Come and See

In Elem Klimov’s searing WWII film, a young Byelorussian boy leaves home to join the Nazi-fighting partisans. The indelible images begin with his mother’s misery writ large on her face, and continue through brutal atrocities — villages raided, people perishing in a blazing barn, the inevitable piles of victims. Klimov alternates the horrors of war with occasional fairy tale-like images; together they imbue the film with an unapologetically disturbing quality that persists long after the credits roll.