Originally Posted by kid-glove
Depressing film. :( By the time the film ends, Floria's soul and everything within is crushed, and only his body is moving. In that final steadicam shot (the film, in tradition of Tarkovsky and Sheptiko, has many of them) accompanied by Mozart's Requiem, he is almost a corpse, among the corps who tread through, as the Great Patriotic war comes to close. The Partisan resistance is still neglected in pop culture, and not propagated by the Americans, brits or their over glorified war films. For every American soldier killing a german, eighty Soviet soldiers and plenty more civilians died. There could be a slight statistical misappropriation, but it's still worth mentioning. The documentary series "Russia's war - Blood upon the snow" is an essential viewing. Maybe there are more authentic books, but the series is eye-opening and informative.
The childish naivety and lack of seriousness as he dugs up a rifle, and then joins the partisan resistance. Over the course of the film, the traumas of losing his mother and sisters, and then losing fellow partisans in resistance and the livestock (a cow is shot dead, for live) in a exchange, and topped by the cruel setpiece where the majority in Byelorussian village are burnt alive (incl Children). Floria's coming of age (if you put it lightly) is in his brutal realization of what is to be in Partisan resistance. Klimov's message isn't really a political or patrimonial or even patriotic (even if is touted to be a patriotic struggle in historical terms), but more of a personal obligation and ultimately survival. Killing of Nazis and the self-betraying Russians, doesn't undo his loss any less (this of course, manifests into the infamous montage of Hitler's actual footage, played in reverse, as Floria shoots his framed image. The vain attempts to deny history, if ever only in his imagination). As I said, everything within is desensitized by the end (and is a lot more telling and direct than "Full metal jacket" could ever achieve, unless it centered on the Vietnam girl). Is what I like to think of it.
The soundtrack, especially after the boy Floria goes a part deaf because of air explosion towards the end of first act, is unbearable. There is an effective mix of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie (used in the final montage too) and different classical music to the sounds of woods, in rhythm with military echos and sounds. It's hellish, and I suppose, that's why it stands out as a cathartic experience that only cinema as a medium could dish out.
Regarding the war psyche, "The Cranes Are Flying" is a good point to start. But I'd like to think of "Come and see" in lineage of director Klimov's wife Sheptiko's "The Ascent", in themes of war psyche, courage, cowardliness, break of sanity, the role reversal, betrayal among Partisan resistance.."Come and see" attempts to touch on betrayal when some of Russians get shot along with Nazi officers by the Resistance. But it isn't as much concerned about inner working of the resistance as in "The Ascent". And of course, Tarkovsky's "Ivan's childhood", in Russian anthology.
