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->''"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, [[TitleDrop Come and see]]. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."''
-->-- '''[[Literature/BookOfRevelation Revelation 6:7-8]]''', shown in the titles

''Come and See'' (Russian: ''Иди и смотри'', ''Idi i Smotri'') is a 1985 Soviet war drama about UsefulNotes/WorldWarTwo. It is loosely based on the 1978 novel ''I Am From the Fiery Village'' by Ales Adamovich, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

We follow Flyora, an adolescent UsefulNotes/{{Belarus}}ian villager who achieves his dream of joining the local partisans in the fight against the invading Nazis. However, he quickly finds out that WarIsHell and embarks on a nightmarish journey through wartime tragedies and Nazi atrocities. Will he make it through with his life, and more importantly, with his sanity?

A joint Mosfilm-Belarusfilm production, the film was added to the ''Creator/TheCriterionCollection'' and released on June 30, 2020.
----
!!This film provides examples of:
* AdaptationTitleChange: The film is loosely based on ''I Am From the Fiery Village''.
* AffablyEvil: One of the Nazis ransacking the house in the village is amiable and cracks jokes. When he finds a child hiding under a bench, he snarks, "Partisan!" and gently deposits the kid with the others. Then he steals a pocket watch. He's a Nazi, remember?
* AintTooProudToBeg:
** The leading Nazi officer at the end [[spoiler: tries all the tricks in the book to have his life spared, even after his nightmarish crimes. The Soviet officer doesn't buy it for a second]].
** The Slavic collaborators [[spoiler: try the same thing, growing more and more desperate when it's obvious they will share the same fate as the Nazis]].
* AllForNothing: The mission to steal a cow for the starving refugee camp. [[spoiler: Literally everyone but Flyora gets killed on the way, including the cow, and Flyora gets captured by the Nazis]].
* ArmyOfThievesAndWhores: The invading German army is revealed at the end to be an ''Einsatzgruppe'', a Nazi death squad whose sole purpose is to commit war crimes. This is why they seem to spend so much of their time and energy [[ForTheEvulz committing atrocities]] on civilians rather than fighting the Allies. Their massacre of Perekhody has the atmosphere of a deranged carnival, as the soldiers get drunk and cavort about, setting fire to the buildings and raping every woman they get their hands on. The depiction is based on the Dirlewanger Brigade, led by the psychopathic [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger Oskar Dirlewanger]] and composed mostly of temporarily released criminals [[EvenEvilHasStandards who disgusted even other SS units with their behavior]].
* AsTheGoodBookSays: The title of the film comes from Revelation, chapter 6, where the phrase is repeated by the Four Living Creatures when the first four of the Seven Seals are opened and the horsemen of the Apocalypse are released.
* AtrocityMontage: The main protagonist Flyora, a young soldier, encounters [[WarIsHell the horrors of war]] that shatter his innocence into a ShellShockedVeteran such as the massacre of the Belarusian village by the SS Einsatzgruppen. These are punctuated by the [[SurrealHorror unsettling, hallucinatory cinematography]] and [[TruthInTelevision the fact these atrocities happened in actual history]].
* BaitAndSwitch: Flyora stumbles across a beautiful Nazi girl, critically wounded after her vehicle crashed. Flyora spots some bandages and picks them up... and in the next scene bandages his broken rifle stock.
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor:
** The film starts with Flyora as a gung-ho volunteer, eager to fight the invading Germans. As the film progresses, we follow his transformation as he experiences the horrific realities of war.
** When the partisans come to Flyora's village to recruit him, they are disguised as German soldiers, and the villagers greet them with food. Likewise, when the Einsatzgruppe arrives in Perekhody later in the film, a few of the inhabitants welcome them as liberators, believing that they will take them to Germany.
** The [[NoNameGiven "Little Policeman"]] is the SS brigade's resident [[TheChewToy chew toy.]] He's mercilessly teased and bullied by the other soldiers, but he still sucks up to them because he wants to be seen as a fellow Aryan. [[spoiler: He's mortified when he joins them in front of the firing squad at the end despite them not considering him their equal.]]
