Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

John-Kane25 The film portrays the stark contrast between the beauty of the countryside before WWII and the barren and scorched landscape after repeated battles and shelling. Bigger than that is the loss of innocence of a boy referred in script as about age 12. (the actor was age 14 at the time of filming)This movie shows the dark side of war with out the shock factor violence of many of the latest wwII flicks. This is what sets this 'artsy' film apart from others that resort to non stop action. In 'Ivan's Childhood', we see the destruction after it occurs and in contrast to a previous happy dream scene. This gives the dark aspect as much impact as violent scenes would, but perhaps with more time to pause and reflect on it. The trouble with action wwII movies is the latest film tries to top the previous film, until there is so much violence that we become either inoculated to it or numb. As a poetic film, about half of it is told with the film scenes, with only minimal dialogue. The nice part is aside from the main character, Ivan, there are only three other characters with a fair amount of lines. This allows the characters to be fully developed with the fewer dialogue intensive scenes.The poetic scenes in the movie portray certain feelings and sometimes leave room for interpretation to their exact meaning by the individual viewer. Though I found the film to be self explanatory after the 1st viewing.One example is a scene of Ivan and his sister riding in a wagon pulled by a horse. The background trees were shot in negative. Both siblings are at first smiling while eating apples in the rain. Then the camera focuses on Ivan's sister for a closeup. She is smiling but no longer eating an apple. The camera pans to the right which should in reality show the end of the wagon and then just the trees, but instead it pans to the same closeup of his sister. This time she is still happy, but not as much as before. The camera again pans to her right only to to do another quick closeup for the 3rd time. This time she looks slightly sad. The film next cuts to a scene where the wagon is tipped over. All the apples are spilled out along the roadside. It is no longer raining and there are several horses in scene. The closest horse is eating the apples on the ground.To me the scene above signifies a time before the war, when life was plentiful and abundant. His sisters changed mood and then the overturned apples seams to signify the loss of his sister. Perhaps also now a need to forage for food is implied by the overturned cart. Many of the scenes could stand alone without anything being added. The meaning of early scenes comes later as more of the mosaic gets filled in by later revelations in the movie.I think the thing to be aware of with a poetic film is they generally don't always appeal to a wide audience. This movie does not show a single shot being fired, nor a single battle of any kind. An upcoming battle is implied and shots are heard but not seen being fired. Quite a few flares land in the water. There are maybe 6 vehicles and 2 or 3 artillery pieces shown in the entire film. Its definately an atmosphere type film.

Anthony Iessi Just at this very moment, that classic Jim Croce song starts playing in my head as I recall my screening of "Ivan's Childhood". Why is it that Tarkovsky, in nearly all of his films, has a wistfulness of the past, in a way that fogs his narratives so uniquely? After seeing "Mirror", I came to the conclusion that Tarkovsky is a cerebral artist, and much less of an actual filmmaker. For in that film, he used memories that nearly disjointed the entire piece, and eliminated the aspect of time and structure of narrative features. I thought of it, kind of like an Eisenstein montage of the recorded memory. So sitting down to "Ivan's Childhood", I fully expected it to be the same, as most filmmakers of his ilk don't stray from their artistic visions. What a surprise it was to know that the film displayed the best of Tarkovsky's creative vision, under the guise of what seemed to be a classic war picture. Ivan is such a wonderful character. He's a brave little boy, fighting for Russia in the midst of the worst times of WWII. The Nazi's were on the warpath, and everyone had to do their part in fighting to protect themselves from the ongoing threat of fascism. We know how hard Ivan can work to support his military, but he really doesn't want to be there. He'd rather go to sleep and dream of his mother, and the place of his childhood. We see visions of him and his mother, staring down upon a wishing well, or frolicking on a sunny beach. It's that longing sense of innocence and ignorance to the problems of the world. You might say that that's what all Europeans and Russians wished they could escape to during the atrocities of WWII. When it is revealed that his parents were taken away from him, thanks to the evils of the Nazi army, it is clear that this is war he has to fight, regardless of how badly he never wanted to be apart of it. WWII has sucked him in. There is no better understanding of this then the opening scene and long take of him emerging himself into a murky lake as he swims to his military base. The river overtakes him completely, as the main titles appear on screen. Tarkovsky is clearly trying to say something here. He's saying that there is no escape from war, and it forces you deep into the grimy depths of it. Even in the many scenes where he stays in the underground room, it seems even more apparent that he's trapped. Foreboding is the writings of German prisoners on the wall that warn of eventual death.The other characters of the film seem to be just as trapped as poor Ivan. For example, we see another Russian in the army, Captain Kholin, who romances a young Russian army nurse, during an assignment in the woods. The way he lifts her off of the ground and kisses her passionately as his legs splay over a short ditch in the ground seems like a silent cry for help. Even the most ardent of soldiers are desperate to escape this terror of a war. For just a fleeting moment, he wanted someone to fall in love with. When tensions are this high, do you blame him? Wouldn't you rather hold on to a beautiful woman, tight, instead of fighting in a world war? The ending of the picture is quite interesting, and many have analyzed its significance. Some have said that it is a flashback, but I have a different take on it. In retrospect, I thought of this final scene as Ivan making it to heaven, which consists of the happy times of his past. There is just something so touching about the final scene, that despite knowing that Ivan has been killed during war, he must have reached the place of his childhood in the end. He always found comfort in remembering the good times of his youth, and perhaps, let's say, he was sent back there to relive those days forever. The shot of the dead tree on the beach might just prove my point. The dead tree might be a symbol of passing on to the other side, in the midst of all the happiness that we see in the final scene. I genuinely feel, for certain, that Ivan went to heaven, and his memories are heaven to him. "Ivan's Childhood" is a sad story, but an excellent film by Tarkovsky, as he uses his exceptional talent of memories to convey loss and rejuvenation. There's a spirit to a Tarkovsky movie, despite having such a grim exterior. His movies are about life and death, and how we all must cope about our balancing act between the two. Sometimes, all we have is our past to help comfort us about our present.

