Ivanovo Detstvo
DIRECTED BY: Andrei Tarkovsky
FEATURING: Nikolay Burlyaev, Evgeniy Zharikov, Valentin Zubkov, Valentina Malyavina
PLOT: A twelve-year old war orphan serves as a scout for the Russian army, repeatedly sneaking over the border to report on German troop positions.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: In his debut film, Andrei Tarkovky’s work isn’t yet confidently weird enough, although his decision to wrap this Soviet war drama in dreamy melancholic flashbacks (in stark contrast to the aesthetics of Socialist realism ) was a strong signal of the pioneering direction he would be taking.
COMMENTS: In many ways Ivan’s Childhood is Andrei Tarkovky’s most conventional work; it’s in a recognizable genre (the war drama) without obscure philosophizing, it’s of a “normal” length (compared to his epic works), and, since the director had not yet begun his experiments with minimalism and ultra-long takes, the pacing is comfortable. There are four dream sequences, but they are all idyllic and tasteful, nothing that would alienate the average moviegoer. So, if you have a friend who is intimidated by slow-paced, three-plus hour philosophical epics like Stalker or Solaris, or if you yourself just want to start in the kiddie end of the Tarkovsky pool, Ivan is the go-to movie. Although it’s stylistically gentler than his later movies, that’s not to say that this debut film is intellectually shallow or atypical of the maestro’s output: all of Tarkovsky’s intelligence and poetry is already on display here. Themes from future masterpieces—the preeminence of the dream, the symbolism of water, careful use of ambiguity—all make their first appearance in Ivan. Anchored by a gritty performance by young Nikolay Burlyaev, who straggles into a base camp half-starved and starts ordering a lieutenant around with the arrogance only a kid can muster but has the right touches of tearful vulnerability at key moments, the story has an easy-to-locate moral and emotional center. Ivan’s childhood has been taken from him by the war. For the most part the wartime scenes are dingy and dark, set in trenches or dirty bunkers. Even the river, the boundary of Russian and German territory Ivan sneaks across the border under cover of darkness, is shot mostly at night, turning it into a cemeterial swamp lined by dead trees. Ivan’s dreams of lost childhood, by contrast, are bright and airy, full of spiderwebs and butterflies and stars that shine from out of wells. Even a ride on a horse-drawn apple cart during a thunderstorm is shot in a negative image so that the shadowy forest glows around the boy. The film’s rhythm of pleasant dream interrupted by gunfire and the call to duty is effective. A relationship between the nurse Masha and Kholin, one of the three officers who together serve as Ivan’s surrogate fathers, interrupts the boy’s story, but is an interesting aside. When the older man catches the dark beauty alone in a copse of white birches, and it isn’t entirely clear whether the dance the two characters engage in is a prelude to seduction or rape. Masha, the only female in the army with a platoon of potential suitors, seems frightened by his commanding demeanor and probing questions; their relationship is never resolved, but the scene develops a great, nervous erotic tension that provides us perspective on an adult world beyond what Ivan knows. His boyhood is inevitably destroyed by the war, but Tarkovsky finds a way to send Ivan off to a heaven thinly disguised as a dream. The ending is one of the enigmatic, just-oblique-enough to pass the censors spiritual moments for which Tarkovsky became famous. Vadim Yusov’s brilliant, fluid black and white camerawork adds immensely to the successful debut of a great cinema talent.
Tarkovsky was given the chance to complete this movie, based on a short story by Vladimir Bogomolov, after another director had failed. Tarkovsky rewrote the script from scratch, adding the dream sequences over the Bogomolov’s objections. Valentina Malyavina, the actress who played Masha, would later serve nine years in prison for murdering a fellow actor.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
I don’t think this is Tarkovsky’s debut film. I don’t know the history, but I have just watched “The Steamroller & the Violin,” which is billed as being earlier and is much more conventional than this film. (Also not very interesting.)
But, hey, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this film. It is very un-Tarkovsky. I think a lot of my enjoyment was derived from the level of intensity Tarkovsky elicited from his very young protagonist. Child actors are historically a mixed-bag, but Tarkovsky makes the most of a young man having to carry the movie through some very tough scenes.
It did make me curious about the female soldier seduction scene. It’s an amazing scene. The use of the background of trees as a filmic set-up is fantastic. The scene where the soldier grabs and kisses her while astride a trench is a fantastic image. The downside of that is the entire scene seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Beautifully filmed, essentially pointless.
I’m guessing that this was Tarkovsky’s training film. “Ivan’s Childhood” was where he really learned his vocation and found his stride. An essential set-up for what followed.
All of that said, “Ivan’s Childhood” is a good movie. I can say I was never bored watching it, which is something I can’t say for Tarkovsky’s later, better movies.
True, Ivan is not technically Tarkovsky’s debut film—it’s his debut feature. The Steamroller and the Violin was a short (46 minute) and a student film—basically his graduation project. It’s a matter of semantics, of course.
Agreed that the seduction sequence was great, but self-contained. The only point is to supply insight into Kholin’s character, but it’s a little bit clumsy.