Iwans Kindheit (1962)

Iwans Kindheit: Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Eduard Abalov. With Nikolay Burlyaev, Valentin Zubkov, Evgeniy Zharikov, Stepan Krylov. During WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.

“Ivanu0026#39;s Childhood, Andrei Tarkovskyu0026#39;s first substantial feature as director (he previously made a short of the Killers, and a 45 minute student film), is a near-masterpiece of adolescence shredded to pieces in subjective perception. Itu0026#39;s set in world war 2, with 12 year old Ivanu0026#39;s family killed by the Nazis and his alliance with the Russian soldiers as a scout able to sneak past into small spaces more to do with vengeance than real patriotism. By the time we see him heu0026#39;s a torn figure, someone who at 12 looks and acts like heu0026#39;s already come of age, by force, and that this deep down has left him in a disparaging state of mind, pushing it away through temper (he wonu0026#39;t go to military school, he tells his superiors), and only with the slightest escape through dreams. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut in these dreams heu0026#39;s also tormented by his past, in fragments that hint to the psychological trauma through abstractions, of a splash of water hitting across the dead body of his mother while Ivan is at the bottom of a well, or in the natural and happy surroundings of a truck carrying fruits. One sees in this the only spots of innocence left in Ivanu0026#39;s life, the pinnacle (and one of Tarkovskyu0026#39;s most breathtaking scenes ever filmed) the final dream on the beach with Ivan and his sister running along the sand. In this nature, smiling faces, the filtering of the background of the forest, Ivanu0026#39;s Childhood is starkly incredible.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe u0026#39;realu0026#39; world as depicted, to be sure, is jagged, torn apart, in dark marshes and forests and with trenches dug for a long while and flares and cannon fire always in the air. It seems almost not to be entirely real, or as real as should be 100% truthful to battlefronts. But itu0026#39;s also, for the most part (sometimes it shifts to the adult soldiers like Kholin and Galtzev), through Ivanu0026#39;s point of view, and so this world around him that is ripped to shreds and bullet-strewn and deadened is amplified a little. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThereu0026#39;s a curious, evocative scene where Ivan, left alone in a dark floor of a house with a flashlight, goes around looking at the messages scribbled frantically as final notes from partisans, and it veers in-between dream and reality, where it could go either way depending on Ivanu0026#39;s mental state, as fragile as his physical condition. He finally bursts into tears, exhausted. Itu0026#39;s this wild meddling with what Ivan sees or experiences or thinks and secretly fears through his would-be tough exterior that makes him so compelling and heartbreaking, as played by Kolya Burlyayev with a sharp level of bravery- not even Jean-Pierre Leaud was this absorbing, albeit on different dramatic terrain.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s a given that it was not Tarkovskyu0026#39;s project to start with, and, ala Kubrick and Spartacus, came in after a director had been let go to finish the picture. While it is remarkable to see how Tarkovsky does make it his vision, and quite an ambitious one considering how expansive the production design gets and the technical daring taken with his director of photography Vadim Yusov, and how thereu0026#39;s a fresh and often original (eg dream scenes, placement of the camera, the scene in the post-war house looking at the records of the departed) perspective that no one else would have given it, there are small parts of the story that could have been dealt with a little better, edited, or cut out altogether. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe character of Masha (played practically with one expression- practically cause of the moment after she is kissed- on her face) is a little unnecessary, or rather more of a means for Tarkovsky to practice some technical ideas in the forest scene, which really leads nowhere, and how her reemergence later in the film also doesnu0026#39;t serve much of a purpose. Maybe thereu0026#39;s a point to be made about women in the army at the time, as sheu0026#39;s an object of desire less much of an effective nurse, but when seeing her scenes (which arenu0026#39;t bad exactly) one wants to get back to Ivan and the central plot.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut, as mentioned, one has to know that as a Tarkovsky picture what doesnu0026#39;t work doesnu0026#39;t matter so much as what does, and Ivanu0026#39;s Childhood is often staggering in its depiction of the brutality on the mind and consciousness, not just through Ivan but through his adult counterparts, and about how in a time when life can be taken away in an instant, almost without a sound, clinging to a past, however surreal, is all that can matter. Thereu0026#39;s truths reached about the devastation of war on the young, and those who care for them, that wouldnu0026#39;t be in a more naturalistic setting, and itu0026#39;s Tarkovskyu0026#39;s triumph that he steers it into the realm of a consistent, poetic nightmare narrative.”