Ivan's Childhood

Dream or Reality: The aesthetic strategies in Ivan’s Childhood Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky is well-known by his understanding of cinema as art and a form of poetry. He emphasizes and utilizes this cinematic poetic logic in his film in order to interpret his aesthetic ideology as presenting inner reality rather than recreating external reality. In his first film, Ivan’s Childhood, he uses the protagonist’s perspective to present what the war looks like and has the impact on a child soldier. This film is the mixture of reality and dreams which involves various conflicts within the protagonist’s narrative identity. Ivan is presented as the miniature of both a victim and a participant in the war. Tarkovsky employed the contraction between …show more content…
As a young major in the army, Ivan overtakes the severe responsibility of transmitting information to his comrades. However, he is still a child. The only chance for him to take off the burden is when he dreaming about the happiness of the past. Ivan’s dream of the childhood and the memory of his mother is his spiritual consolation which recalls the sense protection and love. The intensive comparisons between the presentation of Ivan’s dream and the reality in terms of the lighting and composition emphasis and remind the viewer about the happiness and security they have also experienced before the wartime. Such as in the second dream sequence, Ivan, and his mother is looking at the stars’ reflection on the water through a deep well. The deep tunnel of the well works as the path of transforming from the dream to the reality. Firstly, audiences contribute as the objective observers when they are hearing the conversation about stars between Ivan and his mother. In this shot, the audience sees the characters from the bottom of the well. This positioning and especially with the appearance of Ivan’s mother locates the audience as a part of the reality. Therefore, when the audience sees that Ivan is reaching and touching the shallow reflection of the star, they gain a better understanding than Ivan for …show more content…
It is due to the violence of the war, a child is deprived of love, caring, and protection. Also, it is due to the cruelty of the war, a child is forced to contribute himself as a war hero. Ultimately, it is the war which transforms an innocent child into a monster who internalizes violence. The audiences experience their own unwillingness to face the war, yet to hide in their good memory about the past as they see Ivan’s dreams. Consequently, after the solder finds out Ivan’s death, the film shows that Ivan finally reunites with his families and embraces all the beauty and freedom in his dream as a child again. Therefore, as the ending also implies, people might be able to regain their happiness of lives only by facing the cruelty and the damages caused by the war