Ivan's Childhood (1962)
Movie · 1962 · Drama, War · 1h 35m · RU
Curator score: 9.4/10 (145.9K ratings)
Overview
In WW2, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
Ratings
- Curator score: 9.4/10
- IMDb: 8.0/10
- Letterboxd: 4.19/5
- Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
- TMDB: 7.8/10
Director
Andrei Tarkovsky
Production
Tretye Tvorcheskoe Obyedinenie, Mosfilm
Cast
Nikolay Burlyaev, Valentin Zubkov, Yevgeni Zharikov, Stepan Krylov, Mykola Hrynko, Dmytro Milyutenko, Valentina Malyavina, Irma Raush, Andrei Konchalovsky, Ivan Savkin, Vladimir Marenkov, Vera Miturich, Nikolay Smorchkov
Curator Review
Verdict
A lyrical, devastating anti-war film that treats combat as a backdrop for memory, grief, and the destruction of childhood. Its dream logic, stark imagery, and emotional restraint make it one of the most distinctive war films ever made.
Best for
- Viewers who like poetic, meditative cinema
- Fans of anti-war films focused on psychology over action
- People interested in early Tarkovsky and visual storytelling
- Anyone drawn to childhood, memory, and trauma on screen
Skip if
- You want conventional battle scenes or military spectacle
- You prefer straightforward plotting and clear exposition
- You dislike dreamlike, elliptical storytelling
- You want a fast-paced war drama
Overview
Ivan's Childhood is less interested in war as event than war as wound. Tarkovsky turns a simple wartime premise into something haunted and elemental, where memory, dream, and present tense bleed into one another. The result is intimate rather than grand, and all the more devastating for it.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the film’s sense of lost innocence: a child made into a soldier, yet still pulled toward the warmth of his mother and the fragile textures of a vanished life. The imagery is austere but lyrical, and the emotional force comes from how carefully the film withholds catharsis.
Bottom line
As a debut, it already feels unmistakably Tarkovsky, especially in the way time seems to drift and return in fragments. It is not an easy war film, but it is a profoundly memorable one, and one of the great statements on childhood destroyed by history.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Dirk Diggler (5★) · 1652 likes
A devastating, poetic and heart-wrenching depiction of war and loss of innocence. There are no battle scenes, all we experience is the consequences of war: one moment Ivan is taking or making commands and works like a soldier, the next he's dreaming of his childhood with his mother. Its a very simple film, but there's such a strength and power underneath because of the direction, cinematography and its atmosphere. The shot of Ivan sleeping with the camera then sweeping away… more A devastating, poetic and heart-wrenching depiction of war and loss of innocence. There are no battle scenes, all we experience is the consequences of war: one moment Ivan is taking or making commands and works like a soldier, the next he's dreaming of his childhood with his mother. Its a very simple film, but there's such a strength and power underneath because of the direction, cinematography and its atmosphere. The shot of Ivan sleeping with the camera then sweeping away… more
davidehrlich (4.5★) · 989 likes
impressions of war. Tarkovsky's first tinkerings with time... florid, free-floating psychological imprints serving to underscore the banality of real-world war. 4 dreams bound by 1 nightmare. formative work from a hired gun, but masha hanging above the trenches and the well to the stars point towards a career that would ascend to worlds unknown. can't imagine it's a happy accident that Criterion is re-releasing this and THE TIN DRUM in the same month. echoes abound.
Rembrandt Q Pumpernickel (5★) · 662 likes
Ineffable. In my opinion, it's one of those great words that sounds like its own meaning. You call something "ineffable," and I feel like English speakers, even if they don't know the word, have a sense of what you mean. What's even more impressive is that the word means beyond words in a way. It's a word that exists to tell us that some things exist that there are no words for. Not every picture is a thousand words. Some… more
Zegan (5★) · 628 likes
That kissing scene is literally the best kissing scene ever.
Darren Carver-Balsiger (5★) · 511 likes
Ivan's Childhood is a lyrical war movie, an emotional, poetic experience. It's about childhood and war, two aspects of life far apart but flung together in this world. It is not the most sophisticated Andrei Tarkovsky movie, nor the most moving or artistic, but it has an elegant simplicity to it. Ivan's Childhood is about nature and innocence, surrounded by the stink of war. Ivan is a child of war, having had to live a difficult life and grow up quick.… more
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Topics
anti-war, psychological drama, dreamlike, poetic, WWII, coming-of-age, memory, trauma, art-house, black-and-white