insane after the barn scene. And during that scene, Klimov would in between the takes read parts of “I come from the burning village”.

The main issue I have with the film is that it dehumanizes the enemy almost resembling an animal. While this can be made in a fiction film, like Mad Max, it cannot be done in an historical movie. In the landing part of Saving Private Ryan there was a scene with two American soldiers climbing over the hill and fortifications when they encountered two enemy soldiers who were surrendering to them. The Americans started to shoot killing them and when the Germans collapsed they got closer and started making fun of them ” What did the he say ?” and the other soldier said in a funny way ” Look, I’ve washed for supper !”.

Now this scene is actually generic at first and you can excuse the American soldiers because they themselves faced an ensured death on those beaches, but Steven Spielberg doesn’t tell you one thing, those Germans weren’t actually Germans. The soldiers killed where actually Czech prisoners forced in the Ostlegionen to defend the beaches. What does this tell you ? It humanizes the enemy but also the one who killed them. The Americans where shocked and made rushed or irrational decisions due to the dangerous combat and the enemy soldiers weren’t there by themselves but forced to fight them.

Now let’s compare this to Come and See where you have Germans dressed as clowns with a midged running and gunning people like psychos then burning them in a barn. While I don’t deny this didn’t happen the appearance of the Germans was atrocious and not credible because every Soviet war movie is based on this idiotic revisionism including today’s propaganda.

Source of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7dmcHoODZI

The look of the Germans is actually accurate. They aren’t portraying a disciplined front line unit. They are portraying a unit made up of criminals, regular army rejects and Belarusian collaborators that are miles behind the frontlines. Look up the Dirlewanger brigade and their leader Oskar Dirlewanger. They were a real SS unit that the German soldiers in Come and See were based on. I didn’t believe it when I first saw the film either but it is actually a realistic portrayal of the brigade. Well actually the brigade in real life was much worse.

I agree that a couple other commenters who replied to you acted rather inappropriate in their responses. However, I do disagree with you.

I think this movie dehumanized the Soviets as well. For instance, when Florya first arrived at their base, he was quickly mistreated and forced to perform menial tasks. In one of the final scenes of the film, Kosach showed dehumanization as he attempted to burn the captured German’s alive. In one of the earlier scenes, when Florya was assigned as the night guard, one of the partisans (I forget exactly who he was) advanced on him without saying the password. If Florya didn’t recognize him, he could’ve been shot dead. It was then shown that he was trying to toughen Florya up and to teach him to shoot at anyone who doesn’t give the password, even if you recognize them. This clearly showed dehumanization as that man could’ve easily been shot. What he did what very foolish and dangerous. As far as I’m concerned, this movie dehumanized both sides. In fact, I’d say it shows more dehumanization on both sides of the war than Saving Private Ryan does (although, I also love SPR).

Besides, I wouldn’t say the depiction of the Nazi’s wasn’t credible. As Jack Biddo pointed out, the Nazi’s who burned the villages were based on a real unit made up of criminals and army rejects. Everything which happened in this movie happened in real life so I don’t see anything incredible about it.

In addition, some of your wording in your final paragraph was completely inaccurate in your description of the film. Firstly, what do you mean that the Nazi’s were dressed as clowns? The uniforms in this film were not goofy at all. In fact, many of the uniforms were real ones from the actual war. That wasn’t the best word you could’ve used to describe them in my opinion. In addition, “midged” isn’t a real word. You may have meant to type “midget”. If that was what you meant, however, I’ve seen this film several times, and I’m pretty sure that all the Nazi’s who shot people were not midgets. Watch the church burning scene, and you’ll see that your statement is not true. In addition, the Nazi’s did much more in this film other than just run around and shoot people. In fact, I can’t think of a single scene where a group of Nazi’s did that. Anyways, if you had issues with the depictions of the Nazi’s, that’s fine. However, you don’t have to make inaccurate descriptions of this film to make that point.

Anyways, I agree that this is the best war film ever made, and it makes my top 10 favorite films of all time. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a war film which captured the horrors of war in such a compelling, haunting, and unique way. Also, I feel like the less is more technique used for the violent scenes made the film truly horrifying, yet not to the point where the violence makes you want to look away from the film.

This movie is probably the best war movie period.

Schindlers List is a very powerful and well made film but nothing compares to Come and See except another Russian film by the name of Fortress of War (Fort Brest) which i would add as the next in line to Come and See. This is an exceptional and emotional film. If you have not seen it, please watch it then tell all your friends.

Marked to watch “Fort Beast”

Well-written review of a great film.

[…] 1985-ben bemutatott háborús filmjére, a Jöjj és lásdra hivatkozó cikkekbe. (Például a Taste of Cinema is többször listázta, sőt külön is gyártott róla listát.) Lényegében mindenütt úgy […]

this and apocalypse now are definitely the best

AGREE!!! GREAT MOVIE!

Nice review.

Personally, I agree it is the best war film ever made.

It´s an important movie, one movie that in my opinion also should get the same notice is director Francesco Rosi and the movie Many Wars ago….

This is a great movie no doubt. But when making a list and ranking, I doubt we can declare a particular movie as the greatest. Because it’s almost an objective thing. Personally, I feel “Hotaru No Haka” aka Graves of the fireflies is a movie that not just shows the horror of war but also the aftermath and how it affects the average person.

The article is very well written and is engaging much. I hope more people watch “Come and See”.

