I loved the film, love Tarkovsky as well, but when someone gets their head lobbed off, as it was imagined happening to Ivan, since when do their shoulders stay attached?
"No art without transformation."
-Robert Bresson
When the soldier is going through those dossiers at the end, he says, "hanged" as the method of death for Ivan. I don't think he was put into the guillotine.
sharethe russian word is "kasnion" which does not mean hanged but a general term for either tortured, tried, executed, etc. so I think he indeed may have been guillotined. I don't think it matters either way.
shareHe was definetly hanged. Why do you ask though? we never saw his body (and that picture was obviously taken before his death...).
share[deleted]
Just in relation to these final scenes we see a slightly older and war-scarred Capt Kholin and Lt Galtsev in the ruins of a building, sifting through the dossiers of nazi victims.
Galtsev says: "No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
Any ideas anyone?
I only saw this movie once and it might be the above post putting the image into my head. Before the final dream sequence that ends the movie don't we see Ivan's imagined death as he reawakens into the afterlife? Even if this is so it doen't contradict the fact that he still has shoulders because he was hanged.
shareThis was late WW2 Germany. Their Guillotene was used for executions in their legal system such as it was. Military executions were by firing squad or hanging. Civilian or prisoner executions as this was were usually by gunshot or hanging, something quick and cheap. Not to mention the mass executions in gas chambers, machine gunning next to burial pits, or other methods the (in)human mind is capable of coming up with. They're still finding mass graves in Poland, Rumania and Czechoslavakia.
shareI believe the original poster was referring, not to the photograph on the folder, but to the sequence where Ivan rolls across the floor, only his head (and his shoulders) visible in the shot. It seemed like a typical "head rolling across floor" after a beheading, and it was after we see the guillotine. I don't understand it as well, but I won't say it doesn't belong.
shareYeah, I think that was what he meant mastrmeb.
I think it might have been about Ivan being a child and rolling on the floor is something children sometimes do. He showed the shoulders so we actually noticed it maybe. So it showed he was only a child but was executed like any other person there, with the guillotine.
Could be wrong though. :P
I liked the film, but not as much as Tarkovsky's later work ;)
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=35080015
But we are also shown a row of nooses (noose, neece?), so merely previewing the guillotine shouldn't necessarily suggest that Ivan was beheaded.
On another matter, I think Kenny has posed another interesting puzzle: "No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
Any ideas anyone?
I myself would appreciate some insight into that dialogue.
How Ivan dies is not the point. Ivan represents all of the innocent lives lost to war.
-"No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
Any ideas anyone?
I myself would appreciate some insight into that dialogue.-
I second that.
"No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
this confused me at first and still does but i guess i look at littl light heart-idly. The war is over, a little joke perhaps? or maybe he is imagining he is there? though i doubt that. Though it is a Tarkosvky film
what do others think?
In regards to the person saying Ivan was beheaded - doesn't it clearly state in the film he was hanged? They were reading out the folders of the prisoners who were killed - shot, hanged, shot, hanged, shot, shot, etc. Then he reads a folder saying 'Hanged' and Kholin picks it up from the floor and the folder is Ivan's.
shareKohlin: Won't this be the last war on earth?
Kohlin: You're too nervous Galtsev. See a doctor about your nerves.
Galtsev: But, Kohlin, wait...
Kohlin: You were killed and I'm alive. I must not forget it.
I think Galtsev may be shell shocked. He went from a fresh faced young man to a scared soldier with a lot of death on his conscious. There is a moment when Kohlin is talking about Galtsev's nerves and a chair falls from the top off the stairs, everyone jumps a little and Galtsev even turns around. I think Galtsev is imagining Kohlin being there, or just imagining him talking in his head.
And when he says 'You were killed and i'm alive' I think that is refering to the fact that Kohlin didn't have to endure the rest of the horrors Galtsev saw in war, including the desicion to ultimately let Ivan go to his death. The scars show that he probably went trough some harsh times since we last saw him (I mean you don't get those scars from shaving). I think it may also refer to the frailty of life in war. 'I must not forget it' to me sounds as Kohlin is thanking Galtsev for living when thier places could have been so easily switched. It could have been Kohlin making that desicion with Ivan, and he is grateful that he didn't have too.
Just my analysis, hopes it helps
Fire up the Quatro!
Basically, run
"No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
Maybe Galtsev is having an inner dialog with Kholin. Such things happen when you have unfinished discussion with someone. Maybe Galtsev got used to this dialog so much that he has to remind himself that Kholin is dead now, and this is only a voice in his head. At least thats the impression I got from this scene.
As for OP. In Russin soldier says that Ivan was executed. The scene indeed looks like typical "head rolling across floor" after a beheading. I can asume two things. Either it was not brilliantly shot "head rolling across floor", or maybe this scene also happens in Galtsevs imagination, and he simply can't imagine beheaded Ivan. Personaly I think its the former, but who knows.
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On another matter, I think Kenny has posed another interesting puzzle: "No, Kholin, wait a minute... you were killed and I survived."
Any ideas anyone?
[deleted]
Ivan was HANGED. Why in the world do you think that the very last image in the film is the limb of a tree? It represents, in a general way, the method of his execution, how he met his death.
In a powerful and highly symbolic scene, Ivan---who by rights should have been playing games and leading the normal life of a child---is shown rushing towards his destiny, even stretching out his arm towards it, visually echoing and emphasizing the outstretched tree limb. The desire to avenge the deaths of his family is the primary motivation leading him on. His tragic but heroic fate was to be hanged as a partisan fighter.