** In the last scene, when the Russian collaborator asks for a match, he is actually yelling "Fire!" [[spoiler: The partisans oblige his request.]]
* BigBrotherMentor: Roubej somewhat acts as one to Flyora.
* BigGood: Kosach
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Nazis have committed horrible atrocities against the Belarusian people. Flyora has lost everyone he loves and suffered unimaginable trauma. However, in the end, the death squad is killed to a man. The partisans resist the urge to stoop to the death squad's level of brutality, showing that they have retained their humanity even in the face of such evil. Flyora balks at the thought of killing an infant Hitler, showing that he too has maintained his humanity. He joins the rest of the partisans to continue the fight.]]
* BlatantLies: The death squad commander says that he's never killed anyone and would never hurt a fly. He says this while the village he just slaughtered and razed is ''still aflame''. The translator even assures the incredulous partisans that this is indeed what the man is claiming.
* BoisterousWeakling:
** The Nazi troops [[EvilIsHammy revel]] in the cruelty they inflict on the Belarusian villagers, all the while mocking them for their supposed genetic inferiority. When they go up against Kosach's partisans rather than the scared, defenseless civilians they're used to terrorizing, they get slain to a man. This is TruthInTelevision, as these types of death squads were intended to sow terror amongst civilians rather than fight organized resistance effectively and were little more than psychotic rabble.
** The "Little Policeman" is an extremely small Nazi collaborator who is the loudest and most aggressive member of the group, but he's also the victim of the others' constant abuse.
* {{Bookends}}: Near the start of the film, the local partisans have an impromptu photo-shoot. Towards the end, the Nazis have one as well, in what would become of the film's most iconic scenes.
* BreakTheCutie: Flyora may be one of the most comprehensive examples in cinema, going from a bright-eyed young boy eager to defend his country to a haunted, withered husk of a human being over the course of the film.
* BreatherEpisode: Downplayed with Flyora and Roubej's scouting mission. It's still a tense sequence that sees two side characters blown apart by landmines, but contains more humor than anywhere else in the film.
* BrownNote: Infrasonics and low-frequency sounds were used during the more disturbing scenes.
* ByTheHair: In the village massacre, we see a young woman being dragged around by her hair.
* ChildSoldiers: Flyora joins the partisans despite being in his adolescence.
* ChekhovsGun: Almost literally! In the very first scene of the film, Flyora digs up an SVT-40 rifle from the sand in preparation for joining the partisans and carries it with him for the rest of the film. He is continually denied opportunities to use it, until the very last scene where he [[spoiler: unloads a full magazine into a portrait of Hitler, bringing the theme of the film full circle]].
* ClassicalAntiHero: A big part of why the film so thoroughly averts DoNotDoThisCoolThing; Flyora is a completely ordinary teenage boy who never does anything badass or even heroic. The best he can do under the circumstances is merely try to survive, which is true of the vast, vast majority of those forced to live through war.
* LesCollaborateurs:
** Rubezh and Flyora rob a collaborating Belarusian farmer of his cow while hurling abuse at him for his treachery, but they ultimately spare him. It's implied that [[spoiler:he immediately informs the local Nazis, who open fire on the two escaping partisans]].
** The SS brigade that torches the village of Perekhody includes several Ukrainian and Russian collaborators. There's a particularly loud-mouthed and [[TheNapoleon diminutive]] one among there ranks (referred to in the credits as the [[NoNameGiven "Little Policeman"]]) whom the other Nazis treat with entirely appropriate contempt. We see them [[TheChewToy pantsing him, scrawling big swastikas on his helmet, and locking him in the church with the rest of the villagers (only letting him out after he screams "I'm with you!")]]. [[spoiler: This becomes an IronicEcho at the end when the partisans are about to execute him; he rips off his stahlhelm and shrieks "I'm on your side!" in a last-ditch effort to save himself.]]
* ColonelBadass: Kosach, leader of the local partisans. Though he doesn't receive much screen-time, he's shown to be an unflappable, stalwart soldier.
