Analysis Of The Film 'Ivan's Childhood'

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Ivan’s Childhood (Иваново детство), released in 1962, marked the debut of great film director Andrei Tarkovsky. In his book, Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky describes his experience of creating Ivan’s Childhood as a sort of “qualifying examination.” He viewed the process as an opportunity to determine whether or not he might find success as a director, one that might allow him an unfettered opportunity to explore his own aesthetic ideals. Ivan’s Childhood is a war film, but breaks from the conventional propaganda mold that dictates a glorification of war. Based on the novel by Vladimir Bogomolov, Tarkovsky’s film instead details the utter torment of war through an exploration of the psychological effect war has on the film’s protagonist, twelve year old Ivan. Tarkovsky’s Ivan is no war hero. Rather, he is a victim, irreparably scarred by the death of his loved ones at the hands of the Germans. Ivan’s splintered psychological state is shown though four dream sequences and one nightmarish daydream, shifting the story’s emphasis from a depiction of the external reality of war to an exploration of Ivan’s internal mental state.
While the third dream is the most elaborate, and the opening dream is the first to introduce the stark contrast between Ivan’s idyllic dreamworld and horrific reality, the second dream is arguably the most stylistically significant. Certainly, it is the most visually consistent with Tarkovsky’s later pieces. The second dream is seamlessly integrated with the preceding scene, during which Ivan falls asleep in the bunker after returning from a mission. The camera pans across the room before dropping to the floor, sweeping over Ivan’s shoes and scattered pieces of firewood. The shot then cuts to a clos...

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... is Tarkovsky’s concentration on temporality, memory, and dream, as well as his use of extended shots of scenery and periods of stillness as methods by which to evoke poetic associations. Ivan’s Childhood sees Tarkovsky’s classic deviation from linear sequentiality and movement beyond conventionally coherent logic.
Tarkovsky’s quintessential emphasis on nature seems to center most heavily around the image of trees in this film. There exist two woods that serve as central locations of the film: the river forest and the white birch tree grove. The two stand in stark contrast to one another; while the former is sinister and ominous, the latter is light and unsullied by war. The river forest is dreary and muddy, the landscape surrounding it non-vegetative,
Beyond the scenes that take place in the woods, there seems to be a tree in some form in nearly every shot.

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