gabrielferraz6 My review (it's in Portuguese) Plot form Wikipedia: On the Eastern front during World War II, the Soviet army is fighting the invading German Wehrmacht. The film features a non-linear plot with frequent flashbacks.After a brief dream sequence, Ivan Bondarev (Nikolai Burlyayev), a 12- year-old Russian boy, wakes up and crosses a war-torn landscape to a swamp, then swims across a river. On the other side, he is seized by Russian soldiers and brought to the young Lieutenant Galtsev (Evgeny Zharikov), who interrogates him. The boy insists that he call "Number 51 at Headquarters" and report his presence. Galtsev is reluctant, but when he eventually makes the call, he is told by Lieutenant-Colonel Gryaznov (Nikolai Grinko) to give the boy pencil and paper to make his report, which will be given the highest priority, and to treat him well. Through a series of dream sequences and conversations between different characters, it is revealed that Ivan's mother and sister (and probably his father, a border guard) have been killed by German soldiers. He got away and joined a group of partisans. When the group was surrounded, they put him on a plane. After the escape, he was sent to a boarding school, but he ran away and joined an army unit under the command of Gryaznov.Burning for revenge, Ivan insists on fighting on the front line. Taking advantage of his small size, he is successful on reconnaissance missions. Gryaznov and the other soldiers grow fond of him and want to send him to a military school. They give up their idea when Ivan tries to run away and rejoin the partisans. He is determined to avenge the death of his family and others, such as those killed at the Maly Trostenets extermination camp (which he mentions that he has seen).A subplot involves Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) and his aggressive advances towards a pretty army nurse, Masha (Valentina Malyavina), and Galtsev's own undeclared and unrequited feelings for her. Much of the film is set in a room where the officers await orders and talk, while Ivan awaits his next mission. On the walls are scratched the last messages of doomed prisoners of the Germans.Finally, Kholin and Galtsev ferry Ivan across the river late at night. He disappears through the swampy forest. The others return to the other shore after cutting down the bodies of two Soviet scouts hanged by the Germans.The final scenes of the film then switch to Berlin under Soviet occupation after the fall of the Third Reich. Captain Kholin has been killed in action. Galtsev finds a document showing that Ivan was caught and hanged by the Germans. As Galtsev enters the execution room, a final flashback of Ivan's childhood shows the young boy running across a beach after a little girl in happier times. The final image is of a dead tree on the beach.

ohrid This film is a story about a 12 year old boy Ivan, who happened to spend his childhood within the world of Great Patriotic War. He wasn't supposed to be a part of such a cruel occurrence as war, but having lost parents, chose to help his companions-in-arms in risky and crucial way. In my opinion, Andrei Tarkovsky has made more an art house film than just a typical soviet military drama. We don't see cruel battles, we don't see divided by war love, we don't see a war itself after all. All we see is the consequences of the war in theirs different appearances. The objective of this movie is common - to show what gore and sorrow the war is holding. But Tarkovsky shows us this gore and sorrow in an interesting, unusual way, through the eyes of little boy, through his mind and dreams also. A black-and-white sharp and high-contrast shot adds definition and dramatic atmosphere to the picture. There are a lot of really frightening and inappropriate for children scenes in the movie shown by Tarkovsky in order to achieve necessary level of horror that war provides. So I think Andrei Tarkovsky made a great and strong film showing all horror and gore of war in a different style. A am sure, you won't see any familiar to this one military drama, it's totally unique.