Ivan's Childhood

Tarkovsky pays full attention to the squalor and pity of war but never loses his sense of poetry.

Unmissable.

No other director is simultaneously so precise and so otherworldly.

Director Andrei Tarkovsky has mixed daring with poetry in making this film: he shows the Soviet hero as an individual troubled with the doubts and complexities of other humans.

While the emotional weight of Ivan is clear from the first frames -- Tarkovsky doesn't stray from making us feel the pain of Ivan's world -- there is that sense of music the director is so intent on conveying.

Even in this, his first feature, we see that Andrei Tarkovsky is compelled by memories of precious things.

...has a mysticism and poeticism that would define later Tarkovsky efforts.

It’s well directed, well acted, well shot, well scored and almost perfect in every way. As a directorial debut, it really doesn’t get better than this.

Yes, there is heroism, risk, and goodness in many of the characters in the film. But there is absolutely no lionization...

One of the greatest anti-war films of the 1960s.