10 Visual Movie Masterpieces You've Probably Never Seen

4. Come And See

Whereas Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line employed colourful, captivating footage of nature as a counterpoint to the brutality of war, Elem Klimov's Come and See takes an altogether different approach to the Second World War, depicting the experiences of teenager Flyora (a superb performance from non-professional Aleksei Kravchenko) during the Nazi occupation of Byelorussia in washed out muddy tones and a restless, roaming camera. The heavy use of Steadicams throughout give Come and See the atmosphere of an inescapable nightmare, as Flyora journeys into the heart of darkness, where German soldiers massacre men, women and children, burning them alive in village churches and barns. The imagery is often so striking and powerful that you can't look away, no matter how harrowing the film often feels, enhanced by an exceptional use of sound (a scene in which a shell lands nearby and Flyora's hearing goes is a masterclass in sound design). The atrocities have an almost dizzying, perverse carnival-like feel, in an unnerving, chaotic sense - few would dispute that it is one of the greatest war movies of all time.