Rating: 5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 12/52 | Genre: War
Can't you understand, silly? War is not for you.
Ivan, a 12-year-old boy, looks through a spider web. The world around him is serene — trees scatter the landscape and animals nest. He rises in the air and flies over the countryside. When he lands, he sees his mother.
A loud noise awakens him. He steps out of the barn onto a land ravaged during WWII. A rundown windmill lay behind him. Debris covers the countryside. As flares fly into the air, he sneaks through the swamp, under barbed wire, and past a gun turret. He swims across a river.
Cut to Russian soldiers who have detained Ivan. Ivan will only talk to the commander. They bring a lieutenant. Ivan tells him to call headquarters — they’ll know what to do. Though reluctant, the lieutenant calls and receives instructions to let Ivan write a report.
The lieutenant gives Ivan a pencil and paper. Using a code based on foliage, Ivan drafts a report. Throughout the film, Ivan has conversations and dreams that tell of his life and all he lost to bring him to this moment. Where he goes from there may not be in his control.
It was so stupid how it happened.
What a debut! So many of Tarkovsky’s fixations are present here — dreams and memory, connection to nature, and how one finds identity in a world that doesn’t belong to them.
Vadim Yusov’s cinematography does a lot of work to help this stand out — his mesmerizing and fluid camera work and constant play with depth of field add to the dream-like qualities of the narrative. This way of seeing becomes more pronounced in Andrei Rublev and Solaris.
The kiss over the ravine is one of the most striking images in movie history. I’ve seen it a hundred times before, but it brings me close to tears in context. I hate terms like “visual poetry,” but it fits here.
Does everyone fall in love with Masha when they watch this?
The film uses art and artifacts — the spoils of war — to talk about absence and loss. An etching of a German writer tells us about the books the Nazis burn. A sick knife tells us about a fallen comrade. A piece of an old mural is all that remains of a church after a bombing. Their lives are burdened by the shadows of a promised future that never came.
Ivan wants to fight in the war as revenge for what it has taken from him. His dreams and memories haunt him — vengeance is the only exorcism he can imagine.
Will this be the last war on earth?
As one of the earliest anti-war movies to come out of Russia’s post-Khrushchev thaw, this film feels special. It moves me in ways few (any?) war movies have. I don’t love this like later Tarkovsky movies, but it’s a phenomenal film.