“Unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth” (Sculpting in Time, 21).
For Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the prime functions of art was to embed an inner truth, a subjective, emotive experience, within a piece of work to share with the audience. In all of his films, the Soviet auteur combined the “object representation” of the world his characters occupy with “subjective impressions” of the world that occupies the characters. But how does Tarkovsky depict the inner workings of his protagonists' souls? How can this subjective realm – that which is experienced entirely within one person – be communicated to the viewer? Each of Tarkovsky's films attempts this task in its own way. This paper will examine how the filmmaker brings the audience into the mind of his first and youngest hero – the scrawny, scarred soldier-boy, Ivan. In Tarkovsy's debut film, Ivan's Childhood, the director uses surreal devices such as dreams and imagined sounds and persons to inform the audience of the title character's backstory and reveal to us the homesick boy that lies buried underneath the fearless soldier.
It is easy to distinguish the “real world” in Ivan’s Childhood from Ivan’s dream world because of the notable noticeable differences in the mise-en-scene, cinematography, and sound. The film is set on the front line of the world, on the edge of the no man’s land separating the Russians and the Germans. This area is a dark muddy swamp, with a black river separating the warring sides. Other scenes depict barren fields, with ruined buildings. Scenes set inside buildings that are simultaneously empty and cramped are also dark affairs, with faces often hidden in attached shadows. This contrasts with Ivan’s dream world that feature clean, white sandy beaches where water and land come together (a classic Tarkovsky device) more harmoniously than in the swamps. Ivan is often seen running in open spaces, including in a lush flowery field in film’s opening scene. The sharp contrasts in color and lighting explain Tarkovsky’s decision to shoot the film in black and white. With it, the viewer is almost blinded at times by the sharp distinction between darkness and light.
The camera itself behaves differently during Ivan’s dreams. While awake, it is often still or a little shaky, as if it wants to run loose but has nowhere to go. Some outside scenes feature long tracking shots (reminiscent of the Kalatazov’s camera work in Cranes Are Flying),but Ivan is never in those scenes. When Ivan is awake and present, the camera is alert and sharply focused, mirroring Ivan’s own bitter concentration on fighting his enemies. While Ivan is asleep though, the camera moves freely. In the opening shot, the camera glides gracefully up a tree, stopping at the top to show Ivan standing in a field. In other dream sequences, we see similar camera techniques such as the camera gliding down a hill or up a well. The tracking and crane shots gives the viewer a sense of dream motion – a smoother way of getting around not possible in a World War II army trench.
Tarkovsky also uses music to distinguish Ivan's inner world from his outer. While most scenes in which Ivan is awake are eerily silent, punctuated only by interspersed explosions from the ongoing war, music accompanies each of Ivan's four dreams, which influences the mood for each one. The dream of the opening sequence features light whimsical flutes and plucky strings that evokes a strange, dreamlike feeling. The second dream features a somewhat darker tonal accompaniment – heavier strings and woodwinds draw out long whines, while a xylophone contributes a similar surreal feeling to the first dream. The bells give way to loud horns when Ivan's mother is splashed with water, signifying her death. The flutes, woodwinds, and bells come together in third dream to give a cheery, perhaps nostalgic to the third dream, introducing the viewer to what is commonly assumed to be Ivan's sister. The final dream uses the same music as the first, signalling Ivan's permanent return to the dream world he began in during the opening the sequence.
Having established how Tarkovsky builds dream sequences – contrasting their mise-en-scene, cinematography, and sound with that of the real world – the question that remains is why he uses them at all. Although I intended to answer this question myself, I found Johnson and Petrie have already answered it: “The dreams themselves follow a clear narrative pattern that fits neatly into and explains his behavior,” (Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, 193). Each dream sequence reveals key information that flushes out the character of Ivan and advances the plot.
