Come and See (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Product Information

There have been a smattering of films over the past several decades that cover the atrocities of the Holocaust with everything from the Oscar-winning Schindler's List from Steven Spielberg to the just as important Hungarian indie film Son of Saul.

The closeups of the actor's faces are where the spotlight is though, showcasing every tiny detail in these terrified faces. Wider shots of the trees in the forest and military uniforms all show the necessary textures in all lighting conditions. The color palette is mostly all doom and gloom with a ton of foggy blues and grays, but it's mixed with some spectacular shots of bright greenery in the forest as well as some hot red, orange, and yellow fire from bullets, bombs, and explosions that contrast well with the colder, dark nature of the film. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Criterion's Solaris Blu-ray removed a blue tint while their edition of Stalker made a sepia tint more prominent.The early scene in which he departs from his mother and sisters presents a disconcerting, even alienating complex of emotions: the histrionic panic of his mother (Tatyana Shestakova), who alternately embraces and rails against him; the hardened indifference of the soldiers who’ve come to retrieve him; and the jejune oblviousness of Floyria himself, who mugs at his younger siblings to mock his mother’s concerns.

NOTE: This release has been encoded for regions A and B, so while Criterion has not officially released the film in the UK, this disc will play in region B players. We experience the German invasion of Belarus through Flyora (Aleksey Kravchenko), a teenager who joins the local partisan militia after discovering a rifle buried in the sand. Europe's busiest forums, with independent news and expert reviews, for TVs, Home Cinema, Hi-Fi, Movies, Gaming, Tech and more.

dont think its as disturbing as others Ive watched (martyrs disturbed me more), but its a really good movie. Overall it’s a stunner of a presentation, just as pleasing as what Stalker offered, and it’s an enormous improvement over what was available previously. In a terrifying image, Flyora suddenly realizes his family and neighbors escaped the Nazi attack, but as the two teens run to safety, Glasha looks over her shoulder to reveal dozens of dead bodies behind Flyora's home. But whereas Tarkovsky embellishes his vision of a war-torn fairy-tale forest in the direction of moody expressionism, Klimov goes surreal.

I did a few comparisons with the old DVD release I have in my library and to be honest was quite surprised by the massive upgrade. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made. Klimov counterbalances his film’s apocalyptic hopelessness with a righteous rage on behalf of the Holocaust’s real victims.A band of partisans arrive too late to save the village but in time to capture and mete out justice to several of the Nazi officers. But with this one, she also talks about how she got her life back together after the war, showing how one can still work to move on. sound track, because it would fit the film just fine since it seems determined to put you in the middle of this hell the film presents, but RusCiCo’s surround remixes were pretty spotty at best. Taking cover behind his felled cow, Flyoria awakes in the empty field, now absolutely still, with the mangled animal corpse as his pillow.

A full third of the Nazis’ innocent victims were killed in mass executions on the Eastern Front—both by specially assigned SS troops and the regular Wehrmacht (though the myth of a “clean Wehrmacht” lives on to this day).Criterion's release is sourced from a recent 2K master struck from the original 35mm camera negative.