Ivan's Childhood

I would say this is the big fog movie.

Maybe Ivan's Childhood or Solaris, but I would say even more than those, maybe this.

Oh, to be on set and to be the person using the Tarkovsky fog machine.

That'd be so fun.

So watching the Tarkovsky movies, especially some, like, really long beautiful tracking shots, I think has kind of for me, like, got me to take it a little slow with movies, which I really appreciate.

Yeah, Ivan's...

Uh, uh, I watched it on, on my own.

Uh, Ivan's Childhood fucked me up.

[laughs]

Oh, I, I need to wa- I need to watch that one.

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Today's movie review is for Ivan's childhood.

Ivan's Childhood, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and Eduard Abelov, is a poignant exploration of the loss of innocence amidst the horrors of war.

Released in 1962, this drama and war film is set during World War II and follows the story of a 12-year-old boy named Ivan, played by Nikolai Bulyaev.

Ivan, orphaned by the war, becomes a spy for the Soviet army.

Using his small stature to cross enemy lines undetected, the film is a haunting portrayal of a child forced into adulthood by the brutal realities of war.

Tarkovsky, known for his philosophical and visually stunning films, makes his directorial debut with Ivan's childhood.

His unique style, often described as sculpting in time, is evident in the film's dreamlike sequences that juxtapose Ivan's harsh present with memories of his idyllic past.

But looking at Tarkovsky's quote in context of the rest of the interview, it becomes very clear that he was not making the film as an answer to Kubrick at all.

He wanted to adapt the source material, a 1961 novel by Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, as a continuation of the themes Tarkovsky had explored in his first two movies, Ivan's Childhood in 1962 and Andrei Rublev in 1966.

Here he is laying out the connection.

Quote, I wanted to explain why I decided to adapt Lem's novel Solaris.

I'm curious where you rate this one on accessibility and how much Tartofsky you've seen.

I think I've seen maybe one more Tarkovsky film than Keith, but we overlap quite a bit.

To me, it's almost objectively true that his first film, Ivan's Childhood, is his most successful.

You would actually not necessarily recognize it as a Tarkovsky film if you saw it.

Likewise, in, um, uh, Tarkovsky, uh, with a film that we covered a few weeks ago, um-

Ivan, Ivan's Childhood

...

Ivan's Childhood.

It's, appears all over the place a little more, a, a little more so, actually.

But I, so I can't help but read this, this scene through the lens of, of, of some of those other works, but also, you know, this is, this is, this is religion for the, the American-backed Batista regime.