* CompleteTheQuoteTitle: The title is part of the famous quote from "Revelation."
* CompletelyUnnecessaryTranslator: The SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' can speak Russian but chooses not to when delivering his genocidal MotiveRant to the partisans, instead speaking German and having a collaborator translate for him. It seems to be [[KickTheDog just another expression of his contempt and hatred for the people he has murdered]].
* CoolOldGuy: The old man from Perekhody who tries to protect Flyora from the Nazis by passing him off as a family member. He does this despite having caught Flyora attempting to steal his horse. Perhaps he can't bear the thought of leaving a young teenager out in the open at the mercy of the SS brigade.
* CrapsackWorld: Byelorussia during UsefulNotes/WW2.
* CreepyChild: Some of Flyora's behavior and mannerisms at the beginning of the movie seem unnatural if not somewhat eerie. [[spoiler: As the film progresses and Flyora witnesses atrocity after atrocity, he begins to rapidly age. By the end of the movie, [[PrematurelyGreyHaired his hair has turned grey]] and he looks disheveled and grotesque.]]
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: The Nazis have a habit of burning people alive. First it happens to the old man from Flyora's village, and then it happens to the whole village of Perekhody. The partisans prepare to do the same to the remaining death squad members, but ultimately shoot them instead.
* CruelMercy:
** Flyora is spared from being shot in the head after the Nazis use him for a photo opportunity. But given what he had just witnessed, death would've been a welcome relief.
** [[spoiler: The woman who was dragged by her hair to be brutally raped offscreen while watching her little boy be killed is later dumped on the side of the road, catatonic and mentally broken]].
** Three Nazis spare a senile old woman while slaughtering the rest of the village. They leave her in her bed outdoors with no one left alive to care for her, almost certainly to die of exposure. She doesn't even seem to understand what's going on.
* {{Deconstruction}}: This movie is one ''big'' sledgehammer to the ideal of resistance. Flyora isn't a brave hero, but a scared kid trying to survive in a hellish war zone. The only vaguely heroic thing Flyora does is [[spoiler: balk at the idea of killing Hitler as an infant]]. On the other hand, the film also shows how ''not'' resisting in the face of such atrocity can be suicidal or wasting whatever opportunity one might have to make some kind of difference. Ultimately, the deconstruction shows that there is nothing inherently right or glorious about resistance or compliance, and when WarIsHell, it can be impossible for a given person to know the right answer.
* DecoyProtagonist: Flyora's younger friend has a lot more screen time than he does in the first scene, suggesting that the younger boy is the main character. Once Flyora finds a rifle, however, the film permanently switches to focusing on him.
* DefiantToTheEnd: [[spoiler:In stark contrast to [[DirtyCoward his superior]], the SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' doesn't try to convince the partisans to spare his life. He indulges in an AxCrazy monologue about how his captors are an inferior race who must be exterminated to prevent the spread the disease of communism. [[KickTheDog This is used to demonstrate how monstrous he is]].]].
* DidNotGetTheGirl: While there's some budding attraction between Flyora and Glasha, it should go without saying that the traumas inflicted on them both put an end to any idea of romance.
* DirtyCoward: [[spoiler: The SS-''Sturmbannfuhrer'' and Gezhel the collaborator]] both beg shamelessly for their lives, earning the ire of a lesser officer who is DefiantToTheEnd.
* DisproportionateRetribution: The Germans kill almost every man, woman, and child in Perekhody because a villager had insulted a German soldier earlier that morning.
* DoomedHometown: Flyora's home village, [[spoiler: where his mother and sisters are killed.]] Glasha [[spoiler: sees the corpses]] but doesn't tell him about it, and he insists that they've gone to a nearby island. [[spoiler: The illusion doesn't last long.]] There are indeed survivors on the island, but [[spoiler: Flyora's family isn't there.]]
* DroneOfDread: The score frequently features an ominous droning sound. Various diegetic sounds such as airplane engines and the ringing in Flyora's ears from an explosion are used for this effect as well.
