lifesoboring I am going to be a bit harsh on this film, but it's perfectly alright because I invested the 90 minutes in watching it and I felt that I received no payoff. The adjectives I can think of to describe it are: Depressing. bleak, grim and boring. Plus I did not care about the characters. Now I shall read other reviews and see what makes people praise it.

Matthew Luke Brady Ivan's Childhood (Ivanovo Detstvo) is everything that I love about cinema. The cinematography, the direction, the unique transmissions and the atmosphere are what makes this war film like no other. I would describe this as a sinister fairy tale with a sense of poetry. What makes this even more impressive is that this is Andrei Tarkovsky first major film and we already got our first taste of Tarkovsky haunting vision.Nikolai Burlyayev is one of the best child actors I've ever seen in a movie. He completely blew me away in this, as he is the one that delivered all the hard hitting emotions that happens around him. It's pretty heartbreaking to witness shell shock from a young boy.This is definitely worth seeing. It's absolutely unmissable.

Andres Salama Andrei Tarkovksy's first feature film (excluding his shorts), about a boy named Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) working behind enemy lines as a military spy during World War II after being made an orphan by the Germans, is his most conventional film, though that hardly makes the film a conventional war movie. It includes a non linear narrative, dream sequences, documentary footage of the battle of Berlin, and many poetic images, mostly of Russian nature or of the pre war Ivan playing with his now dead mother (the remarkable black and white cinematography was by Vadim Yusov). The movie also includes good secondary characters, including the nurse Masha (Valentina Malyavina, who looks a bit like Tatiana Samoilova in The Cranes are Flying). The movie best scene has an officer who has pursued Masha romantically kissing her in a birch forest while holding her over a deep trench.

Pavan Bhat If one were to break down a life span of a human into distinct phases, childhood would certainly be one of the most prominent phases of one's life. Andrei Tarkovsky has conveyed exactly the same message through his first feature, Ivan's Childhood. This is a beautiful rendition of the protagonist Ivan's childhood, a childhood that cannot be possibly recaptured in all its glory. The story has a non-linear plot and has a surreal and almost dreamlike representation of Ivan's memories and experiences. The traumatic experiences, especially those memories of Ivan's parents and sister murdered by German soldiers have a strong bearing on Ivan's mind, as he is fueled by the desire to take revenge against his perpetrators. The traumatic experiences have such a strong impression on his mind, that he no longer fears the strong possibility of death. He volunteers as a spy for the Russian Army, determined to find the light of the day against the injustices he has faced. Despite much hesitation by the generals at the Russian HQ against his enrollment initially, he manages to persuade the head-honchos at the Russian HQ to finally accept his services as a spy. Every frame in this film tries to weave a story. Tarkovsky's realist approach in terms of portrayal of childhood trauma is evident from his shot-taking. The realist approach juxtaposed with dream sequences and surreal representations of longing are the unique features of this film. Ivan, who is now on the forefront of the Russian platoon, on its mission to vanquish the German Army, finds himself of great help to the Russians due to his small size and agility. The vast barren landscapes and the war-torn areas portrayed in the film are nothing but an overt externalization of the people's memories and trauma in general, and Ivan's memories and trauma in specific. One of the most famous shots of the film is where Ivan is seen in the frame all alone with sharp spikes left behind after a war scene, all pointing towards Ivan, almost as if to indicate that the mind has entangled the poor boy and is trying to consume Ivan in whole. The ramshackle state of Ivan's mind has been beautifully externalized by swampy marshes portrayed in the film. The most interesting aspects of the film though are the initial and final dream sequences. The initial dream sequence shows how the free spirit of mind (in this case, Ivan's mind) can turn into his own adversary, by falsely implanting a happy thought that he might have shared with his mother. But the truth be told, the mind does not comprehend it to be a reality anymore, thereby taking evasive shape as a 'nightmare'. The never-ending possibility of the outcome of memories projected by the mind are portrayed by the long pine tree shown at the beginning of the film as the crane goes up to quite a substantial height to finally reveal the already tiny stature of Ivan. The final dream sequence, however, is on a contemplative note, where Ivan is seen running behind a small girl. It is probably a deliberate ploy adopted by Andrei Tarkovsky as it has the potential to convey many things at the same time. Longing, the desire to recollect one's lost childhood, lost fragments of a mind, a man chasing after his dreams or simply his desires. What is heart-wrenching though is the fact that Ivan dies without ever realizing or experiencing any of life's gifts. Also noteworthy is the inclusion of two other distinct dream sequences which refer to fragments of Ivan's memories, which Ivan particularly yearns for. Tarkovsky's obsession with incessant portrayal of nature is pretty evident, with focus predominantly on the various nuances of nature. Conscious decisions to use different faces on nature to represent different forms of human emotions is the forte of this masterpiece, which puts it in the same league as some of his later works, like Stalker and some of Bergman's and Kurosawa's films. Tarkovsky's portrayal of human emotions has defined a new style of film making, with many filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman acknowledging his style of contemplative film making. Persistent images of childhood resonate with the need or desire to familiarize with the deepest and darkest recesses of the mind. Hence, the images in this particular film are totally reminiscent of the hidden chambers of the various aspects of the mind which accentuate the need to empathize or sympathize with certain people or their lives' happenings.