Featured Image Credit: Sovexport Film
Topics: Film
Joe Harker
There are some films you watch for entertainment, while others you see because despite how harrowing the experience might be it is an experience you ought to have at least once.
One of the most popular films on Letterboxd certainly falls into the latter category, as it depicts disturbing atrocities committed in the Second World War and doesn't shy away from a bit of it.
The film was made back in 1985 but has had a resurgence in popularity following a re-release and new generations are discovering it.
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The movie in question is Come and See and is set during the Nazi occupation of Belarus, with events witnessed through the eyes of a young teenager. You can watch the trailer here:
The name of the film comes from a passage in the Book of Revelations which goes: "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."
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So yes, this is most certainly a disturbing and deeply affecting film which is utterly committed to showing the atrocities committed by the Nazis during their occupation of Eastern Europe.
The film has come to be seen as one of the greatest movies ever created - though it certainly isn't for the faint of heart.
New audiences coming to the near-four decades old film certainly think the war movie is excellent, having given it glowing reviews on Letterboxd.
In 2022, the site announced that Come and See had become 'officially the number one highest narrative feature film of all time' for them.
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It includes a sequence which Collider called 'the most sickening 25 minute sequence from hell' where a village full of people are slaughtered with young teen Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko) being forced to watch.
The film is adapted from the novel Khatyn and the memoir I Am from the Fiery Village, which used the testimonies of hundreds of survivors of the Nazi occupation.
Those who've seen it have called Come and See 'a harrowing, surreal tale about the horror of war' as well as 'quite possibly the scariest and most disturbing film I've ever seen'.
While others said it was simultaneously 'the greatest war film ever made' and 'the greatest anti-war film'.