[…] Released in 1985 to critical acclaim, Elem Klimov’s “Come and See” is not an underrated film – those who see it are quick to recognize its excellenc  […]

[…] fact, here is an article describing why this film is the best war movie ever made. I disagree with some of its points, but can get behind most of them. […]

Great movie, but its difficult to choose just one film on any genre

I think this movie is overrated and always cringe when I see “the best” or “the greatest” in any headline. To each his own and there are several Russian produced WWII films I preferred while my favorite Russian Front movie was Cross of Iron.

Is is available on Bluray or HD-streaming anywhere?

i think what u really ment is “the best anti-war movie”…well i ll watch it definitely but my humble opinion is that “ivan’s childhood” is the one…again i repeat my personal humble opinion

*says the cunt who didn’t even brought an argument to this discussion.*

Making a propaganda film isn’t art, retard ! It’s propaganda !

Dragul meu. Spune asta si despre Potemkin!

Hai sa spunem ca si Birth of a Nation e arta. SIgur !

Griffith? But of course!

not particularly subtle film, is it…

Without doubt, this is not your typical boring-heroic Soviet war film. And it is probably the best film ever to come out of Belarus. Then again, for me, it just too overloaded with symbolism and tragedy, and I find the film’s depiction of the Nazis and their collaborators rather conventional and cliche. And the moralism in the end with the baby Hitler… sheesh…

Without doubt, the most emotional and accurate war film ever made. I would suggest that the people on here who have made derogative comments about Come and See need to learn more about WW2 especially the Holocaust, and the vile despicable Nazi Einsatzgruppen (a.k.a.Einsatzkommando) mobile killing squads. There are many documentaries you can watch and if you can read, some very powerful and emotional books.

The audience cover their mouths in horror. Such a brutal cinema masterclass. No other war movie is so compelling in its realistic nightmare approach. The only movie i recall to come closer is “Apocalypse Now”, but Coppola brings more artsy approach to war. Jason is completely right: “Come and See” is a brutal cinema masterclass.

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Funny how you deny the fact the Nazis depicted there weren’t shows as some delinquent battalion, but more closely resembling a gang belonging to a Mad Max movie, with a commander so eccentric to have an exotic monkey and yes, a midget dressed in Nazi uniform.

That’s not exactly what I said. I acknowledged that the Nazi’s in the film were really dehumanized, but I also confirmed the point which Jack Biddo brought up which is on how the Germans were based on a real unit made up of criminals and army rejects, meaning that there’s a reason why the Nazi’s did what they did in the film. Like I said, I didn’t find anything about their portrayal to be incredible. It has a basis in real life.

Also, do you remember which scenes the exotic monkey and the midget appeared in? I’m not saying I don’t believe that they’re in the film. I just don’t remember that appearing in the film. If you could point me to a specific scene, that would be helpful. I remember finding the touches of absurdity to be used more sparingly and in the background of the whole affair while the Mad Max films were more in-your-face in terms of the eccentricities.

Why are you denying this, Kremlin defender ? Do you deny the same the Soviet rapes after the Nazi defeat like you deny this propaganda film ? https://www.calvertjournal.com/images/uploads/thumbnails/2016_july/1*07NuaT7Ds4D5eaufbUMVnA.png

https://tinyurl.com/y6bgdd37

Thanks for providing the monkey and the midget. I stand corrected on those points. Still though, like I said, I thought the absurd moments were more hidden and in the background while the absurd aspects of the Mad Max films were far more in your face such as the guitar flamethrower in Fury Road. I still don’t think this film is anything like that. I didn’t think those moments were really that prevalent. Also, when did I ever say that I was denying Soviet rapes? Seriously, where did that even come from? That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about right now. If you want to discuss this movie, fine. However, you don’t need to swing such wild accusations at me.

“I thought the absurd moments were more hidden and in the background while the absurd aspects of the Mad Max films were far more in your face such as the guitar flamethrower in Fury Road. I still don’t think this film is anything like that.” Oh, so you don’t actually have an argument. QED.

I clearly expressed my argument in my post as clear as day. Read it and you’ll see what I was saying. Honestly, this discussion is getting quite tedious right now and I’m not enjoying it enough to continue with it. Say what you will about the film, but I’m going to stick with my opinion.

Gabriel I have to say that I am astounded by how childishly you are acting since the gentleman here is only trying to present you with facts.There are three things I want you to look up. First of all, Oskar Dirlewanger. Then the Dirlewanger Brigade. And finally the Khatyn massacre (which the horrific scene in Come and See was based off of).

I get what you are trying to point out but you are misinformed. The guys surrendering in Saving Private Ryan are the army, not the SS. The SS are those who were mostly involved in atrocities against Jews and other minority groups. Horrible people. To call them animals would be a more than acceptable term. However the SS were well organized and disciplined (as disciplined as one can be when murdering innocent people at least). But the unit depicted in the film, while not given a name, is based off of the Dirlewanger Brigade and the other Soviet collaborators. And they behaved exactly like this. Possibly even worse. You will understand why if you do as I told you to do and do a bit of homework before swearing at other people and using Mad Max as your only source of reference.

PS: I know that the Soviets also did equally despicable things and no one has ever denied it. And I felt that Come and See also made this clear. If it didn’t for you, then I am sorry to say but maybe you just don’t have the maturity for this kind of movie :-).

Take care and happy reading.

Yeah because the commander of the brigade was like a James Bond villain petting a lemur, sure. Take a hike, sophist !

Yes, you are rubbish. You should be recycled. 🙂

Fortress of War is even weaker than Rambo 2. 🙂

That’s because of the Kremlin propaganda. They also promoted Solaris as opposed to 2001, even if 2001 had done so much more 4 years earlier.

