Ivan's Childhood Reviews

[Highly rated reviewer]

Russian cinema has produced two masters of the medium in my view: Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky. The rest is a barren desert of mediocre and uninteresting work. It's extraordinary to think that this is a first film so rich and mature is it in all aspects of cinema: the story, direction, acting and production all gel to produce a masterwork. While all the horror of war is portrayed without sensationalisation the humanity of a struggling people shines through. It is dismaying to think that the fate of many small boys in Russia in the Second World War is repeated today in the Middle East and Iraq. It is the ordinary people that suffer most in these conflicts. When will we learn to live at peace with each other.

amazing cinema

Absolute stunning photography and a story about a boy scouting for the Russians against the Germans giving such a perfect performance that most adult actors could learn from it. Obviously made for propaganda purposes along with the accompanying documentaries, whitewashing the previous alliance with Germany and the atrocities committed by Russian troops but worth seeing.

worth the effort

it's not the most exciting script and certainly dictated by the political realities of film making in russia in the sixties but it is on every other level directorial genius. war shot as a beautiful horror. it will haunt you.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Tarkovksy's début, but it's all there

Although apparently quite different from other works by Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky - it has a coherent plot, for one thing - just about everything that was to come is present here. The blasted landscapes and dripping no-man's lands of 'Stalker'; the idea of family (Ivan has lost his, but equally found another one among the officers of the Soviet army, each trying to outdo the others in protecting him) that powered 'Solaris'; the concept of giving up one's safety for the greater cause (Ivan would rather stay at the front than be sent to military school) that was central to 'The sacrifice'. I feel there is a great tension, in fact, between the director's manner, which is very studied, full of beautiful, carefully crafted, formal compositions, and the more conventional, genre-driven demands of the narrative, a tension which the film never quite resolves. The dream sequences, in which Ivan remembers life with his family, are particularly indicative of this: clearly idealised and fantasticated, they play in obvious opposition to the grimness of the war, a lost territory which Ivan, as we see at the end, will never recover. The gleaming, limpid cinematography remains in the mind, caught, like everything else, between two things, here the beauty and the brutality. It's almost a great film, pregnant with talent but Tarkovsky needed complete freedom to achieve the fullness of his art.

(The interviews with cast members on the DVD are particularly valuable for those who, like me, adore Tarkovsky's work).

A Different Look at the Soviet Union

Everyone should watch this movie if it is only for the young actor who plays Ivan! Pleasure in being alive in a peaceful Springtime Russia contrasts with real fear in his eyes as WWII (or the Great Patriotic War) takes a grip on his young life. The supporting cast is brilliant, bringing out the boredom as well as the horror of war.

The film is in black and white and is all the better for it. It has been restored beautifully.

Don't watch this film if you don't want to be moved or upset but do watch it for the beauty and the humanity of it.

Film at its best

I loved it.It's almost not acting and the easy or not so easy switch into dreamy and surreal sequences. The imagery in black and white is just spectacular. As for the insight and tension; quite amazing.

great!!!

if you're up for foreign films so definitly go for this subtle and sharp masterpiece.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A Masterpiece

Wonderfully filmed - very sad story - superb child actor. What more can be said about such a masterpiece.

The additional material was very interesting too

Ivan has a terrible time

A not wholly successful outing for the impenetrable Tarkovsky, even though undoubtedly one of his most accessible films - by a long chalk.

Some aspects work wonders - the opening sequences, for instance, contrasting the idyllic dreamy mood of Russia before the Nazi invasion, when children could be children, with the apocalyptic landscape of wartime, when Ivan's childhood is long over.

But other sequences - particularly with the "love interest" - drag, and the film comes alive truly only when Ivan (an amazing performance by a child-actor) is on screen.

As an antidote to Hollywood heroics, this is a powerful piece, but somehow it just fails to pack the punch it promises in its early sequences.

Stark reality

this must be one of the best films ever made.

Poetic,dark,stunning,.

By a highly underexposed director i believe it to also be the best war film ever composed, capturing the ruthless,cruel,futility and inhumanness of war.

Masterly