Starring Aleksei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Vladas Bagdonas, Jüri Lumiste

(5-Okay Film)

Monotonous. Striking. Dull.

In Belarus, 1943, a young boy, Flyora, joins the local resistance movement and witnesses the atrocities perpetrated by the occupying Nazis. With such a potent subject, how could I call this film dull? Even with a dozen or so piercing images and an unforgettable sequence early on where Flyora and a new companion make their ways across nearly gelatinous mud, Come and See is monotonous. Like many well-respected foreign films, it has one tone and never wavers for a second from it. It’s like being pounded in the head relentlessly until you get used to it and bored by it. Its style has garnered it many admirers. I’m not one of them.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

(387)