Disregard the negatives replies. I completely agree with you. I don’t say that to downplay the phenomenal works of Speilberg, Kubrick, or Coppola but this movie is something that feels surreal. Unbelievable how 35 years later nothing has matched its impact.

it’s available here for free https://www.effedupmovies.com/come-and-see-1985/

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Come and See (1985) Movie Review: A Chilling and Indelible Reminder of Nazi Carnage

Come and See (1985) Movie Review: ‘ Grandiose, epic propaganda ’ is the word that often comes to mind when filmmakers try to portray the horrors of war experienced by their soldiers and civilians in the hands of the invaded country. Those stylized and romanticized images of persecution raise ethical and aesthetic issues about ways of fully comprehending man-made horror. Then there are less bombastic anti-war films, which, rather than eulogizing the human sacrifices, unflinchingly present the decimation (staying closer to historical truth). 

Finally, there are war movies that profoundly deal with Joseph Conrad’s famous, enigmatic words “The horror! The horror!” These films neither glorify men of war nor stay historically accurate. The emphasis would be on the psychological impact of the war on an individual. Andrei Tarkovsky’s exemplary feature-film debut “Ivan’s Childhood” (1962) belongs to the final category of war drama, where the layers of psychological distress felt by 12-year-old Ivan make us feel empty and lost, just like Ivan himself.

Historical perceptions are pushed to a secondary position to attain deeper meaning through the characters’ emotional reactions. Of course, the profoundness of “Ivan’s Childhood” couldn’t be easily created since, in the hands of a lesser director, such films could be turned into a narcissistic exercise on wartime survival. Only one other film I think could stand closer (or a companion piece) to Tarkovsky’s film in presenting the traumatic realities of war (although the use of subjective camerawork by the film-makers imbues different perceptions upon viewers). It is Soviet Union filmmaker Elem Klimov’s emotionally scarring “Come and See” ( ‘Idi i smotri’, 1985).

“Come and See” was made in a country that often depicted the ‘Great Patriotic War’ with an abundance of joy and romanticism. It hailed from a nation where, not too long before, dissenters were thrown into jail and controversial movies shelved. Former Soviet Statesman Gorbachev’s move towards reformation (known as the ‘glasnost era’ ) made this film possible.

In fact, after witnessing the images of human suffering in “Come and See,” I think no other film-making industry around the world would be ready to present such harrowing material. The film’s end title states that 628 Byelorussian villages were burned down with their inhabitants during the Nazi’s invasion of Byelorussia around 1943.

But Elem Klimov’s movie isn’t the literal recreation of this particular gruesome historical event. Klimov also sheds away the ambiguity of Tarkovsky and goes for a more heavy-handed approach. But “Come and See” isn’t a historical/war drama as written about in encyclopedias or showcased in history museums. Beneath the shockingly realistic style of film-making, Klimov’s frames are riddled with symbolism, heightened surrealism, and even montages. It certainly depicts something that happened for real, but the director brings his own singular vision to this recreation; one that is steeped in irony.

The film opens with teenage boy Florya Gaishun (Aleksei Karvchenko) and a kid hiding from a village elder (Florya’s uncle), who warns the boys not to dig or look for weapons. The kid mimics the voice of the village elder in an attempt to mock this local authoritative figure. Why? Because the boys want to find weapons to be a part of higher authority: anti-fascist partisans. Florya digs and finds a rifle. Florya’s constricted view hopes for warfare and sees it as an opportunity to be a war hero.

The innocent, naive boy leaves behind his mother and twin sisters to gleefully join the partisan forces. Florya is taken to the forces’ base of operations, made up deep into the woods. To his dismay, Florya is left behind by Commander Kosach to look after the camp, along with Kosach’s young, beautiful lover, Glasha (Olga Mironova). They share the grief of being left behind and later share little, playful moments. Of course, the chance of a romance between them is rapidly extinguished as German paratroopers fly down after annihilating the forest with heavy artillery.

Florya, nearly deafened by the crashing sounds of artillery rounds, barely escapes with Glasha to his village. The village is eerily quiet, although Florya finds warm stew in his abandoned house. The twin sisters’ dolls are scattered on the ground, and a foreboding feeling embraces both of them. Florya declares he knows where his family and village members are and runs out.

Glasha follows him down the muddy path while suddenly glancing back towards the village. She sees a pile of corpses stacked beside a house. Florya’s childhood paradise is lost forever, and he goes through horror upon horror. Shock and despair kill the innocence in his face. He is traumatized by witnessing his burned uncle repeating the words:

“I told you not to dig….dig……” Florya, the least capable of surviving the atrocities, ironically sees and hears everything, from the screaming cacophony of bombing runs to the screaming voices of civilians locked inside the burning Church.

Director Klimov uses both the subjective lens as well as a detached vantage point (camerawork by Alexei Rodionov). The subjective view of Klimov isn’t just used to convey the psychological state of Florya but also to generate an empathetic perception in the viewers’ minds, extracting greater impact from visuals and emotions.

When artillery flows down, the explosive sounds are gradually replaced with the ringing sound, putting us in Florya’s sense of bewilderment and sharing his deafness. At other times, the subjective viewpoints are designed to intensify the blow of emotions or visuals.

For example, when Florya encounters his burned uncle, the eye-level camera moves through the crowd of crying villagers, enhancing Florya’s & our feelings of claustrophobia to suddenly reveal the shocking image.

