Ivan's childhood / Ivanovo detstvo (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)

Young Ivan goes on dangerous missions for the Russians behind the lines of the German Nazi army still having traces of childhood in him.

As all the other Tarkovsky films this one has been discussed to death in a plethora of books, articles and possibly anywhere else. There are plenty of good analysis websites out there: Jean Paul Sartre's comments are here.

As I went through the movie I found a lot of three-layer deep-space compositions inside the 4:3 frame. Tarkovsky and Yusov's imagery consists of a lot of these setups. I collected a couple of them here - although there are way more during the course of the movie.

As Ivan is 'accepted' by his fellow comrades, he drinks from a glass. All their gazes focus on the center of the picture. It seems a classical deep setup in three layers.

Here there is the commander trying to prevent Ivan from going back behind the lines. The composition is more extreme, with the foreground cut off and the space between the kid and the commander much farther.

The nurse Masha is courted by an officer. The distance between the two is even bigger (we can barely recognize the man behind her). And her gaze is towards the camera, staring into an unknown distance.

This setup is an amazing variation. It includes the same setup, but Ivan is looking out of the picture at the man reflected in a "distant" mirror behind him. This setup brings not only distance, but even a transparent/glass wall between the two.

The two soldiers desperately await Ivan. They are in the same frame, but don't face each other and stare outside the frame.

Masha comes to bid farewell to the two men. Here too, the distances are enormous (she mostly has her back towards the camera in this scene). It is slightly more conventional, but now the spaces between the characters have grown enormously, and even include a rail as a physical barrier between the characters.

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Time of the Gypsies / Dom Za Vesanje (Emir Kusturica, 1988)

A supernaturally gifted boy from a Gypsy community is forced to survive in the world of crime. The intriguing qualities of Kusturica's films I've seen is his relentless depiction of basically crazy communities. Not just agreeably potty, they're usually outright interstellar-nuts. Here, he follows the fate of the rather harmless boy Perhan, that leaves for Italy in hope of a better future for him and his loved ones. There are some enormously interesting images in the film that kept ringing long after. The ritual in the river and the last scene in the church ruin (with a horse standing somewhere far back in the image...). After sketchily mapping out the scenes it is surprising how rigorously three-acty the screenplay is constructed. The first act seems quite long in terms of time and number of scenes, but there is also a lot of imagery spent on depicting life in this crazy universe, which makes the second part in Italy much more believable. And there is a certa...

Choked (Joong-Hyun, 2011) - #Berlinale 2012 #koreablog

A young man is confronted with his mothers worsening debts. Things spiral out of control when she suddenly disappears. Most notable about the film for me was the insight into the Korean society - the filmmakers seem to suggest that basically everyone in Korea seems to live way over their means. The pressure on the son to get a "good life" in terms of owning an apartment of good size determines the happiness of his fiancee. The characters talk plainly about the subject of money to each other with a frankness that would not be seen in other societies. I wonder if this was a fiction or conversations can be that open in Korea. Something I've noticed recently in some Asian films with a similar style is a sort of liberation of the genre, I cannot really describe it any better. At any point during this film I expected it to turn funny, bloody, dramatic or simply weird. And to a very slight degree it really turns this or that direction. Maybe it was just me, but t...

Prisoners (Villeneuve, 2013)

I haven't seen many of Villeneuve's movies, but I really like everything so far. When thinking about Prisoners after a few days, there was a particular scene that somehow kept returning to my memory: When Gyllenhal's character is introduced, sitting alone in Chinese restaurant, not-flirting with the waitress. For some reason this scene struck me as "different". That gave me the idea to examine all the first appearances of the characters in the movie. ( SPOILERS ) KELLER DOVER (Hugh Jackman) - we don't actually see him, we start with a very static shot into the forest. The man is looking into the forest, it is his POV (which we find out quickly). But we can hear him praying, while a deer walks into the frame. When the camera pulls back, a rifle points at the animal. And just after "Amen", a shot is fired. Now, here's a little surprise: Keller, who was doing the praying has his son RALPH (Dylan Minette) shooting the rifle. It's a fat...

Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

Dieses Blog durchsuchen