* DumbStruck:
** [[spoiler:The traumatized blond girl after being gang-raped by the soldiers wanders around in a catatonic state and blowing a pan flute left by the Germans]].
** Flyora doesn't speak for a while after getting rescued by the partisans.
* EmpathyDollShot: When Flyora leads Glasha back to his mother's house, the first sign that something terrible has happened is that his twin sisters' dolls are scattered across the floor.
* TheEnemyWeaponsAreBetter: The partisan who comes to recruit Flyora is carrying around entirely German gear, presumably captured in the field. It causes a minor JumpScare when he taps on the window and the viewer thinks he's a Nazi at first. Later on, some of the native SS collaborators are shown wielding Soviet weaponry.
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The first time Flyora sees the SS soldiers is when they're jumping out of a truck in the distance while half-concealed by the morning fog, all of which is accompanied by [[HellIsThatNoise an eerie mechanical whistling sound.]] The fact that they're black silhouettes coming out of the mist gives them an appropriately demonic presence, like they're the legions of Hell emerging from the underworld.
* EvilIsHammy: The fat German who guffaws with laughter when he's done [[spoiler: roasting the poor civilians with his flamethrower.]] The uniformed Nazi girl who smiles lasciviously and [[EroticEating slowly eats lobster]] while watching [[spoiler: the horrific massacre]] also counts.
* EvilOldFolks: The SS commander is an old man. [[spoiler: When he's captured, [[DirtyCoward he tries to pass himself off]] as a harmless grandpa with no control over his men, much to the disgust of everyone in earshot.]]
* FailedASpotCheck: When his village appears to be deserted, Flyora thinks they must be hiding on a nearby island and runs off to find them, [[spoiler:straight past the bodies of the villagers that are piled behind a house.]]
* FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: The ''Obersturmfuhrer'' in the end asserts that Slavs have no right to exist, and so the Germans will exterminate them.
* FinalSolution: The death squad is slaughtering every village they come across as part of the Nazi Final Solution to wipe all "lesser" races off the face of the Earth.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Flyora looks down into the well in his hometown, we get a quick shot of his reflection in the water. His hair is clipped short.
* ForTheEvulz: The death squad was going to kill the whole village anyway, but they turn it into a prolonged and sadistic game. This is basically their whole raison d'etre.
* GuiltRiddenAccomplice: One [=SS=] soldier wipes away tears as he guns down the women and children of Perekhody. Another is shown vomiting after the massacre - although that may just be because he's drunk.
* GoryDiscretionShot: Despite being a safe source of NightmareFuel, the director made a point of not showing gratuitous violence as most war films do, saying that if he did no one would bear to look at it. The atmosphere and plot make the real nightmare.
* HarmfulToMinors: The horrible experiences during the war take their toll on Flyora. By the end of the film, he has bags under his eyes and greying hair.
* HateSink: Of all of the SS soldiers, the blonde ''Obersturmfuhrer'' is the most utterly sick and repulsive. When the people are rounded up to be burned in the church, he smugly announces that they either die themselves or sacrifice their children. Before his execution, he defiantly states that the massacre was justified and that sub-humans don't deserve to exist.
* HatsOffToTheDead: One of the Belarusian prisoners tries to do this by taking off his hat as the women and children of Perekhody are burning before him, but an [=SS=] soldier [[EvilIsPetty replaces it with his own helmet to mock him and, by extension, the dying villagers]].
* HelplessObserverProtagonist: Flyora Gaishun is an ordinary teenage boy in occupied Belarus in World War II who is dragged against his will into the war and can only bear witness to the most depraved atrocities of Nazi Germany while powerless to do anything. At one point, he is held at gunpoint and ForcedToWatch as the SS burns down a church full of women and children.
* HeroesFrontierStep: Flyora spends much of the story becoming a horribly disheveled wretch who endures one tragedy after another. [[spoiler: The next-to-last shot of the film shows him balking at killing baby Hitler, showing that while Flyora lost his innocence, he still retained his humanity.]]
