I had to think about this because I was, asked for a top ten or twenty favorite movie list.
Things always fluctuate when I try to list ten to twenty movies that I think are the best ever.
The three movies that have made my top five every time for the last several years have been Come and See, City of God, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Right now, if my life depended on it, and I needed to defend a movie as my personal choice of the greatest movie ever made, I think it has to be Come and See.
My relationship with the film has been odd.
I don't even remember how I first heard of it. I was already getting into Russian and particularly Soviet cinema and I came across it.
The only way I could see it back in the day was to burn forty dollars on a DVD copy with two discs and a cover that was printed entirely in Russian.
It was a great movie when I saw it for the first time at the age of twenty. Still, I was too young and stupid to truly get it. My appreciation for the film was equivalent to an emo kid who saw Requiem for a Dream in high school and thought it was a mind fuck. When you watch either film with a bit more maturity, they hit your soul.
There's a reason why I've only mustered the strength to watch Come and See a few times in my life. It accomplished something that Truffaut thought was next to impossible and that was to create an anti-war movie.
For all the violence and gore and horror depicted in classics like Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and even films like Black Hawk Down, Come and See beats them all when it comes to showing a character who survives while clearly envying the dead.
The cinematography of Come and See was neither beautiful nor intentionally ugly. It was what it was. It was a canvas upon which the likes of Goya might have painted their darkest thoughts. Only, it's embedded in real life. The most horrifying scenes in the film actually happened. The camera didn't serve to glorify nor vilify what was happening. The camera just showed what we are and what we can be and the value of youthful ignorance along with the destruction of youthful ignorance in a way that we can all understand.
Despite the film being made in the twilight days of the Soviet Union, the title comes from the Bible. "Come and See, I saw a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hell followed."
It's not a fun movie. It's not a Netflix and chill movie (nobody is gonna be horny after watching this film). It's not triumphant nor triumphal. It's not uplifting. There's little light to be seen at the end.