Come and See

In an ill-advised attempt to trump my film choice for last week, which was Nemesis (“A sleek, provocative techno-thriller” – L A Times), Cowboy decides to take advice from Channel 4 (50 Films to See Before you Die).

The advice given to him was that he must watch ‘Come and See’ before he died (or possibly just prior to us killing him). Now when I heard this, I at first hoped that the film’s title might be ‘Cum and See’, but it wasn’t. I don’t even recall seeing any ladies boobies in this film.

The story is this:

Young Russian lad wants to join the army and fight the Germans. Unlike the British or American armies where they gave you a gun when you joined up, in the Russian army you couldn’t join unless you had a gun, but I digress. Boy digs up old rifle from a battlefield, joins partisans, gets lost in the woods.

Basically this film is like my friend’s ex wife Lisa, she starts talking and you don’t know where the conversation’s going, but you think “there must be some logic to Lisa’s story, I think I’ll keep nodding and see where it goes”. So you occassionally repeat some key words she says, or mumble “uh huh” when she explains in detail the holiday rota at her work, maybe occassionally rubbing your chin knowingly. But after about 10 minutes a little voice in your head starts to say “this isn’t going anywhere! Lisa isn’t going to stop!” By the time she’s corrected earlier mistakes about the holiday rota for a fourth time and is trying to remember where the guy who works in the warehouse went with his wife you reach a point in which you decide you’re either going to stay here and listen until she either gets to the point or you kill her and have to explain the death to Ian and their kids. Normally the later sounds more appealing.

Same with ‘Come and See’. Technically brilliant, well acted and when there is any action it’s normally live rounds being fired or chunks of C4 blowing the crap out of woodland. Great! But there’s too much mugging at the camera, or dancing in the woodland and people wailing. It could have been condensed down into 70 minutes of film rather than 2 hours. You’re often thinking “What’s going on? Why are they burying that kids hair?”

So overall not bad, but goes on a bit too much (like Lisa).