The first dream in the opening sequences introduces the viewer to Ivan the boy, notably before we are introduced to Ivan the soldier. Running through a lush forest to his mother, he points out a “cuckoo” not shown on the scene. Tarkovsky explained that this was a reference to his childhood (Sculpting in Time, 29). This sequence is better understood vis-a-vis the following one,in which Ivan wakes up and crawls through the mud towards Gal'tsev's camp. The full array of stylistic distinctions discussed previously show the contrast between who Ivan was in the past and still is in his dreams, and who Ivan is now – a scarred and disturbed soldier.
The second dream sequence arrives shortly after we get a fuller sense of the physically scarred and scrawny soldier-boy. Tarkovsky transitions from reality to the dream cleverly: as Gal'tsev carries the exhausted boy to bed but as the camera scans the room it quickly becomes apparent that reality is giving way to dream and for the next few seconds both the character and the narration straddle the two worlds. Visually this is realized by the shot of the Ivan’s hand hanging over the side of the bed, which is realistically motivated, and the water dripping from it into a waiting basin, which belongs to the dream. A confusion of spatial relationships and distortions of reality are characteristic of all the pre-oneiric sequences, as is the use of filtration just before the slip into the alternate narrative plane. Here, in this sequence, the camera tilts up, just as it did at the start of the first dream, towards the ceiling to reveal the top of a well. Ivan and his mother are looking down, watching a feather (presumably from the cuckoo) fall towards the viewer After a cut, Ivan is at the bottom of the well with a bucket falling down towards him him. Just before the bucket strikes Ivan, we cut to his mother, lying dead on the ground. The well water splashes up and drenches her dead corpse. This dramatic and surreal way of showing that Ivan's mother is dead is in line with the “poetry of the dream” Tarkovsky employs throughout the movie (Sculpting in Time, 30).
About halfway through the film, after Kholin and Gal'tsev inspect the boats, not a dream but another device of the surreal, rounds out Ivan's soldier persona. Left alone at the command post, Ivan begins to play – after all he is still a boy, and has already read all the magazines that were supposed to keep him occupied. Ivan raises a bell that was sitting on the floor, kills the lights, and begins crawling on the floor with a dagger. Pretending he's on another scouting mission, Ivan looks up as radio voices begin to speak. They are ringing in Ivan's head and are thus diegetic. Ivan flashes a light at some writing on the grimy walls from soldiers who had come before, instructing the reader to avenge their inevitable deaths. The viewer hears the sound of a girl crying and the camera pans left to show his mother wearing a headscarf and look of horror. The camera pans right to show Ivan clutching his dagger. The camera swings back and forth several times, then cuts to a wide shot of the room. Ivan is running about yelling, and ringing the bell. A chaotic scene ensues. Ivan runs in an out of the shadows, yelling over the ringing bell, blaring orchestral rumbling, and the screaming female voices in his head. Finally, Ivan halts and a crosscut commences between him and a hanging coat illuminated only by Ivan's shaking flashlight. Ivan's full furious desire for revenge is on display as he yells at the coat (which is the same light shade of brown as a Nazi uniform). Many of the dream elements are on full display in the scene, in fact with even more energy than before. The room is darkness but Ivan's flashlight shines even brighter than the dream scenes. The camera moves with even more verve as it swings around the room, matching Ivan's pace. The music is menacing and shrill, not calm and mysterious. This scene represents the emotional climax of the film. The viewer has all the necessary information about who Ivan is and why he is fighting the Nazis instead of going to military school. The only question left in the film is: what is Ivan's fate?
