Come and See · reception & legacy

1985 · Elem Klimov

How Come and See has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A genuine event in the USSR on release — millions of Soviet viewers and the top prize at the 1985 Moscow film festival — it stayed a critics'-circle secret in the West for decades until the 2020 restoration and Criterion release sent it rocketing up the Letterboxd charts.

What's debated

The eternal fan debate: is it the greatest war film ever made, or an experience so harrowing that 'great' is the wrong word — and can you honestly rate a film you never want to watch again?

Its footprint

It's the standard rebuttal to the claim that no anti-war film can avoid glamorising war, and the boy's shell-shocked, prematurely aged face has become one of cinema's most instantly recognisable images — name-checked by filmmakers from Spielberg's WWII work onward as the benchmark for depicting war without spectacle.

Where it stands

A canon climber turned canon summit — it now sits among the highest-rated narrative films on Letterboxd, the ultimate 'one viewing is mandatory, a rewatch is optional' entry.

★ Did you know? Klimov never made another film afterwards — he said that after Come and See he had lost interest in filmmaking, having done everything he felt he could. The script, co-written with Belarusian author Ales Adamovich, had also been blocked by Soviet censors for roughly eight years before production was allowed.