Ivanovo detstvo [Ivan’s Childhood aka My Name is Ivan] (1962)

(Criterion Streaming, July 2020) Let’s describe Ivan’s Childhood for you: It’s director Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut feature, in black-and-white, in Russian, about a child during wartime but intercut with bucolic recollections of an idyllic rural pre-war upbringing. This combination of elements is almost custom designed to get me to tap out of a film, and the result does not disappoint: it’s intensely dull in addition to the excruciating subject matter, and it does nothing to change my opinion of Tarkovsky—in fact, Ivan’s Childhood is one of his dullest films that I can recall, and that’s already saying something.