An objective viewpoint of the same situation would disturb or disorient us too, but in employing this particular technique, Klimov tries to single-mindedly simulate the physical sensations of fear and anxiety in the viewers as deeply felt by the unwilling, forced witness Florya. The same subjective technique is used in the final Church scene when the distressing atmosphere is observed from the viewpoint of the masses. Suddenly, the inevitability of the situation dawns upon us, condemning our emotions to be trapped alongside the masses.

Director Klimov often switches over to an objective point of view when we observe things that Florya couldn’t see. It happens in the birch forest scene when Glasha joyously dances and as they both dash through trees.

There are also hints of a disconnected objective viewpoint, especially when the attacks are underway. Terrence Malick’s stupendous war film “Thin Red Line” excellently uses multiple subjective experiences during the battle sequences to contemplate the idea of self alongside a brutal war (the highly triggered subjective shots, but a less meditative approach was used by Inarritu in “The Revenant”).

Klimov doesn’t quite create the ‘you-are-there’ perspective during bouts of attacks or when Florya runs for survival (there’s a detached sense when Florya runs through the marsh, to hint at his madness, and also in the ‘field attack’ scene). However, when there is a requirement for viewers to share a deep emotional connection with human suffering, Klimov sheds away the vantage point.

Mr Graham Fuller in his essay about this film’s visual techniques (written for ‘Reverse Shot’ ) calls the recurrent close-ups of Glasha and Florya as ‘hyper-real’. The writer says Klimov was inspired by iconic paintings of martyred Russian saints to create these shots, where the backgrounds are out-of-focus, replaced by a radiant light.

The impact of the horrors on Florya’s psyche is reflected in those shots of traumatized faces. Like the desecrated land of Byleorussia, Florya’s face, too, degrades rapidly, pushing him to a zombie-like state with waves of creases appearing on his forehead. The close-up shots make us involuntarily gaze at a face that bears all the brutalities of war and the woes of his entire nation.

The idea that “Come and See” is not a straight narration of history is pretty evident in the massacre scene. There’s a lot of truth in the scene, but at the same time, Klimov exaggerates the reality (not by exploiting it) to attain full comprehension of the horror. As a result, the Nazi Germans are portrayed as savages, incapable of any human feelings. This particular sequence has brought up the label ‘propaganda’ and this label is often used whenever a Russian political film is talked about.

Yes, the exaggerated portrayal of Germans does seem slightly propagandist, but it doesn’t mean that the atrocities we witnessed are also a heightened portrayal of true events (read about Khatyn & Navahrudak massacres – few of the many such genocidal acts in Belarus. Also, in a 2001 interview Klimov calls his film ‘a lightened-version of truth’ ). And, unlike many Soviet Union war dramas, “Come and See” never strives to be a shining memorial of Russia’s hard-won victory; it stands alone, bearing the horrendous scars of war in general.

Movies like Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” marvelously showcased the gritty realism of the battlefield, but it was diffused with more palatable themes and messages. But, Klimov’s movie asks hard-to-digest moral questions on the faceless destruction of war, which turns humans into order-following beasts.

At last, Florya shoots at the portrait of Hitler lying in the mud, and with every bullet shot, the reversed footage of Hitler’s life is played. Each bullet shot conveys the largeness of the horror we endured. It also powerfully relates an individual’s horrific experience to that larger evil. When Florya keeps on shooting at Hitler’s historical effigies, Hitler’s picture as a baby is placed. Now, Florya doesn’t shoot at that imaginative picture.  

Does it mean Florya refuses to participate in the cycle of atrocities? Is there any hope for him (and his species), since he chooses being ‘human’ rather than withholding desire to annihilate everything? Maybe there is a concealed optimism in that ending, but I only felt ambiguity.

“Come and See” (136 minutes) is a brilliantly crafted, traumatizing work of cinema. Its baleful imagery and the protagonist’s agonized face is something that would come to your mind whenever the evils of war are discussed.

Read More: Cinema Against War

Come and see (1985) movie links: imdb , rotten tomatoes , letterboxd , wikipedia come and see (1985) movie cast: aleksey kravchenko, olga mironova, liubomiras laucevicius come and see (1985) movie genre: drama, thriller, war | runtime: 2h 22 mins, where to watch come and see, trending right now.

Arun Kumar is an ardent cinebuff, who likes to analyze movie to its minute detail. He believes in the transformative power and shared-dream experience of cinema.

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Megalopolis release date, news, and everything we know about The Godfather director's divisive new movie

The film has split critics

Francis Ford Coppola's sci-fi epic Megalopolis has received its first reviews after premiering at Cannes , and to say it's been divisive would be an understatement. Starring the likes of Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza, the much-talked-about latest from The Godfather director has become one of the most anticipated films of the year. 

This is thanks in no small part to several surreal-looking trailers , some wild first reactions , and a split between reviews calling it both one of the best and worst films of 2024 so far. So if that's piqued your interest as much as it has ours, then you're in the right place. 

Below, we've compiled a guide to all of the details released about Megalopolis so far, including its cast, trailers, and what Coppola has said about it. We've also looked at its predicted release date, as it looks set to land a wide release later this year.

Megalopolis release date

Megalopolis premiered at Cannes on May 16, 2024, but it doesn't yet have a wider release date.

Per a report by Deadline , the current plan is for the movie to be released later in 2024 with a "limited IMAX release". There's some suggestion too that this may begin in September. No distributor is attached yet, which is why there's no official release date. We'll keep you updated as soon as we have more news on when it will be coming to theaters in the US, UK, and beyond.

