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,…

A devastating, poetic and stunning depiction of war. 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 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 the ghost of a Nazi,…

March Across the World Challenge Film #2 - Russia

Ivan's Childhood is a film that portrays the horrifying nature of war better than most, yet very little actual combat is shown. Personally, I don't need a constant stream of bodies collapsing to the ground, missing limbs and barely breathing soldiers desperately trying to cover wounds to remind me of just how destructive mass violence and chaos can be on humanity. Andrei Tarkovsky centered this film around a 12 year old boy named Ivan, a child seemingly adopted by the military after he is orphaned as a result of war. We see these men handle him both as the child he is, with kid gloves so to speak, but also with…

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,…

A child flies through and above treetops, his mouth a smile like a second sun, finds his mother amid the rollicking landscape, and happily quenches his thirst with the bucket of water she carries.

He wakes up.

Filth and ash mix and become one with the surrounding gloom and darkness of the abandoned windmill he's sleeping in. Outside, it's same, only with an abundance of littered corpses hidden in the smoke.

This is the story of Ivan, a child of the second world war, whose dreams are the reality he and many others should be having in the tangible world. From here, Tarkovsky begins weaving his anti-war visual poem, showing how the human condition lets itself be torn apart and…

The surrealism and philosophical approach of Bergman. The bleak but constantly riveting view of war and life of Kubrick. The relentlessness yet oddly hopeful feel of Welles. All these elements of the very best of cinema are all things I can clearly see executed masterfully in Tarkovsky's first film Ivan's Childhood, which is...insane. Ivan's Childhood is a "coming of age" story that really is unlike any other films I've seen.

Having seen 2/3 of his previous short films I wasn't sure what to expect of this considering the amateurish yet ambitious tone of them, but this...this truly lived up to every intention the director could possibly have hoped for. I'm not done with his final short, The Steamroller and the…