I watched a very powerful movie last night. ‘Come and See’ is about a 14 year old boy who joins the partisans to fight the Nazis in Byelorussia in 1943. I’d never heard of it. Genae found it in a magazine article listing eight great movies you can only stand to see once.

It was made in the Soviet Union in 1985. About two and a half hours long, in Russian with English subtitles.

You can only stand to see it once because it is ruthless in its depiction of brutality. Nothing good happened in that part of the world in 1943, and nothing good happens in this movie. The centerpiece of the film is the burning of a village and everyone who lived there. Not exactly a happy movie.

I really liked the way it was put together. It seemed like the vast majority of the film was made of very long shots with interesting camera movement. Shot after shot, thirty seconds long, forty five seconds long. In one scene, the camera sneaks up on a man, sprinting through open spaces then stopping to peer around a corner, then sprinting to peer around another corner. In a shot near the end of the movie, the camera moves with a column of marching men, then diverts through thick trees and regains the road and the men. Alongside the road we see snow on the ground but at the beginning of the shot it was still summer. A creative way to indicate the passing of time.

Reading subtitles wasn’t an ordeal. Long sections of the movie have no dialog. At one point our protagonist is shelled, deafened by the near miss. We hear his ears ring, all sounds muffled. A hollywood movie would have the ringing stop witin a minute. Here it goes on for quite a while, gradually lessening. Another recurring sound was the drone of aircraft engines. Sometimes we heard it long before seeing the plane.

I forget most of the movies on the list Genae found. One was ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Straw Dogs’ was on it too. ‘Schindler’s List’ was pretty dark, but it tells the story of how people were saved. At the end of ‘Straw Dogs’ the ordeal is over. But in ‘Come and See’ nobody is saved. When the movie is over, it’s still 1943 and the ordeal still has years to play out.

Quite the powerful movie. I’m glad I watched it, but it’s hard to recommend.