Megalopolis review

The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival to some very divisive reactions. Our Megalopolis review gave it two stars. 

Reviewer Anna Smith writes: "Lofty ideas and meta references to Coppola suggest that this is a personal ode to his art, and given that the writer/director has worked on it for some 40 years, it’s clearly a passion project. But it is hard to share his reverence for his narrative when the dialogue is mannered to the point of distraction, and each performance seems to come from a different movie."

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Currently, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 50%, with reviews ranging from one star to five stars. 

Megalopolis cast

The Megalopolis cast is seriously star-studded, featuring rising stars as well as some frequent Coppola collaborators. Check out the full list below:

• Adam Driver – Cesar Catilina
• Giancarlo Esposito – Mayor Franklyn Cicero
• Nathalie Emmanuel – Julia Cicero
• Aubrey Plaza – Wow Platinum
• Shia LaBeouf – Clodio Pulcher
• Jon Voight – Hamilton Crassus III
• Jason Schwartzman – Jason Zanderz
• Talia Shire – Constance Crassus Catilina
• Grace VanderWaal – Vesta Sweetwater
• Laurence Fishburne – Fundi Romaine
• Kathryn Hunter – Teresa Cicero
• Dustin Hoffman – Nush "The Fixer" Berman

Megalopolis plot

Megalopolis is set in a decaying New York City-like metropolis called New Rome. Adam Driver plays idealistic architect Cesar Catilina with the ability to stop time. The film begins with his big plans to rebuild the city as a sustainable utopia. However, his main opposition – Mayor Franklyn Cicero – is determined to keep the struggling city stuck in its old ways. Torn between the two men is Julia, Cicero's daughter and Cesar's girlfriend, who is searching for the meaning of life.

The film has been a long time in the making for Coppola, who shared his vision with Vanity Fair . "I wasn’t really working on this screenplay for 40 years as I often see written, but rather I was collecting notes and clippings for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for some future screenplay, or examples of political cartoons or different historical subjects," he said when debuting the first image .

"Ultimately, after a lot of time, I settled on the idea of a Roman epic. And then later, a Roman epic set in modern America, so I really only began writing this script, on and off, in the last dozen years or so. Also, as I have made many films of many different subjects and in many different styles, I hoped for a project later in life when I might better understand  what  my personal style was."

Megalopolis trailer

There have been a couple of Megalopolis trailers so far. The first was just a teaser showing Driver on top of a skyscraper stopping time . However, the main trailer, which you can watch above, is even more surreal. 

In it, Laurence Fishburne’s Fundi Romaine is driving around as he says in a voiceover: "When does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No, no, but there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it." It also featured the first real looks at Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf, as well as moving statues and neon-infused scenes.

For more upcoming movies, here's our guide to 2024 movie release dates .

I’m the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for the Total Film and SFX sections online. I previously worked as a Senior Showbiz Reporter and SEO TV reporter at Express Online for three years. I've also written for The Resident magazines and Amateur Photographer, before specializing in entertainment.

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‘The Apprentice’ Review: Sebastian Stan Plays Donald Trump in a Docudrama That Nails Everything About Him but His Mystery

Ali Abbasi's film is arresting when it shows us Donald Trump being schooled by Roy Cohn. But was that enough to make him the Trump we know?

By Owen Gleiberman

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A lot of people would disagree with me, but I think there’s a mystery at the heart of Donald Trump. Many believe there’s no mystery, just a highly visible and documented legacy of bad behavior, selfishness, used-car-salesman effrontery, criminal transgressions, and abuse of power. They would say that Trump lies, slurs, showboats, bullies, toots racist dog whistles so loudly they’re not whistles anymore, and is increasingly open about the authoritarian president he plans to be.

All totally true, but also too easy. What it all leaves out, about the precise kind of man Donald Trump is, is this:

Popular on Variety

And that, in its way, is the hook of “ The Apprentice .” Written by journalist Gabriel Sherman, and directed by Ali Abbasi (who made a splash two years ago with the Iranian serial-killer drama “Holy Spider”), the movie is a spirited, entertaining, and not overly cheeky docudrama about the years in which Donald Trump came to be Donald Trump. Which is to say: He wasn’t always.

And that’s when a pair of eyes fixate on him. Seated at a table in the next room is Roy Cohn ( Jeremy Strong ), the infamous HUAC lawyer and Red Scare architect who became notorious for being the man who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Twenty years later, he’s a private lawyer and fixer who’s friends with everyone that counts (mobsters, politicians, media barons). He eyes Donald Trump like a hungry dragon looking at a virgin. Cohn’s head is tilted down, his black eyes are tilted up (so that there’s half an inch of white at the bottom of them). This is the Cohn Stare, and it can accurately be described as a look of homicide. It’s not that he wants to kill you. It’s that he wants to kill something — it will be you, or it will be another party on your behalf.

Cohn summons Trump over to his table, and Jeremy Strong, speaking in a fast, clipped voice that fires insults like bullets, instantly possesses us. With silver-gray hair cut short and those eyes that see all, Strong does a magnetic impersonation of the Roy Cohn who turned bullying into a form of cutthroat vaudeville (and a new way to practice law), putting his scoundrel soul right out there, busting chops and balls with his misanthropic Jewish-outsider locker-room wit. He’s not just cutting, he’s nasty . And that’s to his friends! Trump, by contrast, seems soft — maybe shockingly soft if you’ve never seen a clip of him from the ’70s. He’s like a big shaggy overgrown boy, and though he’s got his real-estate ambition, his power-broker dreams (he drives a Caddy with a license plate that says DJT), he has no idea how ruthless he’s going to have to be to get them.

