Overlooked ‘Heavier Than Apocalypse Now’ War Movie Comes as Mads Mikkelsen’s Personal Choice
It’s hard to impress the master of big-screen villainy but this forgotten war movie “horrified” Mads Mikkelsen — of course, he can’t recommend it enough!
Mads Mikkelsen ’s name is synonymous to the greatest movie villains of all time. The Danish actor is notorious for his captivating and terrifying portrayals of unhinged yet sophisticated characters that stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Mikkelsen indulges in heavy topics and hard-to-watch films, but sometimes, a picture can be too much even for him — that’s how he knows it’s brilliant.
Mads Mikkelsen’s Unlikely Movie of Choice
People are always curious what their favorite movie stars’ favorite movies are, and Mads Mikkelsen shared his Top 5 with A.frame. Most of the Hannibal actor’s selections are well-familiar to the American audience: Taxi Driver (1976), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Dekalog (1989), and Apocalypse Now (1979). Okay, Dekalog is also quite niche, but you get the picture.
Yet Mads Mikkelsen’s fifth all-time favorite picture is a criminally overlooked war movie coming straight from the Soviet Union. This 1985 film is so unbearably hard to watch that few people managed to not pick up smoking after those life-changing 2 hours and 22 minutes, and here’s what Mikkelsen himself had to say about it.
Come and See Is a Devastating Movie
In 1985, Soviet director Elem Klimov released his iconic war drama Come and See. In 2017, it won the Venice Film Festival Award as Best Restored Film, but otherwise, remained largely unknown to the American audience. Come and See follows a young Belorussian boy who joins the Resistance during World War II against his family’s will and, after finding his village massacred, struggles with his new reality.
“[A] film I won’t watch too many more times in my life — because it’s even heavier than Apocalypse Now — is Come and See. <...> It’s an absolute masterpiece, and it’s something that not a lot of people have seen. It’s very hard to watch, and it’s not aiming to be. There’s just something about the way they made it. It’s not to shock us, but it does horrify you. It’s a fantastic film,” Mads Mikkelsen shared.
Come and See has stellar 90 and 96% Critic and Audience Scores on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, and an 8.4/10 IMDb score. The Critics Consensus on RT claims that “as effectively anti-war as movies can be, Come and See is a harrowing odyssey through the worst that humanity is capable of.”
It’s one of those movies that, though barely bearable to watch, are a must-watch.
Source: A.frame