Cast:
Nikolai Burlyayev (Ivan Bondarev), Valentin Zubkov (Capt. Kholin), Evgeny Zharikov (Lt. Galtsev), Stepan Krylov (Cpl. Katasonov), Valentina Malyavina (Masha), Nikolai Grinko (Lt. Col. Gryaznov), Dmitri Milyutenko (Old Man), Irma Raush (Ivan's mother), and Andrei Konchalovsky (Soldier) Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Review:
“If you ask me what influence I have received from artists like Bresson, Antonioni, Bergman, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, I must say none. I have no desire to imitate any of them. Since the main goal of any art is to find a personal means of expression. A language which to express what’s inside of you.”
Admittedly, no auteur is easy to define because that is to assume one can peg a director as being only a certain type in specialization in words rather than seeing for themselves, as is the case with Andrei Tarkovsky. He was born in the village of Zavrazhye in the Kadyysky District, Kostroma Oblast of the Soviet Union as the son of a Soviet poet/translator Arsent Tarkovsky, who served in World War II and ended up losing a leg. Tarkovsky studied music and arts in school (with one year of Arabic studying as well), but he was more of a troublemaker than a solid student. His interest in film was not immediately present, as he applied to the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (now known as the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography) after serving in a research expedition as a prospector (with his time spent in a taiga influencing him); noted filmmaker Mikhail Romm was his professor. His first film as a student came with collaboration with Aleksandr Gordon and Marika Beiku, for which it resulted in the 19-minute short The Killers (1956) that saw all the roles played by VGIK students. Gordon and Tarkovsky collaborated with each other three years later with There Will Be No Leave Today as a practical exercise to learn the basics of filmmaking. Tarkovsky directed (and co-wrote) one more short with The Steamroller and the Violin (1960), which served as his diploma film. One film that influenced Tarkovsky as a filmmaker was Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (1958), but he was also influenced by Japanese cinema as well. Ivan's Childhood (1962) was his first feature film, coming off the heels of other Soviet films such as The Cranes Are Flying (1957), Ballad of a Soldier (1959), Fate of a Man (1959) in their depiction of the human costs of war that were distinct from previous Soviet works involving World War II (i.e. not just a war movie depicting glory). The Khrushchev Thaw in the mid-1950s certainly helped directors in the country get better chances at making features. Before his death, he wrote a book with Sculpting in Time, which talked about each of his films (along with including other aspects of writing, such as poetry by his father) that attempted to give insight into his manner of filmmaking, complete with including letters of people who wrote to him expressing their thoughts on his films. Tarkovsky died of cancer at the age of 54 in 1986, but his legacy lives on in the seven feature films that he made, such as Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979); a statue of him rests on the entrance of VGIK.
The film is an adaptation of the 1957 novella Ivan, as written by Vladimir Bogomolov. He co-wrote the film alongside Andrei Konchalovsky and Mikhail Papava (Tarkovsky also contributed to writing, albeit without credit), one that saw the director be approached only because another director's attempts at doing a film version was rejected. Tarkovsky once stated that art enriches the spiritual capabilities of a man, one that can help rise above oneself to enact free will. He was quoted later as saying that he hoped with this film that he could establish whether or not he had what it took to be a director (stating that any time of trying to "replace narrative causality with poetic articulations" saw film authorities take umbrage), and he expressed certain regrets about how certain scenes were shot. At any rate, the movie is best enjoyed as one where you let the images sift through your mind with concentration, one where memory and poetry end up being far more important than sifting through in a linear fashion. It is a film of rhythmic elements that express time and memory as if they were two sides of a coin. One dwells on Burlyayev not in the usual manner one thinks of when it comes to a coming-of-age story but instead sees him warped by the bounds of time and memory that expresses Tarkovsky's hatred of war expressed in a war that saw plenty of children lose their lives but just as many lose their childhood. It creates an unwieldly dichotomy all throughout the 94-minute run-time, whether that involves dreams or reality within landscapes, or a child within guilt and innocence, or in the end, time within life and death. It is a movie to look upon the imagery within time, such as the time spent in a night-time swamp that sees "Welcome" bodies laid out or the eventual result from going from battle to footage of Berlin. As a whole, Tarkovsky would have plenty of further works to delve further into the nature of time and memory that makes this film seem his "most accessible", but do not let the labeling fool you: it is a curious film that one should absorb as a passage of poetic links to help open one's mind up. As a directorial debut, Tarkovsky certainly succeeds in his expression of what he wants to deliver, simply put.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: Two to go in New Directors Month, with the next one being a movie from 2022.
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