By Shannon Flynn
French filmmaker François Truffaut reportedly said, “There is no such thing as an anti-war film.” After all, war is a high-value commodity in Western society, an object of fixation as much as a material reality. We revisit it compulsively, distilling its chaos into ready-made narratives. Even when employing a staunch anti-war message on paper, the visual aspects of many war films fall into the traps of glamorization. Senseless violence becomes alluring, mass death becomes individual sacrifice, and dehumanization becomes a coming-of-age aspiration. This is no accident, but rather the mark of a deeper cultural obsession: a passion for war and the false heroism we impose on its wreckage. Many have refuted Truffaut’s statement, asserting several exceptions to his rule. Among these exceptions, Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) is often praised as the true anti-war film. Set in Belarus during World War II, the film follows Florya, an adolescent boy who joins the Soviet partisans in their fight against German forces. Throughout the film, he witnesses the unspeakable horrors of war—of Nazi war crimes specifically—and sinks into a numbing despair and disillusionment.
The film does not shy away from the initial pull of warfare. At the beginning, Florya is youthful and enthusiastic, caught up in a naive fantasy of war that promises camaraderie, heroism, and a sense of purpose extending far beyond village life. Death is of no consideration; on the imagined battlefield, it is transformed into noble sacrifice. When two officers arrive to enlist him, he gladly joins them and becomes part of a troop stationed in the wilderness, despite his mother’s tearful pleas. From here, the film embarks on an individual odyssey. The viewer is isolated in Florya’s perspective, forced to endure the war alongside him.
Throughout this journey, Come and See makes sparing use of violent imagery, opting instead for close-up reactions to the surrounding carnage. When Florya passes a hospital tent, the camera does not enter; instead, it lingers only on the hollow expression of Glasha, a young nurse. She stares directly at the viewer, mute and unblinking. Attempting to express the inexpressible, the horrific violence of war is implied through the severity of her gaze. Through this technique, the film refuses to give the viewer satisfaction. When the violence of war is not on display, there is nothing to glamorize. Nothing is justified because nothing is given proper attention. Rather, the carnage becomes part of the natural landscape. It is not special, it is not dignified, it is not noble. It is just there.
However, the war here is not fought without reason. There is a clear antagonist, an evil that must be vanquished: the Nazis. This undermines much of the film’s alleged anti-war sentiment because it creates several justifications of war, specifically World War II. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert, a film critic and journalist, describes the antagonistic S.S. Major Sturmbannführer as the “principal Nazi monster in the film” and claims to have “rarely seen a film more ruthless in its depiction of human evil.” The language of viewers such as Ebert imbues this representation of war with a clear purpose and therefore creates an unbalanced narrative that is actually quite pro-war.
These aspects of Come and See further reveal themselves through the differing portrayals of the Soviet partisans versus the Nazis. The film presents the partisans as a downtrodden people, with ill-fitting and mismatched uniforms, fighting with purpose but without glory or honor. The Nazis, on the other hand, are somewhat all-powerful, with crisp uniforms and a certain nonchalance to the evil they inflict upon the Belarusian people. As Ebert articulates, they are studious and detached, elevated to a status of oppressive power.
This struggle against evil is further justified in the film’s latter half. Here, the wartime violence becomes strikingly present. Where the camera once shied away, it now lingers indefinitely and refuses to cut away. In a prolonged scene, Nazi soldiers force the population of a small village into a barn, which is later set on fire. The viewer watches as Florya himself escapes the barn, only to be taunted and toyed with by Nazi officers as the screams of his countrymen fill the air. The viewer is forced not only to watch the full extent of these Nazi war crimes unfold but to experience them alongside Florya. This further evokes the excitement and purpose of warfare as it reminds the viewer that war is a valid solution: it can and will end the suffering on screen.
