Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Ivan's Childhood
Ivanovo Detstvo (Ivan's Childhood)
1962
[I must forewarn you that this is pretty sketchy. It will not make much sense if you haven't seen the movie. I am still working on this review... these are my first impressions after watching the movie the first time on Sep 22, 2005 at the Russian Cultural Centre, Thiruvananthapuram]
The film begins with Ivan strolling the countryside. There is a close-up of a butterfly, and the camera sweeps right up a steepling birch tree. It converys a feeling of weightlessness, and it's breathtaking when you watch it on the 35-mm B&W canvas. Like adolescent laughter, the shots dissolve into Ivan's dreamed-up reality.
It is, after all, a dream: reality announces itself with a deafening sound. As Ivan's Mother wipes the sweat off her forehead, lovingly gazing upon her son drinking from a pail of water like a cow, Ivan starts out of troubled sleep to stare at the streaks of painfully bright sunlight, instinctively shading his eyes. One hopes, at this pont, not to have been shattered out of such beauty, but by a rather more natural, but illogical, sound of heavy breathing (it would be natural from the viewer's perspective only; it is common experience that one is often started out of nightmares by the visual equivalents of loud, snapping noises). Such is the grand introduction to the film that brought Tarkovsky, and Mosfilm, international acclaim: Ivanovo Detstvo (Ivan's Childhood, 1962). As the story unfolds, one would be forgiven for hoping for war (as Kholin remarks to Galtsev, "How long for this war to end, the last of humanity's wars?"). War, unfortunately, remains the only means to heroism for a man; and films like these, as long as they are viewed, perpetuate the notion. Ivan is easily one of the best war films ever made.
Kholin: he's almost like an elder brother to Ivan. The actor is spontaneous, perfectly at ease with the situation and his co-actors, and is literaly living every scene. He is not so sure with Masha, she catches him completely off-guard. She is completely detached from what is going on about her, and one feels the war too bad an apology for her circumstance. When faced with Masha, Kholin is forced to become a poet and invent verses. Apart from that, Kholin is easy going and aggressive, and perfectly aware of his pivotal role as "ringmaster" to Ivan, and also as a pet of Colonel Gryaznov.
Galtsev: Galtsev was the hero of Bogomolov's novel, in which he is the narrator. He is considerably de-promoted in the film, but the film exists on an artistic level primarily because of him. He is the one with the artisic sensibility and the gramophone...his ability to recognise the artist even in the face of Ivan speaking vehemently from experience ("they have no writers...I saw them burning books at the square...") is considerable.
Dreams: Tarkovsky's last films are devoid of dreams, being dark and gloomy in their prophesy of numanity's future. In Ivan, the boy's stark reality is contrasted with memories of peacetime spent with an ardent mother and a sweet sister, both of whom he lost to the war. However, his dream sequences are not hard to identify, and he achieves this not with gimmicks but by his honest storytelling. His later films have no story, by the way.
Masha: she connects the setting of her first "romantic" tryst with Kholin with childhood memories as well, with the mountainous terrain near Moscow, where she grew up, where there were lots of flowers growing on the hillsides, and where the writers used to come (she had seen Lev Tolstoy, as a matter of fact). Kholin, overcome by the immenseness of the birch woods, could not help himself from taking advantage of a little gully by offering her safe passage across it, planting his long legs across like a pair of dividers, and hoisiting the nurse. There, whilst she dangled in his arms over the gully, defenceless, he kisses her, and is at once taken aback by her defencelessness. Maybe the absurdity of the circumstance strikes Kholin immediately, as it strikes the viewer: the defenceless, fragile nurse in the long, swarthy Captain's arms, unable to resist, unable to enjoy, but more importantly, unable to do anything. He releases her and calls her back, but again, the entire circumstance is comic, and he beseeches her to go away. [When Galtsev finally deems her unfit for the front - fair enough - and assigns her to a hospital, she comes to say goodbye to Leonid, and there are signs that she has fallen in love with the burly colonel, and finds the leavetaking tough that she disappears during at the first opportunity].