Cohn the reptile looks at Trump and sees a mark, an ally, maybe a kid with potential. He’s very good-looking (people keep comparing him to Robert Redford), and that matters; he’s also a lump of unmolded clay. As Trump explains, his family is in a pickle that could take them down. The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization for discriminating against Black people when it comes to who they’ll rent their apartments to. Since the family is, in fact, guilty, there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it. But Cohn, right there, floats a plan for how to do it. He says: countersue the government. It’s part of his strategy of attack, attack, attack (the first of his three rules for living).

That Roy Cohn successfully beat the government on behalf of the Trump Organization, neutering the discrimination suit, is a famous story. If Gabriel Sherman’s script is to be believed, “The Apprentice” tells an even more scandalous version. In the movie, Cohn is going to lose the case and knows it. (The Trump Organization has rent forms by Black applicants marked with the letter “C.”) So at a diner, he and Donald have a casual meeting with the federal official who’s authorizing the case. He won’t budge. But then Cohn pulls out a manila envelope. Inside it are photographs of the official frolicking with cabana boys in Cancun. Cohn, who is gay, turns his own closeted existence into a form of power. A deal is struck. And Trump is off and running, his empire built on a poison pill.

New York, at this point, is in its shabby edge-of-bankruptcy ’70s dystopian era, and Donald is determined to change that. His dream is to buy the boarded-up Commodore Hotel on 42nd St., right next to Grand Central Terminal, and turn it into a glittering luxury Grand Hyatt hotel. The area is so decrepit that most people think he’s nuts. But this is where we can see something about Trump: that he wasn’t just a charlatan with a big mouth — that he had a perception of things. He was right about New York: that it would come back, and that deals like his could be part of what brought it back. But the art of the deal, in this case, comes from Roy Cohn. He’s the one who greases the wheels to make it happen. And Donald is now his protégé.

Ali Abbasi stages the “The Apprentice” with a lot of jagged handheld shots that look a bit too much like television to my eyes, but they do the job; they convince us of the reality we’re seeing. So does the décor — as Trump starts to develop a taste for more lavish surroundings, the movie recreates every inch of baroque merde -gold vulgarity. And Sebastian Stan’s performance is a wonder. He gets Trump’s lumbering geek body language, the imposing gait with his hands held stiffly at his sides, and just as much he gets the facial language. He starts out with an open, boyish look, under the mop of hair we can see Donald is obsessed with, but as the movie goes on that look, by infinitesimal degrees, turns more and more calculated.

For its first half, “The Apprentice” is kind of a knockout: the inside look at how Trump evolved that so many of us have imagined for so long, and seeing it play out is both convincing and riveting. Yet I have an issue with the movie, and it all pivots around the mystery of Trump. I don’t think “The Apprentice” ever penetrates it.

There’s a moment when Trump is getting too big for his britches, ignoring another lesson that’s there in the Cohn worldview, which is that you have to maneuver in the real world. Cohn questions Trump’s obsession with building a casino in Atlantic City, a place Cohn says has “peaked.” He’s right. Trump winds up making bad investments, flying too close to the sun, and ultimately shutting Roy out ­— treating Roy the way that Roy treats everyone else. It’s an evolution of supreme hubris, especially when you think back to the slightly sheepish kid from Flushing who lined up to kiss Cohn’s ring.

The trouble is, we don’t fully see where that side of Trump comes from. In a relatively quick period, starting from around the time of the Atlantic City deal, and building through the moment when he pisses off the Mobster and Cohn crony Tony Salerno (Joe Pingue), which results in the half-built Trump Tower being set on fire by Salerno’s goons, Donald turns into the Trump we know today: the toxically arrogant man-machine of malignant narcissism, who treats everyone around him like crap. His marriage to Ivana devolves into a loveless debacle. He turns on his downward-spiraling alcoholic brother like a stranger. He becomes so heartless that he makes Roy Cohn look civil. He turns on Cohn, in part because Cohn has AIDS, which freaks Donald out.

We know Donald Trump did all these things. But what we don’t see, watching “The Apprentice,” is where the Sociopath 3.0 side of Trump comes from. His daddy issues, as the film presents them, won’t explain it (not really). The fact that he gets hooked on amphetamines, popping diet pills around the clock, is part of it. Yet the Trump we see goes through a looking glass of treachery, leveraging his empire — and what’s left of his emotions — to within an inch of his life. And once that happens, we’re simply watching a well-acted TV-movie made up of familiar anecdotes built around the Trump we already know. At that point, “The Apprentice,” good as much of it is, becomes far less interesting. The mystery the movie never solves is what Trump was thinking, deep down, when he chose to become Donald Trump.  

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (In Competition), May 19, 2024. Running time: 140 MIN.

• Production: Kinematics LLC, Baer Development/Gidden Media presents, in association with Rocket Science, Head Gear Films and Metrol Technology, Project Infinity, Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, a Scythia Films, Profile Pictures, Tailored Films production. Producers: David Bekerman, Jacob Jarek, Ruth Treacy, Julianna Forde, Louis Tisné, Ali Abbasi. Executive producers: Amy Baer, Mark H. Rappaport, Emanuel Nunez, Grant S. Johnson, Phil Hunt, Compton Cross, Thorsten Schumacher, Levi Woodward, Niamh Fagan, Gabriel Sherman, Greg Denny, James Shani, Noor Alfallah, Andy Cohen, Andrew Frank, Neil Mathieson, Lee Broda, Blair Ward, Anders Erdén.
• Crew: Director: Ali Abbasi. Screenplay: Gabriel Sherman. Camera: Kasper Tuxen. Editors: Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Olivier Bugge Coutté. Music: David Holmes, Brian Irvine, Martin Dirkov.
• With: Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Ben Sullivan, Mark Rendall, Joe Pingue, Jim Monaco, Bruce Beaton, Ian D. Clark, Valerie O’Connor.