* HeroicBSOD: Flyora basically spends the majority of the film going through one of these.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: At the end of the film, [[spoiler: the surviving partisans readily give in to brutality and are prepared to burn the captured Nazis alive. Even Flyora hands them a tank of gasoline without hesitation. This is subverted at the last second [[MercyKill when they machine gun them instead.]] The final montage of historical footage shows that, unlike the Germans, Flyora would not stoop to killing children, even one that would grow up to be Hitler.]]
* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: While the film accurately depicts Nazi atrocities, little of the atrocities of the Red Army or the partisans is depicted. The one war crime we do see is the execution of surrendered SS soldiers, and that is presented as a mercy compared to what they ''could'' have done.
* HorsemenOfTheApocalypse: The title itself is a reference to the Horsemen's arrival. During the movie, there's no lack of scenes dealing with illness, violence, hunger and, obviously, death.
* IHaveAFamily: [[spoiler: When captured by the partisans, the SS-''Sturmbannfuhrer'' tries this excuse, along with NothingPersonal, to escape punishment. It doesn't work.]]
* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Flyora badly wants to be a war hero, which is why he disobeys his mother's advice and joins the partisans.
* IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim: Implied by the partisans' ultimate decision not to burn the death squad prisoners alive and mercifully shoot them instead. Also Flyora's decision not to symbolically shoot the baby Hitler.
* IronicEcho: [[spoiler: When Flyora sees the gang-raped girl (which bears a striking resemblance to Glasha), he repeats Glasha's line ("To love, have children...") with their meaning now [[RapeAsDrama horribly]] subverted since she is a catatonic vegetable.]]
* JumpScare: The muted tone of most of the film gives the occasional mine explosion this effect.
* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler: The SS brigade that burned Perekhody is massacred shortly afterwards in an ambush by Kosach's partisans, and their leaders are executed via machine gun fire underneath a railroad bridge]].
* LaserGuidedKarma: The death squad like to burn their victims alive. When they're about to be executed, a partisan insists that shooting is too merciful, so they prepare to burn them alive. At the last moment, several partisans decide to just shoot them anyway.
* LesCollaborateurs: The Nazis are accompanied by Soviet defectors who decided to side with them to avoid being killed. They're treated like [[ButtMonkey punching bags]] by the Nazis and [[spoiler: get executed by the Soviet partisans when they're captured]].
* MagicRealism: Several sequences are implausible and downright surreal, and intentionally so.
* MatureWorkChildProtagonists: It revolves around a boy of about fourteen who joins a group of partisans opposing the Nazis. It's widely considered one of the most disturbing and unflinching portrayals of war and its negative effects ever put to film.
* MercyKill: Rather than PayEvilUntoEvil on the Nazis by [[spoiler: dousing them in gasoline and burning them alive]], the partisans just [[spoiler: shoot them with machine guns]].
* MindScrew: Many scenes have a hallucinatory edge to them. In particular, the final sequence in which [[spoiler: Flyora finds a framed photo of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler in the mud, and begins shooting it, reversing time in archive footage until it rewinds all the way to a photograph of Hitler as a baby. Flyora ultimately decides not to shoot the baby Hitler]].
* MisplacedWildlife: Done intentionally to create a surreal atmosphere. Flyora encounters a stork wandering around the Belarusian woods. Later, the Nazi commander has a pet loris.
* NewMeat: Flyora is just a kid who's never fired a rifle before in his life, and so Kosach assigns him to nonessential tasks like scrubbing cooking pots. Flyora is frustrated and hurt by this because he wants to fight the Germans. It's implied they do this to protect him from the horrors of the war.
* TheNapoleon: The [[NoNameGiven "Little Policeman"]] character is the shortest of all the native SS collaborators. He's also very loud and boastful about his hatred for non-Aryans, which is probably a feeble attempt to [[ProfessionalButtKisser ingratiate himself to the other soldiers]].
* NothingPersonal: [[spoiler: Among the many cards the old Nazi officer tries to pull after he is captured is claiming he has no beef with the Soviets as a people. Predictably, this doesn't work]].
