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

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 24, 2025

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.

| Original Score: A | Aug 1, 2024

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

| Original Score: A- | Feb 28, 2024

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

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2020

Remains one of the most remarkable debuts in all of cinema, and one of the most indelible portraits of war and childhood ever made.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 6, 2019

The surrealism of Solaris, the spatial experimentation of Stalker, the psychological insight of Mirror, these are all visible if not fully developed in Ivan's Childhood.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 5, 2018

No one paints a stark landscape like Tarkovsky, but we're not just talking surface beauty; the director shows a rare understanding of the consequences of combat.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 2, 2017

The work in which the remarkable nature of [Tarkovsky's] talent first shone through.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 25, 2016

[A] subdued depiction of warfare as mostly a lot of waiting around for brief explosive action... The orphan kid - who several times describes himself as 'jittery' - is a more openly shell-shocked version of all the adults around him.

| May 21, 2016

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

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 19, 2016

Unmissable.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 19, 2016

No other director is simultaneously so precise and so otherworldly.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 16, 2016

It was the caveat of the profound possibilities of eastern cinema, effectively heralding the discovery of one of the most perceptive minds to ever stand behind a movie camera.

| Feb 1, 2016

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.

| Aug 4, 2015

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.

| Aug 4, 2015

Pairing [poetic] images with fragmented characters and Ivan's single-minded desire to get back in the fray, the result is disturbing and affecting.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 11, 2013

It feels stylistically as fresh as if it had been made yesterday -- even to some very striking use of handheld camerawork. It's really something of a masterpiece.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 1, 2012

The plot is straight out of the grayish, state-approved, thesis-tidy Ballad of a Soldier bin, but the landscapes and visions are Andrei Tarkovsky's and nobody else's

| Nov 21, 2009

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

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 27, 2007

Much more than a war film about a young boy, My Name Is Ivan is a pure film experience.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 30, 2006