Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Criterion Collection, 97 minutes, Black and White, in
Russian with subtitles
★★★★★
Many of the greatest classic films were
made thousands of miles from Hollywood, and their auteur creators never set
foot in California. Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) made nearly all of his films
in the Soviet Union (except for a film completed in Sweden and another begun in
Italy). His heroes were European directors such as Antonioni, Bergman, Chaplin,
Dreyer, Buñel, and Kurosawa. That’s a pretty heady bunch.
Tarkovsky films seldom go down easy.
They are often philosophical musings and some viewers find them painfully slow.
To give but one example, the sci-fi movie Solaris (1972) is probably his
most acclaimed work, though most English-speakers know the story from Steven
Soderbergh’s 2002 remake. Same story, but Tarkovsky’s Solaris is a
whopping 166 minutes in length and Soderbergh’s a mere 98.
All of this is in service of suggesting
that you might wish to ease yourself into Tarkovsky’s oeuvre by starting with
his first film, Ivan’s Childhood. It’s probably his most accessible film
and the closest he got to conventional filmmaking. It’s my favorite; not
because it’s “easy,” but because it is his most humane offering. It takes place
during World War II, as seen through the eyes of Ivan Bondarev (Korlya
Burlyaev), a 12-year-old boy, and Lt. Galtsev (Evgeny Zharikov), one of his
military contacts.
When Ivan’s Childhood was
released in 1962, World War II was just 17 years in the past. That conflict
often gets called “the good war” in the United States and the decade or so that
followed was dubbed “victory culture” by historian Tom Engelhardt. Not so in the
Soviet Union. Of the roughly 75 million war dead, more than a quarter of them
were Russian–far more than the dead of fascist aggressor states of Germany,
Italy, and Japan combined. As we learned after the fall of the USSR, its
economy never really recovered from the war’s devastation.
Tarkovsky gives us several dream
sequences that help us understand young Ivan. Idyllic romps through the
countryside abruptly end as Ivan awakes for a swim across a river in
war-ravaged Mother Russia to make his way to the Russian frontline. He is
sullen, angry, arrogant, and tells Lt. Galtsev that he will speak only to
Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov) or Lt. Colonel Gryaznov (Nikolai Grinko). In
due time we find out that Ivan’s family was murdered by Nazi invaders and that
he has sworn revenge upon the fascists. He has essentially been a free agent spook
since soldiers slew his family and he managed to get away. Ivan also escaped
the military school in which Kholin and others acting as his guardian placed
him, as he wants to return to spying on the Germans. Ivan might be 12 years
old, but it’s an “old” 12 and the only thing childish about him are the temper
tantrums he takes when he is told war is no place for a child.
There is a subplot involving the
rivalry between Kholin and Galtsev for the affections of a comely nurse, Masha
(Valentina Malyavina), who looks like no more than a teen herself. Presumably
Tarkovsky wanted audiences to contemplate how war accelerates “growing up,” as
it were. I shall say no more except that not much that happens is as surfaces
suggest.
Yes, the film is subtitled and yes,
it’s in black and white. It’s also utterly brilliant–one of the better uses of
flashback structure you will see. (That technique bordered on being considered
uniquely innovative at the time.) Cinematographer Vadim Yusov paints the screen
as if grainy old photographs have sprung to life. His shots of Ivan being
ferried across the river and set loose in a swamp have an Edward Gorey-like
creepy quality that would not work in color. Besides, another point of the film
is that war’s devastation drains everything: normality, childhood, emotions,
even color.
How good is this film? How many movies
can you name that won praise from Ingmar Bergman and was reviewed by
Jeal-Paul Sartre? If you don’t think you are an “art” cinema kind of person,
try Ivan’s Childhood. It will leave you shattered.
Rob Weir
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