Product: My Name Is Ivan [VHS] (1963)
Rating: 4.0
Don't read this film too literally
In the late 50s and early 60s the war genre dominated Soviet film, but that didn't stop directors like Kalatozov and Tarkovsky from re-imagining this genre and coming up with very expressionist pieces of work. Ivan's Childhood can be read literally, as it seems most critics have, or more abstractly as I think Tarkovsky approached his subject.The film opens and closes by a minimalistic lakeshore, but the scenes that dominate this film are those of young Ivan serving as a reconnaissance agent behind German lines during WWII. Thanks to his thin 12-year old body, he can go deeper into enemy lines than can his comrades. This is news to a young lieutenant who can hardly believe Ivan works as an agent, only to find out through a chain of command that Vanya is indeed who he says he is and to treat him well.Tarkovsky treads a fine line between a standard espionage thriller, not much unlike those you would see in the West during this time, and an expressionist piece of work that dovetails dream sequences of Ivan's childhood into the main action. The question becomes which is real and which is imagined, as the scenes seamlessly flow into each other through young Ivan. The well appears to evoke the deep hole Alice fell into, with the war time scenes looming underground. This is a remarkable debut feature film for the young director. His only previous film was a short adaptation of Hemingway's The Killers. It is obvious that he wanted to go beyond the war genre, as he would in later works, leaving the viewer to ponder over Ivan's fate.Criterion offers a beautifully restored version of the film along with a few extras to help fill you in on the details.