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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west.

• Kevin Costner
• Sienna Miller
• 4 User reviews
• 14 Critic reviews
• 51 Metascore

• Hayes Ellison

• Frances Kittredge

• Hugh Proctor

• Diamond Kittredge

• Colonel Houghton

• Owen Kittredge

• First Lt. Trent Gephardt

• Walter Childs

• Sgt. Major Riordan

• Caleb Sykes

• Roland Bailey

• Matthew Van Weyden

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The 2024 Festival Films You Need to Know

• When will Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 be released? Powered by Alexa
• June 28, 2024 (United States)
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• $100,000,000 (estimated)

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How does Trump's trial end? It may hinge on how jurors feel about sex and privacy

Tyler Bartlam

Scott Detrow

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media after the day's proceedings in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday in New York City. Steven Hirsch/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media after the day's proceedings in his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday in New York City.

The hush money trial against former President Donald Trump is nearing the end, but there are still a few twists and turns to come.

The prosecution's star witness, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, testified for three days last week and is back on the stand on Monday.

The team at NPR's Trump's Trials podcast breaks down why prosecutors have a timeline problem, what Cohen's testimony so far has shown, and why it may all come down to a question of sex and privacy in the end.

What prosecutors have (and haven't) shown so far

Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Michael Cohen leaves his apartment building on his way to Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday.

Cohen testified about how the alleged scheme to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels and cover their tracks by falsifying business records came to be. Cohen also placed Trump directly at the center of this scheme, testifying that Trump was aware and involved in the plot to hide the payment and the cover-up.

But Boston University law professor Jed Shugerman says it might not be enough.

Prosecutors have to show intent to defraud when it comes to the business records. But if prosecutors are alleging that Trump was trying to defraud the voters, they could run into a timeline problem, Shugerman argues, because none of these allegedly false entries were made until 2017. That's well after the 2016 election.

Trump gets by with a little help from his friends during New York hush money trial

"You can't defraud voters with documents when those voters are voting in November 2016 if those documents don't exist yet," Shugerman said, adding that he feels the target of the alleged fraud hasn't been made clear by the prosecution.

"Under the statute, intent to defraud needs a target. They've never applied it to the general public or anything as broad as the electorate."

That's essentially what Trump's defense argued – that because the alleged record falsification happened in 2017, the evidence of alleged intent is not relevant.

But in February, Judge Juan Merchan disagreed in a response to a series of motions by the defense. He said the prosecution had sufficient evidence to bring the charges, arguing, "The term 'intent to defraud' carries a broad meaning and is not limited to the causing of financial harm or the deprivation of money or property."

The question now will be how the argument lands with the jury.

Still missing from the prosecution's case

Some of the key testimony from Cohen was about Trump wanting "to make this go away," and it seems this is being interpreted as Trump's intent related to the campaign. But Shugerman thinks the prosecutors need more than that.

"They have to prove a crime that was being covered up by these documents," he said. "And under federal election law, to make this a crime, they have to prove that Trump knowingly and willfully violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. And I don't think anything that Cohen said showed that level of knowledge or willfulness."

These people waited hours to see the Trump hush-money trial up close. Here's why

Why it may all come down to sex and privacy.

This entire case is based around an alleged sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels.

"I'm interested in what these jurors think about sex and privacy," Shugerman said.

Referencing Daniels' salacious testimony, Shugerman said that "there is a possibility that some jurors thought it was just way too much and [her] testimony may have backfired with them."

And if that's the case, he said, it will be good for Trump's defense.

"If [jurors] think politicians have a right, like any other American, to engage in nondisclosure agreements to protect their privacy, some of them may be wondering what was the crime here," he said.

What did Trump say? Explaining the former president's favorite talking points

What to watch out for.

• The prosecution's redirect examination of Michael Cohen
• Whether Trump takes the stand
• Closing statements are now expected next week (earlier the judge had said they could begin this week)
• Michael cohen
• Donald Trump
• Stormy Daniels

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‘Young Sheldon’ Is One of TV’s Most Popular Shows. So Why Did It Just End?

The “Big Bang Theory” spinoff aired its last episodes Thursday night, but the franchise will continue on CBS this fall.

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By Noel Murray

This article includes spoilers for the “Young Sheldon” series finale.

In last week’s episode of the CBS sitcom “Young Sheldon,” a laid-back, beer-drinking Texas high school football coach named George Cooper (Lance Barber) says goodbye to his family and goes to work. He never comes home: George dies of a heart attack later that day.

The tragedy sets up the series’s last two episodes, which premiered Thursday night on CBS. They are about what happens when someone so steady, so reliable and so unassuming is just … gone.

A spinoff of “The Big Bang Theory,” the long-running CBS hit, “Young Sheldon” has been steady, reliable and unassuming over its seven seasons. This warm family sitcom, which fills in the back story of the “Big Bang Theory” breakout character Sheldon Cooper — played by Jim Parsons in the original and Iain Armitage in the prequel — has quietly been one of TV’s most-watched shows since it debuted in 2017.

