After watching "Ivan's Childhood", I was blown away by this 12-year-old boy. Ivan is so beautiful, even more beautiful than Thomas Mann's perfect statue of a Greek teenager, but Ivan is crazy, a little monster. This childhood was a child whose mother was robbed of everything by the war, and his eyes were always full of coldness, madness, hatred, and pain that did not match his age. The enemy killed his family and killed him, because, in my opinion, to lose a person's ability to love is the most brutal destruction of him. I always hope that my heart is soft, even if it is hurt, it is soft enough to love someone. But if a 12-year-old child has nothing but killing and hatred in his mind, living, maybe it's a punishment. Childhood is destiny, so Ivan is destined to be the most pitiful victim of this war.
Peace is a luxury, an accident, not the norm. War destroys people's homes, destroys people's hearts that are willing to believe in beauty and long for happiness, and it destroys everything. The world at war, for adults, has a beginning and an end. For a child, war is mixed with all cherishable memories, interwoven into a fantasy. For Ivan, his happiness is mixed with the destruction caused by the war, so Ivan's world has no real happiness since then. He doesn't want to love others, and he doesn't want the love that others bring. All he wants is to go to the battlefield, exchange his young body for more intelligence, and kill more enemies. This is a child who has been brainwashed by war, a child who has been destroyed by war, because if there is no hope, life is meaningless. Therefore, in my opinion, death is the best destination for Ivan.
The film begins with a masterful introduction to Ivan and the world of real and fake in the war, telling us everything from the realistic scene of Ivan walking through the woods to the unreal death of his mother. War has robbed people of their sanity and turned them into lunatics of looting or revenge, killing people on and off the battlefield, and Ivan is the proof of people's madness, because he is the craziest one . This boy, a 12-year-old boy, is not the embodiment of justice, nor the representative of evil, he is just an ordinary child, in a middle position, an extreme product of historical creation. He was drawn into this war, living for it and dying for it. And despite his madness, he was still a good boy, a little hero. The loneliness of the bereaved family kept Ivan young and weak as a child, but he could no longer be protected, and even he himself forgot to seek the care and protection he should have received. Therefore, the director arranged for us a lot of dreams, but these dreams must eventually become nightmares, because we all know the results and situations of reality. The poetry in this movie, the clear sky, clear water, dense forest, piles of food, mother's loving face and sister's bright smile, the more beautiful, the more scary it is. The happy life Ivan once had was something he could never go back to or even remember, so we, as outsiders, saw it, but Ivan couldn't. Therefore, the design of several dreams in the film can be described as the finishing touch. But no matter how terrifying the nightmare is, it will eventually wake up, and what about war? Just as the person in the film asked, "Will this be the last war of mankind?" It was me, and I didn't know how to answer.
Those who have seen this film will not forget the last face of Ivan, 12 years old, hanged. Then the photo floated down and turned into Ivan's final expression, the hateful eyes, the eyebrows, the corners of the mouth, which made us seem to see hell. And the fire of hell is not as cruel as war, the devil that can destroy all good things such as family, love, friendship, childhood, values and so on. So, in my opinion, Ivan's death is the most happy ending, because I'd rather see a child die in the execution of a mission he is willing to give himself to than live with hatred ever since. And those tens of thousands of children who have been deprived of their relatives and homes, those children who have the same fragmented life that Ivan always harbors hatred for and the tragic fate that can be seen, may be the greatest tragedy in society. Because when we can't have peace, can't love, and have nothing to be thankful for, living is the cruelest punishment.
I will always remember that summer.
Clear sky, clear water, warm wind.
Children are playing hide and seek.
They danced, ran, and ran to the never-ending road and the distance.
I laughed with them, made trouble, and shouted loudly.
Let God hear our voices and take us back to that long lost paradise.
If God can hear.
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