Evidence from several recent African wars shows in graphic detail the degree to which children are used as fodder for combat. In our own country, children are exposed to excessive violence mostly in video games and on TV, but are used as mules in the drug trade by gangs. In Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985), one of the most horrific war zones in human history [the Nazi occupation of Belarus] is seen through the eyes of a youth, whose education and descent into madness are one and the same. Of all cinematic witnesses of war, this area produced, along with Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, Come and See, arguably the greatest war film ever made.

The brutality and horror of the war between Russia and Germany in World War II continues to fascinate for many reasons. Fought in Eastern Europe, it was a large theater of battle conducted in the shadow of the Holocaust; it was a battle of wills between not only two of the greatest armies in history, but also between arguably the two most heinous despots in history. But the real lure goes beyond battles, and beyond Hitler and Stalin. It fascinates because of its massive tragedy: over 30 million people dying, its results igniting the cold war and affecting the region in world terms for the next 50 years, and for the level of heroism and suffering on the part of the Russian people and those of occupied Eastern European countries. It was a theater of battle in which there were innumerable horrific images to wallow in.

This film, like the battle zone itself, illustrates the importance of wallowing in such images; not for war-porn thrills, but to witness. The horror of the Eastern Front and the Holocaust is more documented by its victims than perhaps any other war. Come and See is an additional witness. The film is first and foremost a coming of age story in a time of death, where the growth and horrific education of 13 year old Florya (played by Alexei Kravchenko,) is also a transformation of him into living witness for the horrors that shape him. War is a part of history that many obsess about but few remember when it comes time to stop the latest one. So what good does witness do without a remembrance of history? The film begins as Florya is living with his family in Belorussia. A band of resistance fighters come to recruit village men to help them fight the invading Nazis. Though Florya wants to go, they leave him behind, essentially to spare him the horror they are to face. He finds enough horror by remaining behind. A bomb renders him deaf, and the ringing in his ears becomes a constant in the film's soundtrack from then on. In his distraught and disoriented wandering in the woods he meets Glascha (Olga Mironova) obviously cavorting on her own. They pair up, and after briefly romping among the trees, Florya decides to bring her back to his village to meet his family. They find no one in the house, and Florya runs off in a panic.

Daring to look behind them as they run, Glascha sees a pile of nude and bloody bodies behind the house, massacred. Slowly the truth dawns on him, and his descent into the madness of war really begins. After a series of horrific scenes as raw as in any war movie, the rebels finally kill off the Nazis in their area, but Florya is permanently scarred. Of those scenes, two stand out in their brutality. Florya is briefly trapped with members of another village as they are all locked into a barn as it is set afire by drunken laughing Nazis. The gleeful cruelty of the soldiers is shattering, a supremely graphic depiction of sadism as I've ever seen. Also, Glascha's comatose return from being gang-raped by other soldiers is both moving and scarring.

Klimov does not flinch from the casual madness and visceral, spontaneous horrors of war. We are changed after viewing this, haunted forever by Florya's anguished face, unforgettable in its grief and incomprehension. The question now arises: how are we changed? Florya's coming of age in horror makes it necessary to think about his future off-screen. Did he survive? Kill himself? As an adult did he become one of the soldiers that later went into Budapest or Prague with the Soviet army to crush rebellion? When one of the primal scenes in a child's life is brutality and violence, all bets are off as to how he will respond to that trauma in adulthood. We are witnessing a kind of molestation in the midst of a historical backdrop. In an age of manipulated images and truth, when the veteran's pain and injury is ignored, yet used as a symbol by politicians, the questions of witness and trauma are more acute. Come and See, therefore, can stand as an indictment of our own era.