review of come and see

[martinb]

thought this was coming out on oct 23rd? Haven't seen it on sale anywhere yet. Anyone know where or when?
Here is a dvd review i found on the net:
review (http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/showreview.php3?ID=1632)

[SimonI]

I ordered it from CDNOW months ago and still no sign of them having it. But someone here said their's had been shipped by Amazon just after the release date.

[adamvbarker]

Mine arrived from Amazon.com today. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet. I'll post again when I have.

[adamvbarker]

I haven't watched the movie yet, but i've had a look round the disks.

It's released by Kino in the US, and the packaging is Kino's, but once you get inside you find two Ruscico disks with 'Kino' stickers on them. And when you put the disks in your machine, they are Ruscico disks through and through - from the opening logo, russian copyright warning, menu style etc. This is of course a good thing.

Of the extras I've looked at so far, I've seen:
15/20 mins of documentaries on the Byelorussian partisans fighting the Nazis, of a type that will be familiar to Ruscico owners. These are fascinating, not just for the information in them, but for their style and message. They are (surely) near contemporary Soviet propaganda, and it is interesting to try to work out how much is real documentary and how much is reconstructed for the cameras - after all, you don't take a camera on a tripod when you go on a raid to blow up a nazi train. The films are also brutal and shocking.

20 min introduction to the film by director Klimov, which is excellent. He talks about his own childhood fleeing Stalingrad that was in flames, about the difficulties of getting the film made, his own doubts about his movies, the ingrained memories of Nazi atrocities in the Byelorussian people, and his fears for the sanity of the young lead actor having to play out these horrors.

I briefly looked at the film itself. It is 4:3, which is the correct AR. It looks a little washed out and grainy, and to some extent I think this is how it is meant to be - I watched the first few seconds of an interview with the DOP, where he talks about going for a documentary style look - but the review linked above may be right about some smeariness in backgrounds etc. But I didn't get the feeling that this was going to have too serious an effect on my viewing of the movie.

Over all then, so far it's an impressive package.

[The Boogerman]

I received my copy yesterday. Though I'm saving watching the film until the weekend. Considering that the film is considered to have the visual and emotional intensity of the first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan throughout its 142 minutes, and consequently draining to sit though. I found the quote from director Elem Kilmov in the accompaning booklet most enlightening;
In Come and See, what I ended up filming was a lightened up version of the truth. Had I encluded everything I knew and shown the whole truth, even I could not have watched it.

[tinder]

...are there any alternative suppliers of this disc ?.....or will i have to use amazon?

[The Boogerman]

amazon.com is also where I bought my copy. Try DVDPricesearch.com to find alternate R1 suppliers.

[adamvbarker]

I've just watched it. I'm blown away and emotionally drained. I don't think a film has affected me this much in a long time.
I'll write more about it later.