Iwans Kindheit

The first full-length feature film by the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky caused a sensation when it was released and shown at Venice Film Festival in 1962 where it won the Golden Lion. The world had not seen such a powerful motion picture about war and what it does to the youngest and weakest - the children. It is a bleak, haunting and horrifying portrait of lost innocence and the childhood that was interrupted the very day the boy's family was murdered. Although Ivan survived physically, he was changed forever, not a boy but a man who looked in the eye of triumphant death and horror. The film introduces young Nikolai (Kolya) Burlyaev in the fascinating performance as Ivan. "Ivan's Childhood" is a screen adaptation of the story by a Russian writer Vladimir Bogomolov "Ivan" which is a fiction story but it is based on the real facts. Millions young boys and girls perished during the endless days, months, and years of the worst war of the last century. Bogomolov fought as a soldier during the WWII. He was only 15 years old but he had forged his papers - added two years, dropped from his school and joined the Army. He had been seriously wounded three times but survived and finished the war in Berlin - the 19 year old soldier with six medals for courage and heroism. He was a very good writer and I love his books "Moment of Truth" ("In the August of 1944"), and "Zosya" that were also adapted to very good movies in Russia.

Like most films of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, My Name is Ivan (a.k.a. Ivan's Childhood), reaches out to the spirit within us. Based on a short story titled "Ivan" by the Russian author Vladimir Bogomolov, My Name is Ivan is a bleak but deeply moving film about a 12-year old boy whose parents and sister were killed by the Germans and is now a scout (spy) for a Red Army battalion. Alternating between idyllic dreams of childhood, nightmares of revenge, and scenes of war devastation, Tarkovsky creates a uniquely personal exploration of the effects of war on the mind and spirit.

My Name is Ivan is set on the eastern front during World War II. Ivan's (Nikolai Burleyayev) size allows him to slip behind enemy lines and obtain vital strategic information about German positions for the Russians. Burleyayev, who later portrayed Boriska in the bell sequence in Andrei Rublev, gives a truly amazing performance as young Ivan. As the film opens, Ivan wakes up jarringly from a poetic dream of his mother and finds himself in the attic of an empty windmill. Dodging enemy fire, he swims across a muddy swamp to reach a Russian bunker where the ranking officer, Lieutenant Galtsev (Yevgeni Zharikov), questions his credentials.

Ivan is short-tempered and speaks to the Russian commanders with bravado unusual for someone of his age. The officers, however, take an interest in Ivan's welfare and provide him with love and protection. When they plan to send him to a military school, Ivan demands to be sent back to the front, seeking to revenge his parent's death. Unable to persuade his superiors, Ivan runs away but finds only desolation and returns to camp. Despite the officers' objections, Ivan is sent on another covert operation.

Tarkovsky shows us war but without bombs or glory or battle scenes -- only the suffering spirit of a child devastated by loss. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more an internal map of Ivan's mind. Haunted by the demons of approaching death, he seems to become emotionally inert. Tarkovsky said about the film (as quoted in amazon.com): "I attempted to analyze the condition of a person who is being affected by war. When personality is disintegrating then we have the collapse of the logical development, especially when we are dealing with the personality of a child. I always conceptualized Ivan as a destroyed personality pushed by the war from the normal axis of development."

Though an early film, Ivan presages Tarkovsky's later work with the use of hallucinatory camera work and very long takes where nothing happens for several minutes. Using dream sequences of normal life juxtaposed with mud-splattered reality, the film is suffused with an air of melancholy and longing. In a memorable dream sequence (supposedly lifted from Dovzhenko's "Earth") Ivan and his sister ride in a cart loaded with apples, in the words of Gregory Pearce, "reawakens within us the longing for the lost purity of childhood". This is one casualty of war not counted in the statistics.

(***** out of *****)

Ivan's Childhood is Tarkovsky's debut feature film about a 12 year old boy who volunteers to fight in the front lines against the German invasion because his family where murdered by Nazis. His size and height make him the perfect spy for the Russians as he slides his way across muck and swamp to bring back vital information about the German offence that no other man can achieve. At the same time his commanding officers object to this boy being used as a tool of war but have no control over the matter because of Ivan's convictions to bring down those that killed his parents.

Shot in beautiful monochrome the camera never ceases to capture nature, religion, dreams and love - all of which are major elements in any Tarkovsky film. This motion picture is one of the most stunning independent movies you will ever see.

Sometimes Ivan cries like the child he is but this is not because of the burden of war but because he can not do what he wants most - to avenge the death of his family. Other times he is like a General in the making - standing up to his commanders, spitting orders back at them, making other soldiers look pale in comparison and walking into the fray without any fear attached. The dichotomy of his fractured personality is evident the most when he is alone. One moment he is dreaming of his mother, the next he is stalking the ghost of a Nazi murderer in the room where he sleeps (which is one of the most disturbing scenes in this film).

The final sequence in the ruins of Berlin fully brings home the impact of the film's premise. This is a story about Ivan's Childhood and that is exactly what you get. Heart wrenching from the first frame to the last and never equalled. To think this was all made in 1962! Shocking cinema at its very best.

"Childhood of Ivan" is not only about Ivan's life but it stands as a symbol for the many Russian lives shattered by the war. This is an elliptical film, that is, it doesn't reveal everything - it suggests.

"Childhood of Ivan" requires the use of your brain and imagination, but it is in no way a difficult film. Once you accept not understanding everything right now, just relax and follow the images and sounds and you are ready for the "Childhood of Ivan".

As I said before the film uses many ellipses to show Ivan's fractured life - he plays in the fields, his mother calls him and smiles; a water well, he stares down at the water and his mother stands beside him and tells a story about the stars; we hear a gun shot, someone lying on the grass; Ivan is wading through a swamp to reach a soviet army unit.

The war is not shown at all - it is suggested. We only see the enemy soldiers once for a brief moment. And two hanged men is all there is to denounce the carnage of the war. The rest is suggested by unfinished speeches, by faces where pain is followed right after by the desire to live and be happy......

Ivan's memories: His mother, his sister and their games, the beach, the sea and the rain, his captivity - his life, a broken life. Nothing remained for him in life but to fight - to fight against the enemy that had taken everything from him.

I repeat that "Childhood of Ivan" is not a partisan film, it doesn't try to demonize the adversaries. I would call it much more an intimist film, somewhat in the vein of "Les Jeux Interdits", but Ivan's childhood was over after the horrors he had to go through; his only way to survive as a human being was to fight the horror that had crippled his life, while the children of "Les Jeux Interdits" went on with their children games in spite of the war. France, because of her fast surrender, was preserved from the butchery inflicted on the Soviet Union.

I recommend this film to everyone who wants to see a paradoxically sad, beautiful, reflexive and passionate film.

This film by Tarkovsky depicts the story of Ivan, a child partisan in the eastern front during the second world war. The strength and immersion of the film are quite amazing, although it was made almost forty years ago it has not lost any of it's power and is still absolutely gripping. The dream sequences are especially powerful in the way they show the history and state of mind of the young Ivan.

The acting is very good and so are all the other aspects such as editing and cinematography that is exceptionally good. Overall the film is an example of directorial excellence, from a very simple story Tarkovsky is able to build a larger history with obvious references to christianity. Questions about humanity and the nature of humankind are in the center of this film and there are many reasons why this is one of the best war films that exist.