My intent here is to delineate the technical aspects of the current DVD issue and leave prophetic wisdom and insite of the film to other eager reviewers. But I will say that as a long-time war film fan I found "Come and See" easily one of the best with some of the most stunning visuals ever committed to film. If you've seen and appreciated such films as The Winter War, Das Boot, Stalingrad or Die Brucke (The Bridge) you should be quite pleased with this effort.

The current DVD package is no longer two DVDs, but one (thankfully) and contains all 142 uninterrupted minutes of the original film. The special features are scant and consist of a theatrical trailer with no oral commentary and a written appreciation of the film by Sean Penn.

The movie is full frame (aspect ratio 1.33:1) and NOT in original widescreen. It is in Russian with English subtitles giving the viewer adequate time to read each line. Each chapter is delineated on your DVD player, so you can stop anywhere you like and pick up where you left off later. I have a decent home theatre system and found the picture quality very good and likely similar to that which was released for theatres. The audio is in stereo and the sound quality is good and on a par for the era in which it was produced.

The DVD is still produced by Kino Video, issued in a hard case and contains the same art cover and interesting film descriptions as the former two DVD version.

In summation, a monumental motion picture (and a favorite of mine) and top quality production, not withstanding modest extra features.


Unique, Surreal Film About a Different Kind of War - Not Propaganda   November 26, 2005
 28 out of 32 found this review helpful

I recently saw this movie, and was moved to comment about it after reading other reviews here on Amazon. Other reviewers here have commented that:
1) The surreal aspects of this film are a flaw or weak point.
2) The movie is about the horrors of war in general, not this particular war.
3) The movie is communist propaganda.

I disagree strongly with all three of these points.

1) The film *is* surreal, and that feature works perfectly to impart to the viewer a feeling of being dumped out of one world and into another that doesn't make sense - the exact feeling the 16 year old boy protagonist would feel when suddenly dropped into the hell of nazi occupation. I can't name another film that does so good a job of making the viewer feel like he or she is there, part of what is going on, seeing through the eyes and hearing through the ears of the protagonist.

2) This film is not about just any war. It's about the special nature of the war waged by nazis. There is no combat in this film - none - zero. This film never, ever shows the partisans fighting the nazis. It shows the nazis attacking unarmed civilians. Old and weak men, women, and children.

**** spoilers below ****



Then, in the aftermath of combat, when the partisans have captured a group of nazis, one of the ss officers explains in a calm voice the twisted logic of why they did it. It's all about exterminating an inferior race. "You don't have the right to be" he says, and "it all starts with the children". The nazis want to eliminate their enemy's ability to reproduce. Killing the women and children is not just a brutal act of passion, it's a strategic goal of the nazi war. The fighting between armies to gain control of territory and resources (what we usually see in a war movie) is only one half of the nazi war.

3) The movie is too thoughtful to be propaganda. Propaganda would tend to be a simplistic statement of "we're good, they're bad", but it's clear in this film that nazi ideology is being indicted, not the German people. In the ending montage that some have criticized, the boy is shooting at a picture of Hitler. It's clear he's blaming Hitler, not the Germans. With every shot he takes, time rolls back further, and further, undoing the things Hitler did. He rolls time all the way back to a picture of baby Hitler sitting on his mother's knee. Then, he stops. The camera shows a horrified look on the boy's face. He does not shoot the baby Hitler. This scene implies to me that the boy recognizes the potential for evil in all humans, including himself, and he fears that maybe the human creature itself is irredeemably flawed. I don't believe a propaganda film would leave such an open-to-interpretation ending, or an ending that didn't clearly place blame for everything on "the bad guys". I believe a propaganda film would have taken that last shot, wiping out Hitler at the root as if that answered all questions about everything that happened during World War 2.