Over the years, films like “Schindler’s List,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Full Metal Jacket,” “Platoon,” and others have dominated the discussion surrounding what constitutes the very best war films of the modern era. Sadly, one of the films that seem to have been kept under the radar is “Come and See.”
Thankfully, Janus Films has recently remastered “Come and See,” giving it the 2K restoration treatment and is releasing the film back in theaters. And as you can see in the new trailer for the film, the war film as beautiful and visceral today as it was when it was released in 1985.
READ MORE: The 25 Best War Movies Of All Time
“Come and See” is the final film from acclaimed filmmaker Elem Klimov. The antiwar film was selected as the Soviet entry in the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar race but ultimately was not selected as a nominee. However, over the decades, it’s gained incredible acclaim, not just from critics but from filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh.
Way back in 2012, our own Rodrigo Perez interviewed Soderbergh, who raved about “Come and See.” He called the films “one of the best things I’ve ever seen” and added, “You can be sure that Steven Spielberg saw it before he went and did ‘Schindler’s List.’ It’s unbelievable. It follows this sort of young kid through these events in the second world war, and it’s stunning.”
The new restoration of “Come and See” arrives at the Film Forum in New York City on February 21, 2020.
Here’s the synopsis:
This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) 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 camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.
