[9][10] The film's plot focuses on the German occupation of Byelorussia during World War II, and the events as witnessed by a young Belarusian teenager named Flyora, who joins a partisan unit, and thereafter depicts the Nazi atrocities and human suffering inflicted upon the populace.

Glasha appears emotionally unstable, and mocks Flyora when he tries to act mature; she taunts that he isn't living, and expresses a want to love and have children.

The camp is suddenly attacked by dive bombers and German paratroopers, partially deafening Flyora and forcing the duo to flee into the forest.

The man hurriedly explains a fake identity to Flyora, while an SS Einsatzkommando accompanied by collaborators from the Russian Liberation Army and Belarusian Auxiliary Police, surround and occupy the village.

As the partisans leave, Flyora notices a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler in a puddle and proceeds to shoot it numerous times.

[10] Flyora rushes to rejoin his comrades, and they march through the birch woods while in the meantime a season passes and snow blankets the ground.

I had been reading and rereading the book I Am from the Fiery Village, which consisted of the first-hand accounts of people who miraculously survived the horrors of the fascist genocide in Belorussia.

I will never forget the face and eyes of one peasant, and his quiet recollection about how his whole village had been herded into a church, and how just before they were about to be burned, an officer gave them the offer: "Whoever has no children can leave".

"[9]The original Belarusian and Russian title of the film derives from Chapter 6 of the Book of Revelation, where in the first, third, fifth, and seventh verse is written "Ідзі і глядзі" in Belarusian[15] (English: "Come and see", Greek: Ἔρχου καὶ ἴδε, Erchou kai ide[16] and "Иди и смотри" in Russian) as an invitation to look upon the destruction caused by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.To prepare the 14-year-old Kravchenko for the role, Klimov called a hypnotist with autogenic training.

"[20][21] For eight years,[12] filming could not begin because the State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino) would not accept the screenplay, considering it too realistic, calling it propaganda for the "aesthetics of dirtiness" and "naturalism".

[9] Alongside this, the death of Klimov's wife Larisa Shepitko, also a filmmaker, in 1979 forced him to first complete the work she began on what was to be her next film, Farewell; it would finally be released in 1983.

[19] To create the maximum sense of immediacy, realism, hyperrealism, and surrealism operating in equal measure,[25] Klimov and his cameraman Aleksei Rodionov employed naturalistic colors, widescreen and lots of Steadicam shots; the film is full of extreme close-ups of faces, does not flinch from the unpleasant details of burnt flesh and bloodied corpses, and the guns were often loaded with live ammunition as opposed to blanks.

[12][28] At a few key points in the film classical music from mainly German or Austrian composers are used, such as The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II.

During the scene where Glasha dances, the background music is some fragments of Mary Dixon's song from Grigori Aleksandrov's 1936 film Circus.

"[40] Rita Kempley, of The Washington Post, wrote that "directing with an angry eloquence, [Klimov] taps into that hallucinatory nether world of blood and mud and escalating madness that Francis Ford Coppola found in Apocalypse Now.

And though he draws a surprisingly vivid performance from his inexperienced teen lead, Klimov's prowess is his visual poetry, muscular and animistic, like compatriot Andrei Konchalovsky's in his epic Siberiade.

The website's critics consensus reads, "As effectively anti-war as movies can be, Come and See is a harrowing odyssey through the worst that humanity is capable of, directed with bravura intensity by Elem Klimov.

"[4] In 2001, Daneet Steffens of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "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.

"[46] In 2001, J. Hoberman of The Village Voice reviewed Come and See, writing the following: "Directed for baroque intensity, Come and See is a robust art film with aspirations to the visionary – not so much graphic as leisurely literal-minded in its representation of mass murder.

(The movie has been compared both to Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, and it would not be surprising to learn that Steven Spielberg had screened it before making either of these.)

The film's central atrocity is a barbaric circus of blaring music and barking dogs in which a squadron of drunken German soldiers round up and parade the peasants to their fiery doom ...

The bit of actual death-camp corpse footage that Klimov uses is doubly disturbing in that it retrospectively diminishes the care with which he orchestrates the town's destruction.

Club wrote that Klimov's "impressions are unforgettable: the screaming cacophony of a bombing run broken up by the faint sound of a Mozart fugue, a dark, arid field suddenly lit up by eerily beautiful orange flares, German troops appearing like ghosts out of the heavy morning fog.

"[49] British magazine The Word wrote that "Come and See is widely regarded as the finest war film ever made, though possibly not by Great Escape fans.

[51] In 2006, Geoffrey Macnab of Sight & Sound wrote: "Klimov's astonishing war movie combines intense lyricism with the kind of violent bloodletting that would make even Sam Peckinpah pause".

[52] On 16 June 2010, Roger Ebert posted a review of Come and See as part of his "Great Movies" series, describing it as "one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead ...

[55] Phil de Semlyen of Empire has described the work as "Elim [sic] Klimov’s seriously influential, deeply unsettling Belarusian opus.

No film – not Apocalypse Now, not Full Metal Jacket – spells out the dehumanizing impact of conflict more vividly, or ferociously ... An impressionist masterpiece and possibly the worst date movie ever.

[11] The film is generally considered one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made, and one with the most historically accurate depictions of the crimes on the Eastern Front.