Come and See (1985)

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas might give it a run for its money

Love that film

Great film. I enjoyed it more on second and third viewings. Truly a masterpiece of cinema.

I consider it a comedy and have thoroughly enjoyed multiple viewings

I've said this before somewhere on this board, but a lot of people go into Come and See expecting it to be a war movie. It is not a war movie. It's an atrocity movie. Imagine that you were born somewhere in Ukraine in 1900. By the time you were 50 you would have experienced:

-The Russian Revolution of 1905
-A famine
-World War I
-Another, even worse, famine
-The Russian Civil War
-Yet another famine caused by War Communism
-The Polish-Soviet War
-Another famine so awful that they actually named it (The Holodomor)
-Stalin's purges
-Forced collectivization

And finally, after all of that, you had to endure the greatest, most awful war in human history, during which the enemy unleashed detachments of violent criminals and released prisoners commanded by some of the worst people ever to walk the planet (Oskar Dirlewanger, for example, whose brigade is the one portrayed in the movie - look him up), told them all that you and your fellow Ukrainians were not actually people, and then gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted and kill whomever they wanted in the name of "pacification." All of these things happened, not in some other corner of the world or even in some other part of the country, but all of them right in your own backyard. You saw and experienced them all.

Come and See is the kind of movie that results from something like that.

Really want to watch this because of how rough it is(I’m a disturbed individual ), but I’m 40 minutes in and am struggling to pay attention.

Does it improve?

The director shot Come and See like a horror movie with close ups where you can see every facial expression. This filming technique worked for such a nightmarish movie.