* NotWorthKilling:
** After gang-raping her to their hearts' content, the Nazis just dump a woman on the road, not bothering to finish her off.
** After the Nazis' photo with Flyora, they just walk off and leave him behind. As the death squad marches out the few survivors they've taken prisoner, one last member on a motorcycle spots Flyora collapsed in the burnt-out village. The Nazi kicks him once and snaps, "Hey!" But when Flyora doesn't respond, he simply drives away, not bothering to either force him to join the others or kill him.
* ObliviouslyEvil: The SS-''Sturmbannfuhrer'' sincerely sees himself as an innocent victim of LaResistance.
* OminousFog: The most horrific part of a pretty horrifying movie comes a little more than halfway through when the SS rolls into a village on a misty morning thickly bound with fog.
* TheOphelia: Glasha manages to switch from pretty but unsettling to merely creepy.
* OrchestralBombing: The film uses Mozart to this effect at several points, such as shortly before the Perekhody massacre.
* OrphansOrdeal: When [[spoiler: Flyora tries to reach his mother and sister once again, he finds out his village has been burned down and now he has to provide for himself for good]].
* PaperTiger: The Nazis are terrifying and incredibly brutal when going against unarmed villagers who can't fight back. Then they get drunk and run into LaResistance, who utterly kick their asses.
* PayEvilUntoEvil: {{Subverted|Trope}}. [[spoiler: After the partisans capture the SS commanders, Kosach orders them to be burned alive where they stand, but the assembled partisans simply machine gun them to death instead]].
* PinballProtagonist: Flyora barely affects the plot, instead being bounced from one traumatic event to another as he tries merely to survive the horrors of World War II.
* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Midway through the film, a bomber plane drops leaflets telling local Slavs to kill the "Bolshevik kikes." The antisemitic remarks have no effect on Rubezh. Later a captured SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' goes on an unhinged rant about how some races have no right to exist.
* POVShot: A number of scenes are filmed from the perspective of a character, which goes hand-in-hand with the number of times characters look directly into the camera. The robbery of the collaborating farmer is filmed from Rubezh's perspective. We see his gun extending out from the bottom of the frame.
* PsychologicalHorror: The movie uses sound and disturbing imagery to create an unsettling atmosphere.
* PsychoSupporter: Even compared to the other native SS collaborators, the [[NoNameGiven "Little Policeman"]] character is especially gleeful about reveling in the slaughter of Perekhody's villagers.
* QuicksandSucks: Flyora insists on plunging into a swamp to get to the safety of "the island," but the mud almost consumes them before they reach solid land.
* RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler: Heavily implied to happen to the mother who was dragged away from the barn at the end.]]
* RapePillageAndBurn: This is the whole point of the ''Einsatzgruppen'', who do indeed rape, pillage, burn and then slaughter a whole village.
* RayOfHopeEnding: [[spoiler:Flyora, now [[EmptyShell a thoroughly shell-shocked husk of his former self]], blends into a crowd of his fellow partisans, marching off to fight another battle. However, the patriotic music then swells at this point, indicating that the invaders will eventually be driven back. His refusal to kill baby Hitler shows that while he has lost his innocence, he has retained his humanity.]]
* LaResistance: The Belarusian partisans, led by a Red Army veteran who Glasha is sleeping with. {{Deconstructed|Trope}}, however; even in a 100% justified war with an unambiguously good side fighting for survival against an evil genocidal invader, the war is miserable, dehumanizing and destroys their sanity.
* RightHandCat: The ''Sturmbannfuhrer'' has a pet loris that snuggles his shoulder while he coolly oversees a genocide. The ostentatiousness of the pet makes him even more unlikable.
* SadisticChoice: When the Nazis herd the poor Belarusian villagers into their church and shut them in, [[spoiler: the SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' then calmly gives the villagers a choice -- climb out of the open window if you can, but leave your kids behind to die. Most of them answer only with stubborn silence and stay where they are. The church is burned down.]]
* SanitySlippage: Flyora ''and'' Glasha are both driven to the brink of madness by their experiences.
