Popular reviews

• 

  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½

  impressions of war. Tarkovsky's first tinkerings with time... florid, free-floating psychological imprints serving to underscore the banality of real-world war. 4 dreams bound by 1 nightmare. formative work from a hired gun, but masha hanging above the trenches and the well to the stars point towards a career that would ascend to worlds unknown.

  can't imagine it's a happy accident that Criterion is re-releasing this and THE TIN DRUM in the same month. echoes abound.

• 

  Review by Dirk Diggler ★★★★★ 17

  A devastating, poetic and heart-wrenching depiction of war and loss of innocence. There are no battle scenes, all we experience is the consequences of war: one moment Ivan is taking or making commands and works like a soldier, the next he's dreaming of his childhood with his mother. Its a very simple film, but there's such a strength and power underneath because of the direction, cinematography and its atmosphere. The shot of Ivan sleeping with the camera then sweeping away and looking up the well, where Ivan and his mother are standing, was one of the most beautiful dream transitions i've seen. But there are endless beautiful and haunting moments in this film, especially the low-angle kiss shot, Ivan becoming…

• 

  Review by Rembrandt Q Pumpernickel ★★★★★ 12

  Ineffable.

  In my opinion, it's one of those great words that sounds like its own meaning. You call something "ineffable," and I feel like English speakers, even if they don't know the word, have a sense of what you mean. What's even more impressive is that the word means beyond words in a way. It's a word that exists to tell us that some things exist that there are no words for. Not every picture is a thousand words. Some are only a sentence or two. Some are a couple pages. And some...well, they're ineffable.

  There's very little that compares (for me) to the endorphins released into my brain, when I figure something out. I loved puzzles as a child,…

• 

  Review by Macho Mindset

  Real shit if you didn’t escape to Russia from a German prison camp and avoid military school in exchange for using your skill set to spy on the nazis in hopes of avenging your family’s death when you were 12 then you had no childhood

• 

  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 12

  Ivan's Childhood is a lyrical war movie, an emotional, poetic experience. It's about childhood and war, two aspects of life far apart but flung together in this world. It is not the most sophisticated Andrei Tarkovsky movie, nor the most moving or artistic, but it has an elegant simplicity to it. Ivan's Childhood is about nature and innocence, surrounded by the stink of war.

  Ivan is a child of war, having had to live a difficult life and grow up quick. As a child though, this world overwhelms him and he doesn't quite understand it. Ivan is convinced he has to fight, he thinks everyone should, and this seems to be his way to cope with trauma. He wants revenge, to…

• 

  Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 10

  Tarkovsky's poetic composition is a masterpiece to the senses. The loss of innocence is the central topic, not the war itself. Extraordinary dream sequences and a dreamlike, dancing rhythm address our attention towards Ivan's past dreams and idealistic hopes, like if he was living a double life: in real life, he serves as a spy and rejects to go to school with a personality made of steel, and in his dream life, he returns to his mother and plays in the way his heart yearns for. This incredible debut already featured the director's filmic trademark, especially in the scenes involving Masha.

  98/100

• 

  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★★ 10

  From time to time mid-watch of a film, my heart will race and hands start to sweat as I get the inkling it has the potential to become an all-time favourite.

  However, this hasn't happened for a while. Recently, I've really struggled to enjoy the medium at all, finding it almost impossible to engage or maintain interest regardless of what I was putting on. Naturally, this has left me in a rut of frustration, unable to gain any pleasure from something I hold so close to my heart, an interest I'd go so far as to define myself with. It's an incredibly numbing feeling.

  The love for film has never left; I've still wanted to watch as much as humanely…

• 

  Review by spap1 ★★★★ 4

  i’ve been meaning to watch another Tarkovsky film for a long time, knowing that i’d like it, but not quite having the energy to sit through. it’s not that i find them bad, as you can see already, but… well, i think you know what i mean. 

  this was probably his most starkly human film, in terms of the grounding reality which is connected to it, but is definitely not unlike what he approached afterwards. 

  ….

  imagine waking up in a world that you do not recognise, one that doesn’t even seem to recognise you, it doesn’t even seem to have a place for you any longer, but still having to come to terms with the fact that it is…

• 

  Review by Lara Pop ★★★★ 10

  A mud-soaked forest. Water lazily dripping into a well. The jagged remains of a burnt-down house. The hollow creaking of a dislocated door. Towering white trees in a barren forest. A furiously chiming bell. Sunlight seeping through the bent but not broken survivor of an explosion: a cross. You and her on the cart, holding apples into the rain. Laughing. The peaceful lapping of a boat on troubled waters. Two long-dead bodies sitting grotesquely in the swamp. Treading through a mud-engulfed forest. A silence-puncturing gunshot. The voice of German soldiers. Towering trees in the darkness. The troubled lapping of a boat on peaceful waters. An execution room. Running across a beach. Overtaking her. Reaching your destination: a perished tree.

  Ivan's…

• 

  Review by Sam Thompson ★★★★ 3

  What childhood?
  War is not for children.
  Ivan didn't have a childhood and his journey is something no child should have to go through.

  That essentially sums up Tarkovksy's haunting look at a young orphaned boy amidst World War II. He wants to fight and help because he has nothing left. He is naive and yet has proven himself of great service. Soldiers around him want him away from the war because "the front line is no place for a child." However, through the course of the film we see that Ivan is beyond his years in many aspects. Through dreams and imagination we see his childlike desires and glee but this is contrasted by his harsh muddy reality that…

• 

  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★ 2

  (The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast Episode 18)

  One of the most unique and beautifully shot black and white films I have ever seen.

  "If a well is really deep, you can see a star down there even in the middle of a sunny day."

  Legendary Russian Director Andrei Tarkovsky tragically only made a handful of films, but it is obvious that he poured everything he had into each one of them. And his first feature 'Ivan’s Childhood' is no exception, and features some stunningly beautiful sequences including that gorgeous kiss over a trench in a berch wood forrest.

  Overall the story is a simple and slow one that features the loss of innocence for a young Russian boy, who…

• 

  Review by Sally Jane Black

  A cold, bleak, bitter sad film about war and innocence that is far too sad for me to contemplate at the moment.