ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Ploydsge just watch it!

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

lasttimeisaw Tarkovsky's legitimate first feature film, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD walked off with the Golden Lion in Venice, an honor shared with Valerio Zurlini's FAMILY PORTRAIT (1962). At the age of 30, Tarkovsky extraordinarily implements his stupefying aesthetic tack to the hilt, the film can sweep any new audience off their feet tout court, and sends out a biting anti-war message with soul- pulverizing poignancy.WWII, Eastern front, our hero is a 12-year-old scrawny Russian boy Ivan (Burlyaev), who is left bereft and hell-bent in his reconnaissance vocation urged by an inexorable impulse of avenging, the front-line is not a place for child, Colonel Gryaznov (Grinko) intends to send him to a military school (and adopt him when the war is over), but Ivan is already a fearless soldier in defiance of his gaunt figure, after having prematurely experienced a baptism of fire out of man-made atrocity, which entirely traumatizes his child-like innocence, there is no propaganda whitewashing in his characterization, he is brusque to his senior comrades, reckless in his intent to stay on, and holds a skeptical world-view jarringly incommensurate with his age. That is what war can afflict an innocent child, changes him into an anomaly. Ivan is pestered by dreams of his past, the ephemeral peaceful time with his mother (Tarkovsky's wife Irina) and his younger sister, both perished along with his father. Mesmerizing shots and distinct compositions bombard audience in glut: a slam-bang swooping take strafing not far off his mother; the diagonal angle is scintillatingly deployed to eviscerate the shambolic and dilapidated state of affairs; a striking framing gimmick magnificently transpires when Ivan and his mother gaping into a well, and the camera looks towards them from under, which generates an ineffably magical vision contends to be the tenderest moment in this war-torn living hell. Also unforgettable is the camera-work's sublime attribute of foregrounding its close-ups and often pensive portraiture, which plays up the supreme chiaroscuro, second to none in its expressiveness and legerdemain, like the haunting imagery of the marshland during the last mission of Ivan and his companions, the young Lieutenant Galtsev (Zharikov) and Captain Kholin (Zubkov). Tarkovsky doesn't even for once, avail himself of point-blank combat - the modus operandi of warfare movies to grant a direct outlook of thrill and terror, because in his insightful and humanistic philosophy, a more horrifying and excruciating scourge is the pervading trepidation hovering around before the blood-letting, it gnaws under one's skin but downright ineradicable, and progressively it becomes inimical to the soundness of mind. The plot is being expectedly downplayed in favor of its atmospheric richness. The sub-plot digression into Kholin's imprudent flirtation with a young army nurse Marsha (Malyavia) conveys a faint discomfiture of carpe diem expedient, a knock-on aftermath under such extreme circumstances. Ivan never reaches his adulthood, all he has is a stunted childhood that he could only embrace during his slumbers, Burlyaev remarkably liberates Ivan's unceremonious singularity with both acerbity and compassion, and, it goes without saying, everyone looks more stylishly stark under Tarkovsky's exquisite mise-en-scène. A ground-breaking feature debut, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD wrestles gallantly with its unsettling subject and takes the risk to corroborate a somewhat inaccessible ideology in contrast with most patriotic offerings of its era, after all, what can a new viewer say after stumbling upon this time-tested masterwork? Just to be dazed and amazed!

t-viktor212 I read the plot synopsis, and thought - this will be a good Tarkovskij WWII movie! - remembering Andrei Rublev's Tartars attack scene.Then I watched it, and realised that I saw a movie about war without seeing war. There's a lot of the post-war destruction, that was very well shot as well, but no war action at all, if we don't consider the opening and near-the-ending sneaking around. The movie focuses of course on a child soldier, that is angry at Germans whom supposedly destroyed his family, and how he grows up, though his fate is tragic. This movie enlights on an aspect we don't really see of war in war movies, from a perspective and in a setting we don't really see often, and does it outstandingly.Yet I've put the lowest rating I gave to a Tarkovskij film. That's because it doesn't have that sort of thing other reviewers call "Poetry" Other Tarkovskij films have: even if I could enjoy this better than Nostalghia or Sacrifice, those film had much more messages to tell. But, still, I consider "outstanding" all the films I rate over 8.

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.

sule kalmis Last weekend, I watched 5 movies of Tarkovski based on the advice of a close and highly intellectual friend. I understood that most of the Hollywood war movies got inspirations from this movie. I recognized that actors looked at the camera directly for a couple of times but it did not disturb me much. i admired the child actor, he has given both the adult soldier role and a simple child role very perfectly. In this movie, the women actor had too much act. I mean, this is something I recognized in almost all movies of Tarkovski movies I watched so far: The selected female actors have overdone their roles in showing their emotions. I cannot say all actors were very natural and professional. I liked the movie anyway. the last scene was very touchy.