Childhood in dreams

At the end of Andrei Tarkovsky's feature film debut "Ivan's Childhood", Ivan ran freely on the beach, before a huge dead tree appeared. Remember the first shot of the film? In a sliding shot of a tree, the audience saw Ivan behind the spider web. Tarkovsky's father was a poet. There was once a poem "Ivan's Willow Tree", which described a child who died under a willow tree. The cuckoo call at the beginning of the movie corresponds to the first line in the film "Mom, I heard the cuckoo call". According to Tarkovsky’s sister, Tarkovsky once said to his mother The same thing. "Ivan's Childhood" is not the first work Tarkovsky imagined. The film was handed over to the young Tarkovsky because of a bottleneck in the previous shooting. In the early 1960s, the Soviet film industry still followed the strict film supervision policy of the Stalin era, but the atmosphere of political thaw began to permeate, and more young directors emerged. Tarkovsky wanted to make this theme-first script into his own style. He admired Duprenko’s poetic realism, so dreams occupies a key position in "Ivan’s Childhood" and even directly determines the direction of the narrative. . Tarkovsky’s films have a strong indisputable subjectivity. He likes to give the audience a mysterious and religious experience. This combination of reality and fantasy is in "Ivan’s Childhood." The middle is absolutely dichotomy, which is completely different from the completely realist perspective of the original novel (and therefore also caused dissatisfaction with the co-authors of the script). But the phantom shots in Tarkovsky's films can never be separated from reality. This is the common belief of Russian artists. Only by accepting the call from the earth can the faith from heaven be welcomed.

In the first dream in the movie, Ivan is running in the beautiful countryside. Suddenly the camera is up and Ivan flies up. This awakens the audience from the beauty before. Darkness covers the screen, the camera is flipped, and a dark warehouse. Here, Ivan wakes up and begins to trek through the boundless swamp, escaping from the enemy’s chase. The birch trees stand like ghosts, and the arrogant branches are like the palms of the devil. In the labyrinth-like swamp, the faint light of the signal flare illuminates the little figure. The birch forest in the dream is the memory of love between Ivan and his mother. Those scattered apples and beautiful beaches are full of life. The war took away Ivan's childhood. He became withdrawn and irritable, but he was so innocent and happy in his dream. The birch tree connects dream and reality, and the image of the "sun" also has the same effect. In dreams, the sun spreads over the earth, but in reality it is blocked by thick clouds. Tarkovsky rejects single symbolism, so it is difficult to analyze specific symbols in his films. These elements are instead given a more emotional level, which can hit your heart at inadvertent moments.

"Ivan's Childhood" is an out-and-out war movie on the outside, but Tarkovsky did not show the brutal reality of the confrontation of guns and bullets, the bones and death of machine guns, the war camp he created. It is extremely abstract and extremely obscure. This camp is located in a small village with broken walls, and the command post is in the abandoned church. The fallen cross reflects the bleak sunlight, the bombed icon painting, the fallen bell, when the bell is struck, the meaning of religious judgment is highlighted. The magazine Ivan read appeared in the picture of "The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse". The Doomsday Judgment came, and the Lamb unlocked the seven seals of the scroll and called the knights riding on four horses of white, red, black, and gray to fight the plague and war. , Famine, and death bring human beings to the final judgment, when the world will be out of balance, and the sun and the moon will be discolored. The narrative on the religious level also allowed "Ivan's Childhood" to surpass the realistic aesthetics of the Soviet film at that time. After that, Ivan saw the lettering on the wall, and the young people who were previously held here by the Nazis were begging for rescue. The war puzzled Ivan. He didn't understand why he wanted to kill each other, but he already believed that this state was the most basic way of survival for mankind.

Ivan doesn’t understand the rules of the adult world. He doesn’t understand that the colonel sent him to the military academy instead of sending him to the front. He is not satisfied with Catasonitch’s leaving without saying goodbye. There are no worries in the adult world of war. They seem to be The War Machine regards killing as its own job. Ivan is trying to approach and accept these rules, but he still has those memories of love and longing for beauty. The young lieutenant Gartsev is the narrator in the original book, and his image in the movie is also very important, because Ivan occupies the center of the fantasy dream, while the lieutenant is the recorder of the real world. The young Galtsev was different from the old and mature and fearless Captain He Lin. In that privately decided three-man action, the lieutenant felt terrified. He thought of his mother. He Lin laughed at him, but then he said, "Actually I miss her too". To some extent Gartsev can be regarded as the same person as Ivan, he is the youth version of Ivan. The interaction between them is not like Ivan and the Captain Colonel are like father and son. The lieutenant is more like Ivan’s brother. In a scene in the film, Ivan talks with the lieutenant, and Ivan is behind him in the camera. The mirror, the lieutenant sitting on the other side is reflected in the mirror, which clearly implies that Gartsev is the mirror image of Ivan. In a later shot, Gartsev put his hands on his head, enjoying the last quiet time before the task, a quick edit, and Ivan made the same action. At the end of the film to liberate Berlin, Gartsev found Ivan’s information in the execution files. Along with the narration of the interrogation record, Gartsev’s filter was superimposed on the gallows. He felt the same way, as if he had also experienced Ivan’s presence there. Everything experienced after the mission was lost. In addition, the love triangle between nurses Martha, Gartsev and He Lin in the film was criticized by critics at the time, but in fact this is another genius of Tarkovsky. The recurring lyrics in the film "Dear Martha, don't cross the river, you will lose your sweetheart" exactly mirrors the love story of Martha and Gartsev in reality, and Martha is very similar. The beautiful little girl in Ivan's dream. The triangular relationship between Martha, Gartsev and Herring is also a realistic representation of the suppressed happiness in Ivan's dreams. These plots strongly illustrate the extent to which life was distorted during the war. What’s more interesting is that there is a shot of the lieutenant picking up the sleeping Ivan in the film, which is obviously related to Tarkovsky’s work "Andrei Rublev", "Andrei Lublio" In "The Husband", Rublev also hugged him when he witnessed the success of the hard work of casting a bell and collapsed to the ground. The bell-casting boy made Rublev see his own shadow, the artist’s mission and the pain

Tarkovsky regarded "Ivan's Childhood" as a "study" in his director career. Many film techniques that Tarkovsky used frequently afterwards can be seen, but some of them have been revised in later works. The tilted lens that was used extensively in "Ivan's Childhood" has almost disappeared in the movies after Tarkovsky, while the lens in "Ivan's Childhood" is short, and the longest shot is less than 2 minutes. This is also different from Tarkovsky’s later works. But this is by no means to say that "Ivan's Childhood" is immature, on the contrary, this film is full of creative passion and courage to explore. The two scouts who were killed by the Nazis and hung on the tree and wrote "Welcome" are like lingering nightmare torturing the audience. Ivan, the lieutenant and the captain ferry from "this shore" to "in the night" "The other shore" is like a ritual. Until Ivan walked into the swamp again alone, and the little figure disappeared into the chilling silence, we discovered that he was destined to leave this cruel and sinful real world. Go to the peaceful and beautiful heaven, leave us behind, fight selfishness and injustice in this sinful world, bear the pain, and wander alone...

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