* SceneryGorn: The result of having WarIsHell depicted through [[DoomedHometown burnt-down villages]], [[DontGoInTheWoods mass killings]] in the woods, [[SwampsAreEvil creepy swamps]] and sudden bombings from the peaceful blue sky.
* ShellShockedVeteran: [[spoiler: By the middle of the movie, twelve-year-old Flyora is one himself.]]
* ShellShockSilence: One of the longest examples in cinema history, after Flyora is caught in a German artillery bombardment.
* SmittenTeenageGirl: Glasha for Kosach. Flyora meets her as she pines away for him in the forest.
* SmugSnake: The ''Obersturmfuhrer'' acts this way when he gives the villagers their [[SadisticChoice ultimatum]], where he's stoic for the most part but he's clearly taking pleasure in torment he's putting them through.
* TheSnackIsMoreInteresting:
** A death squad member drags a Belarussian woman toward a rape-van but pauses so that a buddy can light his cigarette.
** The female member of the death squad watches the slaughter while dining on lobster. A scene later, [[spoiler:she's seen mortally wounded, with streaks of vomit trailing down each side of her mouth]].
* SoleSurvivor: Flyora repeatedly finds himself in this situation; first for his village, then the scouting mission, then for Perekhody.
* SoundtrackDissonance: Used in several scenes, such as when the Nazis blast fun ragtime music as they rape, torture, and murder the people of Perekhody.
* TheSquadette:
** A number of female partisans are visible throughout the film, although none have lines.
** The death squad includes one beautiful woman who spends the massacre casually eating lobster.
* StukaScream: Played straight during the bombing run on the partisan camp. Subverted in a later instance where we hear the distinctive sound of a bomb falling, causing Roubej and Flyora to dive for cover, only for the "bomb" to be an empty whiskey bottle that the German pilot tossed out the window.
* StupidEvil:
** A Nazi plane dumps boxes of leaflets over Belarus with a curt, blunt demand for Slavs to "kill the Bolshevik kikes." Reading the propaganda, the partisan Rubezh just scratches his head wondering why they would go to such trouble to drop such a stupid message.
** The Nazi death squad has a ball getting drunk and razing a village. They then run right smack into a unit of partisans and get slaughtered to a man.
* SurrealHorror: Despite being actually a war film and avoiding to show the most gruesome scenes, it managed to be classified as one of the most horrific films ever for its surrealistic and nightmarish atmosphere in depicting the horrors of war. It even got ranked #76 in the [[http://www.timeout.com/london/film/best-horror-films#tab_panel_3 Time Out 100 Best Horror Films]].
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler: After herding a whole village into a church, the Nazi death squad hurls grenades through the windows, sets fire to the building, unload their machine guns into the building, and then torch the remains with flamethrowers]]. You'd think that this is a waste of resources, but as a death squad, this is exactly their purpose.
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: Implied through some of the film's more surreal touches, like the MisplacedWildlife.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Downplayed with Flyora, as he becomes understandably more sullen and hostile over the course of the film, at one point even attempting to rob an innocent farmer at gunpoint. Despite this, though, he never uses his gun on another human being and ends the film with some of his humanity intact.
* TradingBarsForStripes: During the introductory scene of the [[NoNameGiven "Little Policeman"]] character (when he grabs Flyora's face and throws him to the ground), it's shown ''very'' briefly that [[FreezeFrameBonus his forearms are covered in what look like prison tattoos.]] This implies that he was a criminal of some description who joined the Waffen-SS for opportunistic reasons, not unlike many of the ex-convict collaborators who aided the Dirlewanger brigade in real life.
* TranquilFury:
** The partisan commander Kosach behaves this way toward the captured Germans: his face is cold and calm, but he's very clear that they will ''pay'' for what they've done.
** Flyora reacts with barely-concealed rage when he sees [[WouldHurtAChild the blond SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'']] among the surviving Nazis.
--->"He's the one... He's the one who said: 'Leave the children. You can come out, but not with children.'"
