My first Tarkovsy was Andrei Rublev, but Ivan’s Childhood is definitely what I would recommend as a “beginner’s introduction to Tarkovsky”

Scenes that hit me — the shot from the boots, across the logs, to the basin of water and Ivan’s dripping fingers. Masha and the captain in the birch forest, the pathos of the old man mourning his lost “old woman.”

I liked the elliptical plot, the retrospective understanding, the way Tarkovsky makes you really watch by making the viewer think.

I liked Chukhrai’s Ballad of a Soldier a bit more than this, as far as war flicks from the post-Stalin Thaw go. But Tarkovsky is the master overall.