The movie is called "Ivan's Childhood", but Ivan's childhood was gone when his mother fell.
The movie depicts a child who has been decayed due to war, unable to fight back in the face of a sudden disaster, with scars on his back. After losing his parents, only hatred remained, and he had to grow too fast. His father became Captain Holling, and his home became a battlefield. This is a child with nothing, a distortion of violence under the war machine, full of accusations against human civilization, and anti-humanity. Therefore, in addition to being pitiful, he will also make all viewers feel uncomfortable.
Only when he is dreaming can he return to childhood. His dream is a call to childhood. The four dreams are coherent. The sun is always so bright with the mother by the well and the girl by the water. The water hits Ivan’s immature face. He runs with a smile, looking carefree. . The two women brought him the happiest and peaceful period of time, almost the opposite of war. And the only male figure that appeared in the dream, his father, was still about war. In the second dream, there were only voices and no images. His father said, "There is no need to be angry about small things, stop nagging. Let me see the situation, you stay here." Then his mother fell to the ground and Ivan was awakened. In this movie, women are almost excluded from the war. Even if it is the female medical lieutenant Martha, she is too naive and undefended and seems out of place with the war. What is more about her is not war, but behind the war. The beautiful human emotions.
"Mom, there is a cuckoo." In "Sculpture Time" in which the director Tarkovsky wrote an essay, he said that this was one of his first memories of childhood. He was four years old at the time, which was the age when he began to know the world. part. All children are more sensitive to nature than adults. Nature gives mankind the most authentic and beautiful sensory experience. Mankind can get comfort from the natural world. The nature of the war has long since disappeared. The childhood memories have the countryside scenery, the horse-eating lips and the bent neck, and the well-rounded apples, so that they fall from the car because they are too full. Reality There are no cuckoos in the world, only broken walls and endless gunfire.
In the third dream, the scene where horses fiddle with apples with their wet tongues on the beach is rarely seen in daily life, which creates a sense of absurdity, and the use of negatives makes this feeling aggravated. The other three dreams are light-colored tones, full of soft reflections from the water surface and strong sunlight. The overall color is bright. In this dream, the negative film makes the atmosphere depressing. In the storm, the girl’s hair is showered with strands. With the dripping water, her smiling face suddenly became serious, and Ivan was awakened by Holin from his dream, which seemed to imply the death of Kata Solinic and Ivan.
Facing the gallows, Tarkovsky inserted Ivan's dying dream. He played hide-and-seek with a group of childhood friends, he was in charge of catching, the other children were hiding, and the best girl he played with was hiding behind the tree and looking at him mischievously. At this point, the movie is over. Tarkovsky ended with a dream, which allowed the child, who was not like a child, to finally return to his childhood. It was the last bit of warmth in the fissures of war, and this warmth was exchanged for Ivan's death.
His blunt, stubborn and hateful expression on the death list is in stark contrast with the happiness in his dreams. The movie does not have a grand scene of gunfire, but we feel the war against an innocent person from the calm emotional tension. Child's injury. There are very few mood swings, even Katasonic’s death is so quiet, sadness is hidden under the cannonball; the dim setting, dead silence and it is difficult to see the birch forest on the opposite shore, just like in "Stalker" The deserted desert; the sound of buckets washing his face, the sound of rain, the sound of walking in the river, his movies are always so damp, clinging to the emotions of hesitation, full of white noise of water. Although "Ivan's Childhood" was a graduation work from Tarkovsky's school days, he has already developed his style. Everything is done according to the trend of psychological and emotional, and he doesn't want anything. The previous composition or color theory is just "Old artistic conclusion", his thinking is the most accurate arrow, pointing straight to the center, and constantly introspecting: how to be faithful to the expression of feelings?
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