The film does not try to obscure this justification; it is made clear with the words of Kosach, the commander of Florya’s troop: “[Hitler] will turn you into slaves, into insects to be crushed. But we’ll make [the Nazis] tremble. We’ll be ruthless. That’s what they deserve.” He immediately establishes the moral goal of the partisans: to defend their nation against a real, imminent threat. However, this goal is never actualized during the film’s runtime as the Nazis never “get what they deserve.” Rather, Florya only sinks further into despair as he faces the degradation and death of his own people. There are no victors, at least not among the partisans. However, when viewed in its own historical context, the Allied victory in Europe ended much of the suffering portrayed; the Nazis were defeated. Therefore, Come and See only works as an anti-war film when stripped of all historical context. Only without any knowledge of World War II does the characters’ plight seem truly senseless and endless.
However, the film does stand on one final assertion of its anti-war sentiment. In the final scene, Florya fires his rifle for the first and only time, aiming at a framed portrait of Hitler, an item the Nazis left behind on their journey to another village, another massacre. With each bullet fired, time reverses itself. The viewer watches the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the emergence of Weimar Germany, the violence of World War I, and the industrialization of Europe. The economic and cultural despair that led to World War II is undone until the camera arrives at another portrait of Hitler as an infant. Florya can shoot no more, arriving at a profound conclusion. In spite of its grand mythology, no amount of war can undo history nor undo the Nazis’ crimes. It can halt them, put an early end to them, but it can never undo them. Thus, when Florya lowers his rifle, rejoins the soldiers, and marches onward, there is little hope to be found. A basic historical understanding of World War II reveals that he and the partisans will indeed march on to victory, but that victory hardly seems worthwhile. Nothing can be truly vindicated. War is futile.
However, this last vestige of anti-war sentiment disintegrates in the face of audience reception. On Letterboxd, a social media app centered around film discussion, a review of the film reads, “as soon as the film ended i went online and enlisted in the US army. no child will ever suffer like this again on my watch.” This review is a joke, but nonetheless rooted in very real sentiments. The solution to war is more war. War has now become an abstract dichotomy of good versus evil, democratic versus tyrannical. No longer is it rooted in any real-world experience.
Although the film doesn’t explicitly show warfare, it still manages to glamorize it. A sense of awe characterizes audience reception of the film, awe at the sheer horror of it all. Viewers have made a monument of the film’s disturbing qualities, abstracting its original message in favor of a sense of accomplishment—a successful, blasé viewing of the tragedy it presents. Its brutal, unflinching approach to war has become a spectacle in itself.
This transformation speaks to our cultural obsession with war. Its perpetual veneration arrives from our impulse to impose order where none exists. Structurally, film mediates the unreal experiences of war, reducing them to palatable fragments. The viewer finds solace. After all, if atrocity can be captured, edited, and consumed, it can be endured—it can be enjoyed. Despite refusing resolution, Come and See still offers such merely by virtue of its conclusion. War, in this form, is a finite ordeal. When the credits roll, the suffering ends. The viewer emerges unscathed, deluded by a lack of object permanence: once the camera cuts away, once the screen fades to black, the violence and the guilt it provokes each cease to exist.
Indeed, the form of war that the film engages with has ceased to exist. It is trapped within the confines of narrative filmmaking. The mud-stained, blood-stained soldier has been replaced by the clean, casual—though still unblinking, with bloodshot eyes—drone pilot. War is now a machine conflict, a battle of progressive technologies. Human suffering and mass death, though still present, have been taken out of the equation. Thus, through film, viewers now relish in the horrors of antique warfare, with its familiar narrative logic. There is a strange nostalgia with viewers looking back on and condemning war in this form while worshiping war in its present form. Antique war is grimy, barbaric, vile. New war is entertaining, gamelike in its simplicity. Its true devastation is hardly ever seen, hardly ever fathomed.
These realities stunt the success of Come and See as a true anti-war film. Overall, such a concept seems impossible because war is too valuable as a cultural commodity. Even when presented in its grimiest, rawest form, it quenches our desire for amusement and passion. It is never boring and always justified.
Works Cited:
Come and See. Directed by Elem Klimov, Mosfilm, 1985.
Ebert, Roger. Review of Come and See, directed by Elem Klimov. rogerebert.com, 16 June 2010, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-come-and-see-1985.
Fetter, Cameron. Review of Come and See, directed by Elem Klimov. letterboxd.com, 10 August 2020, https://letterboxd.com/nibiru_truth/film/come-and-see/.