* {{Tsundere}}: Glasha, who mocks and belittles Flyora, but also seems to like him.
* UncertainDoom: It's mentioned that Flyora's father had gone out to fight in the war before him, but he's not seen in the movie himself, and considering the brutality of the war there's a good chance he's not alive any more. Though if he is, it certainly makes Flyora's situation less horrible.
* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler: After he translates the ''Obersturmfuhrer's'' psychotic rant, [[DirtyCoward Gezhel breaks down in tears when he realizes the partisans aren't going to spare him despite his pleas that he's not German]]. Even though those weren't his words, the fact that he willingly took orders from the ''Obersturmfuhrer'' (despite ''being'' one of the "subhumans" in said rant) seals his fate.]]
* VillainsNeverLie: PlayedForHorror, the ''SS-Obersturmfuhrer'' tells the villagers [[spoiler:in the barn that they can escape if they leave their children behind. The two who escape are Flyora and a young mother with her child. The Nazis ''hurl the child back inside'' and drag the woman by the hair to a truck where they do... things to her and dump her on the side of the road afterwards. They also drag Flyora around and hold a gun to his head for a photoshoot, and then just dump him in the middle of the village and go. But Flyora and the woman are alive, though they might wish they weren't.]]
* VillainousValor: A thoroughly unsympathetic case that's PlayedForHorror. The blonde SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' shows no fear when held at gunpoint by the Partisans, expresses disgust for his commander's cowardice, and uses his last breaths to furiously inform his captors that they are an inferior race that has no right to exist. Rather than making him a badass, the intention is more to show him as a rabid dog well beyond any possibility of redemption.
* ViolenceIsDisturbing: Is it ever! Possibly a subversion, though, because surprisingly, for a film like this, there is not much actual violence shown onscreen. Instead, we're shown the reactions to violence, the aftermath of violence, or it cuts away before the violent act takes place. In an interview, the director jokes that if they had shown actual violence, then no one would have wanted to see such a movie.
* WarIsHell: So very much, to the point it's arguably the best example of this trope put to film. What did you expect from a movie that quotes the Apocalypse in its title?
* WhamShot: When Flyora and Glasha begin running away from the village to find his family and the village's residents, Glasha looks back, and sees [[spoiler:a pile of the residents' corpses stacked against the wall of a house. They're only shown briefly, just a few frames too much to be considered a FreezeFrameBonus, which somehow makes it even creepier]].
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
** We don't actually see Glasha at all after Flyora leaves the refugee camp.
** On a much lesser note, what happened to that Nazi's adorable loris?
* WomenAreWiser: [[spoiler:It's a female partisan with a medical armband who fires the first shots on the Nazi prisoners, preventing them from being burned alive and saving the partisans from stooping to the Nazis' level of cruelty]].
* WouldHarmASenior: The elderly of the village of Perekhody aren't spared, but a special mention goes to the Nazis who put an old and senile ''Babushka'' in her bed out in the open and abandon her to her fate. She apparently has no clue what's going on and would almost certainly die of exposure or from wild animals.
* WouldHurtAChild:
** Happens off-screen to [[spoiler: Flyora's twin sisters]].
** The SS go out of their way to murder children, even telling the villagers of Perekhody that they can leave the church unharmed ''as long as they leave their children behind''. When a mother escapes through the window with her young son, they proceed to toss the son back inside and then drag the mother off to be gang-raped. When they are later ambushed, the blonde SS-''Obersturmfuhrer'' proudly proclaims that he targets children because "It's with children that it all begins".
* WouldntHurtAChild: Flyora, in one of the movie's most iconic scenes. [[spoiler:He starts shooting a picture of Adolf Hitler, and each time he shoots, a cut shows the life of Hitler in reverse until it shows him as a baby. Flyora hesitates and decides to not shoot him]].
* WriteWhatYouKnow: The film is based upon upon Ales Adamovich, who had fought with Belorussian partisans as a child soldier, and a documentary filmed about a Belorussian man who had been locked into a burning church by the Nazis, and was only released if he left his children and women behind.
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