Ivan lost his father, a border guard, to the Nazis. How he lost his younger sister is not clear, because the dreams don't tell us that. In one of his dreams ("I am jittery these days. Can't get used to begging all the time.") that start out like a refreshing flower and end up like the mangled pulp of a trodden grape, we see his mother shot down by a Nazi as he had just went inside the well to cup the "star inside". It is a breathtakingly stoic shot, a piece of utterly still journalism.
Commandeering the boat and Katsynovitch: Tarkovsky just gives a hint that there will be a casualty, and there's every reason to believe that it will be Katsynovich. Katsynovich's love for the boy is revealed in all its tenderness, and, when we find only two of them returning... Katsynovich has to die because he loves the boy most dearly. Ivan is depicted as being absolutely deprived of love, and it prophesies Ivan's fate too.
Avenge us: Ivan lost her sister probably in the massacre at the church
When Ivan asks Galtsev for the knife he has taken a fancy to, we're almost apalled, "My God, the boy's just a sewer rat!" (but when he tactfully alters his request to a single night with the knife, we admire his sensibility, but the sewer rat returns when we see how he treats the knife later on). And then the truth dawns on us: the soldiers like Ivan the reconnaissance boy for his daring errands and for what he's gone through, but would find it hard with his imperious ways once the war's over. Instantly we also see such a proposition as false: Ican would not see the end of his childhood.
Raising the bell, and Kolya Burlyaev's ostentatious acting. One can almost see why there was a bell-caster in Rublyov and why it had to be Kolya.
The gramophone
The final mission to the flooded forest
Victory
The Gestapo file
Ovchinnikov's music has a theme from Pohjola's Daughter (Jean Sibelius)
Footnote:
The DVD quality was excellent. (Russico).
The power failure
The crying baby
The women
Philips portable DVD player and IBM projector
The couple that sat outside
The mother and son
The mother and daughter
The preganant wife and the husband
The Russian gil and her two friends
My neighbours: No more watching after 8:15, because you know, he'll be waiting for us at Statue (probably the other venue: VJT Hall)
1962
[I must forewarn you that this is pretty sketchy. It will not make much sense if you haven't seen the movie. I am still working on this review... these are my first impressions after watching the movie the first time on Sep 22, 2005 at the Russian Cultural Centre, Thiruvananthapuram]
The film begins with Ivan strolling the countryside. There is a close-up of a butterfly, and the camera sweeps right up a steepling birch tree. It converys a feeling of weightlessness, and it's breathtaking when you watch it on the 35-mm B&W canvas. Like adolescent laughter, the shots dissolve into Ivan's dreamed-up reality.
It is, after all, a dream: reality announces itself with a deafening sound. As Ivan's Mother wipes the sweat off her forehead, lovingly gazing upon her son drinking from a pail of water like a cow, Ivan starts out of troubled sleep to stare at the streaks of painfully bright sunlight, instinctively shading his eyes. One hopes, at this pont, not to have been shattered out of such beauty, but by a rather more natural, but illogical, sound of heavy breathing (it would be natural from the viewer's perspective only; it is common experience that one is often started out of nightmares by the visual equivalents of loud, snapping noises). Such is the grand introduction to the film that brought Tarkovsky, and Mosfilm, international acclaim: Ivanovo Detstvo (Ivan's Childhood, 1962). As the story unfolds, one would be forgiven for hoping for war (as Kholin remarks to Galtsev, "How long for this war to end, the last of humanity's wars?"). War, unfortunately, remains the only means to heroism for a man; and films like these, as long as they are viewed, perpetuate the notion. Ivan is easily one of the best war films ever made.
Kholin: he's almost like an elder brother to Ivan. The actor is spontaneous, perfectly at ease with the situation and his co-actors, and is literaly living every scene. He is not so sure with Masha, she catches him completely off-guard. She is completely detached from what is going on about her, and one feels the war too bad an apology for her circumstance. When faced with Masha, Kholin is forced to become a poet and invent verses. Apart from that, Kholin is easy going and aggressive, and perfectly aware of his pivotal role as "ringmaster" to Ivan, and also as a pet of Colonel Gryaznov.