And now it, too, is gone. The series finale takes Sheldon from the small town of Medford, Texas, where he attended high school at 9 and college at 11 as his family tried to understand and accommodate his genius, to the California Institute of Technology, where “The Big Bang Theory” is set. The episode included appearances by Parsons and Mayim Bialik, whose character, Amy, marries Sheldon in the original show.

The franchise will continue this fall with another spinoff: “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” It will follow Sheldon’s good ol’ boy older brother George Jr. (Montana Jordan) and his wife, Mandy (Emily Osment), as they raise their baby daughter.

“Young Sheldon” was a smash from the start, and while its network TV audience has shrunk (just like most every other show’s), its episodes elsewhere have drawn newer, younger viewers . Reruns air on the cable network TBS almost daily. Netflix licensed the show late last year, and it has since appeared regularly on that service’s self-reported Top 10 most-streamed TV series.

Yet despite its pervasiveness in TikTok memes , “Young Sheldon” has never been much of a cultural phenomenon. Television critics rarely write about it, and the Emmys have ignored it entirely — it has yet to get a single nomination. “The Big Bang Theory,” one of TV’s most-watched shows for much of its 12-season run, which ended in 2019, had a mixed critical reputation. But it did get press coverage, and was a legitimate Emmy contender, earning four nominations for best comedy series and picking up four wins for Parsons.

The “Young Sheldon” finale, meanwhile, came and went on Thursday night without much advance hype. Unless you regularly watch shows on CBS, you may not have known it was ending.

You may also be wondering: If it’s so popular, why is it ending?

In a phone interview, Steven Molaro, who created “Young Sheldon” with Chuck Lorre, and Steve Holland, an executive producer who has been a writer on the show since Season 2, explained that the series has always had an expiration date. This is because the story they inherited from “The Big Bang Theory” established that Sheldon began attending graduate school at Caltech at 14, the same year his father died.

The “Young Sheldon” team delayed the inevitable once, by holding the characters of Sheldon and his twin sister, Missy (Raegan Revord), at the same age for two seasons. But that trick could not be repeated indefinitely.

“The premise of the show is that an exceptional young kid is thrust into a world where everyone is older than him,” Holland said. “But as soon as Iain aged and Sheldon aged, he didn’t look that out of place anymore, even in college.”

So when Holland and Molaro sat down with Lorre to plot out Season 7 after the writers’ strike was settled, they decided their prequel had reached its natural conclusion. The tight post-strike production timeline meant they had to inform the cast about the decision on a group Zoom call, which surprised some of them. (In a Variety interview , Annie Potts, who plays Sheldon’s “Meemaw,” described her initial reaction as “shocked” and “ambushed.”) But whatever mixed feelings the cast may have had about the series coming to an end, it doesn’t show in their performances in the final two episodes, which strike the usual “Young Sheldon” balance of gentle good humor and soft sentimental pangs.

In the penultimate episode, “Funeral” (which aired Thursday night right before the finale), the Cooper family struggles with saying goodbye to George, with Sheldon revisiting his last moments with his father and thinking of the things he could have said to him but didn’t.

The episode ends on a poignant note, as Sheldon’s devoutly religious mother, Mary (Zoe Perry), rages at God at the memorial service before Meemaw steps in to lighten the mood. (She jokes that no one is sadder about George dying than the Lone Star beer company.) Sheldon, still lost in his own head, imagines the heartfelt eulogy he is too numb to give.

The finale, “Memoir,” tells a more typical “Young Sheldon” story, about Mary trying to get Sheldon baptized before he leaves for college. In framing scenes, the older Sheldon and Amy argue about his parenting of their own children, underlining one of the show’s main themes: that Sheldon’s parents, while dealing with all the usual messes of everyday life, did the best they could to take care of him. The episode closes with a shot of the 14-year-old Sheldon at Caltech, connecting everything back to “The Big Bang Theory”; the adult Sheldon is working as a Caltech physicist when that series begins.

Holland said Lorre pitched the idea of having Parsons and Bialik appear in the finale to make the episode feel a bit more “significant.” (Parsons, who is also an executive producer of “Young Sheldon,” has been the show’s narrator from the beginning, but this is his first on-camera appearance.) As for the differences between the last two episodes — one heavy, one lighter — Molaro said they wanted something “a little more positive and upbeat” for their ending.

“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” which was created by Lorre, Molaro and Holland, will be a multicamera sitcom shot with a live audience, like “The Big Bang Theory.” (“Young Sheldon” is a single-camera series with no audience, a choice Molaro said was made to “let the show feel like its own thing.”) They hope to have some “Young Sheldon” regulars appear as guest stars, if they figure out how to do that without turning the new show into what Holland called “Older Young Sheldon.”

As for the legacy of “Young Sheldon,” that will now depend largely on whether it remains as popular as it has been on Netflix, where Molaro said the show is being discovered by kids who have never been in the habit of watching prime-time network TV. Despite the lack of critical buzz, “Young Sheldon” has always been good family television, with a likable cast of youngsters and showbiz veterans helping to tell slice-of-life stories that push deeper than some viewers may expect into topics like religious hypocrisy, marital strife and how it feels to share a household with someone both irritatingly eccentric and astonishingly brilliant.

The final episodes of “Young Sheldon” were designed to hit many of the notes that the show had played so well during its run, ending with a finale that Holland wanted to have “a little bit of humor and a little bit of hope.” The series finishes in an understated and touching way — going out just as it came in.

An earlier version of this article in one instance misspelled the given name of an actor. He is Iain Armitage, not Ian.

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