The third dream sequence sticks out as the strangest and least explicable part of the entire movie. Naturally, it is also the most Tarkovskian part of the movie. Unlike the other dreams there is no cinematographic transition, just a cut from Ivan falling asleep while gazing at the writing on the wall to the opening dream scene – a tree-lined path with rain sprinkling down in the foreground. The dreamy flute is playing. A truck, with apples falling the back, drives forward toward the audience. The next cut uses negative film stock to show stark black contrast meant to show lightning. Tarkovsky would explain this aesthetic choice as an attempt to “create an atmosphere of unreality” within the dream (Sculpting in Time, 30). Ivan and and a young girl (who Johnson and Petrie call Ivan's sister) are sitting in the back of truck on a bed of apples, hands waving the air while thunder rumbles. Ivan is seen smiling – something he never does while awake. He takes an apple and holds it in the air. The camera focuses on the apple with rain drizzling down on it and the white trees moving past in the background. The camera pans right to show the shy, quiet smile of Ivan's sister. The camera then lingers on a pile of apples on the truck – a shot reminiscent of the last scene of Dovzhenko's Earth (one of Tarkovsky's favorite films). This sequence of Ivan holding the apple up and panning back to the girl repeats itself three times, creating a strange illusion that the camera is continuously panning right with the sister magically reappearing. In the final part of the dream, the camera leaves the truck as it continues down a sandy beach into background, leaving a trail of apples. Horses stand along the beach and the camera focuses on one in the foreground leaning down and biting into an apple. It is difficult to precisely interpret this scene, other than it displays all of Tarkovsky's surrealist elements – a bright mise-en-scene, eery music, and clever camera work – and thus brings Ivan's world into its most vivid focus. The director himself said he “wanted to capture in that scne the child's foreboding of imminent tragedy” as well to “link” this dream with the final one (31).
The final dream symbolizes Ivan's eternal return to childhood. Once the audience has learned that Ivan did not survive the war, the camera begin to twist violently in a figure eight path, or perhaps the camera is drawing the sign of infinite. An upside down image of Ivan's head rolling across the screen cuts suddenly to Ivan's mother smiling down to the corner of the frame with bright shining eyes. The camera cuts to Ivan smiling back up. He is shirtless, knees entrenched into the sandy shoreline from the third dream, and drinking from the bucket of water from the first dream. The camera cuts back to Ivan's mother picking up the bucket and walking into the water while she waves goodbye. She and Ivan never occupy the same frame. In the next part of the dream, Ivan is playing hide and seek in the sand with a circle of children. It is his turn to count and he heads to a dead tree erected in the middle and places his hand against it. The tall lifeless tree contrasts the the green leafy one that opens up the first dream. A double exposure (a dreamy effect if there ever was one) transitions to Ivan wandering the beach, presumably searching for his friends. As he looks about the foreground, his sister peaks from behind a dead tree trunk lying horizontally - another symbol of death - in the background. The scar is noticeably absent from his back. After lingering on Ivan next to the upright dead tree, the camera transitions to the final scene of the movie. The flutes, which up to this point had been lulling quietly, pick up their tempo and Ivan and his sister can be heard exchanging giggles. After several crosscuts of Ivan chasing and catching up to her, a wide tracking shot shows him running past his sister into the ocean. As he messianically runs on the water, the film cuts to black – a bleak reminder of Ivan's tragic fate.
Tarkovsky says that he felt drawn to adapt the story of Ivan to the silver screen by three things: Ivan's fate, his personality, and the fact that the story takes place during “the interval between two missions,” (Sculpting in Time, 17). In light of the themes of life and death, manhood and boyhood, and the space between two periods of time, it is not surprising that Tarkovsky constructs Ivan's childhood in a bifurcated way, constructing two realities – the real one and the dream one. Each reality possesses its own structure and style. The real world features a linear plot line, stylistically characterized by a dark, shadowy, and dirty mise-en-scene with eerily lingering camera work and music that conveys a similar mood. The dream world seems to exist outside of time completely, as the repeating shots in the third dream sequence demonstrate. This world is light and sunny – even during a thunderstorm. The music is lighter, though still eery. Gymnastic cinematography, featuring wide tracking shots, pans and tilts, and the occasional fast focus helps bring out the child within the film and within Ivan. In later films, Tarkovsky would finely blend the real and the surreal to the point where it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between the two. But in his first film, Tarkovsky simply largely allows the objective and the subjective, the world and the mind, to coexist side by side.
Works Cited
Johnson, Vita T. & Petrie, Graham. The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987.