Galtsev: Galtsev was the hero of Bogomolov's novel, in which he is the narrator. He is considerably de-promoted in the film, but the film exists on an artistic level primarily because of him. He is the one with the artisic sensibility and the gramophone...his ability to recognise the artist even in the face of Ivan speaking vehemently from experience ("they have no writers...I saw them burning books at the square...") is considerable.
Dreams: Tarkovsky's last films are devoid of dreams, being dark and gloomy in their prophesy of numanity's future. In Ivan, the boy's stark reality is contrasted with memories of peacetime spent with an ardent mother and a sweet sister, both of whom he lost to the war. However, his dream sequences are not hard to identify, and he achieves this not with gimmicks but by his honest storytelling. His later films have no story, by the way.
Masha: she connects the setting of her first "romantic" tryst with Kholin with childhood memories as well, with the mountainous terrain near Moscow, where she grew up, where there were lots of flowers growing on the hillsides, and where the writers used to come (she had seen Lev Tolstoy, as a matter of fact). Kholin, overcome by the immenseness of the birch woods, could not help himself from taking advantage of a little gully by offering her safe passage across it, planting his long legs across like a pair of dividers, and hoisiting the nurse. There, whilst she dangled in his arms over the gully, defenceless, he kisses her, and is at once taken aback by her defencelessness. Maybe the absurdity of the circumstance strikes Kholin immediately, as it strikes the viewer: the defenceless, fragile nurse in the long, swarthy Captain's arms, unable to resist, unable to enjoy, but more importantly, unable to do anything. He releases her and calls her back, but again, the entire circumstance is comic, and he beseeches her to go away. [When Galtsev finally deems her unfit for the front - fair enough - and assigns her to a hospital, she comes to say goodbye to Leonid, and there are signs that she has fallen in love with the burly colonel, and finds the leavetaking tough that she disappears during at the first opportunity].
Ivan lost his father, a border guard, to the Nazis. How he lost his younger sister is not clear, because the dreams don't tell us that. In one of his dreams ("I am jittery these days. Can't get used to begging all the time.") that start out like a refreshing flower and end up like the mangled pulp of a trodden grape, we see his mother shot down by a Nazi as he had just went inside the well to cup the "star inside". It is a breathtakingly stoic shot, a piece of utterly still journalism.
Commandeering the boat and Katsynovitch: Tarkovsky just gives a hint that there will be a casualty, and there's every reason to believe that it will be Katsynovich. Katsynovich's love for the boy is revealed in all its tenderness, and, when we find only two of them returning... Katsynovich has to die because he loves the boy most dearly. Ivan is depicted as being absolutely deprived of love, and it prophesies Ivan's fate too.
Avenge us: Ivan lost her sister probably in the massacre at the church
When Ivan asks Galtsev for the knife he has taken a fancy to, we're almost apalled, "My God, the boy's just a sewer rat!" (but when he tactfully alters his request to a single night with the knife, we admire his sensibility, but the sewer rat returns when we see how he treats the knife later on). And then the truth dawns on us: the soldiers like Ivan the reconnaissance boy for his daring errands and for what he's gone through, but would find it hard with his imperious ways once the war's over. Instantly we also see such a proposition as false: Ican would not see the end of his childhood.
Raising the bell, and Kolya Burlyaev's ostentatious acting. One can almost see why there was a bell-caster in Rublyov and why it had to be Kolya.
The gramophone
The final mission to the flooded forest
Victory
The Gestapo file
Ovchinnikov's music has a theme from Pohjola's Daughter (Jean Sibelius)
Footnote:
The DVD quality was excellent. (Russico).
The power failure
The crying baby
The women
Philips portable DVD player and IBM projector
The couple that sat outside
The mother and son
The mother and daughter
The preganant wife and the husband
The Russian gil and her two friends
My neighbours: No more watching after 8:15, because you know, he'll be waiting for us at Statue (probably the other venue: VJT Hall)
