If war brings people anything, then there is only suffering. Life and death, fear and fear, every moment living in the shadow of death. The most remarkable thing about war is not the heroes, but the ordinary lives that are broken. No longer having a complete family and life, pain and fear became the whole of the rest of my life.
Unlike the war movies I remembered, Ivan's Childhood didn't portray war heroes, and even said that the whole movie didn't show a fight with the enemy. It uses a large number of dreams, which are basically all dreams to nightmares, perhaps we can compare it to the beauty of fantasy and the ugliness of reality. And all this is reflected in an eleven- or twelve-year-old child, the reality of the ugliness is his real childhood, he can no longer get along with his beautiful mother, drive on the road with his beautiful sister, or even play with his companions. He was the only one left in the whole world, so he ignored the advice of the adults and wanted to contribute his strength, even to his life, to ending this war.
Speaking of life, the protagonist of the entire film, "Ivan", died on the eve of victory, and the director shows us this fact in a kind of sound montage. As Goksen looks around the prison, the camera slowly moves with the sound, and the German conversation forms a figurative picture through the audience, combined with the scene in front of the camera, telling ivan's death. The childhood left for Ivan is a world full of pain, and he can only find his own carefree in the beach of dreams!
The film is like a struggling poem, in which the protagonist envisions a dream childhood, with relatives, friends, carefree, and no need to struggle to live. But all this was shattered, witnessing the death of everyone around him, leaving only himself to live in pain, letting the nightmare from reality torment, trying to grasp the life-saving straw, but finding nothing.
This poem is for all those who have experienced war, especially children like Ivan, whose childhood is the most beautiful thing in the world, not mixed with interests, and should only be accompanied by smiles and happiness, just like the dream shown in the movie, children laughing and running in the sun. But reality took it all, and the children of the war lost their smiles, struggled in the shadow of nightmares, filled with hatred in their eyes, and became the poorest warriors in the war.
I think you should have seen the children in the war more than once on the Internet, the eyes are all dazed, the faces are full of puzzlement, the war has made them realize life prematurely. Displacement, life and death are the norm, who else can they beg?
Perhaps, incompetence is reflected in the fact that adults want children to inherit the fate of the country. Was Ivan's insistence convincing the soldiers, or was they helpless in their selection? Perhaps, Ivan's fall on the eve of victory is the best home for him, he can spend his childhood in his dreams, and he does not have to leave painful memories in reality alone.
Tarkovsky once said that film is the art of time, and "Ivan's Childhood" is precisely based on that painful memory, using the film to make that scarred time forever. There's no gunfire or heroes in this movie about war, just a child eroded by the pain of war and a bunch of adults who can't do anything about it.