Ida

Whereas Jacques Rivette's despairing 'La Religieuse' had been shot in incongruously pretty sixties Eastmancolor, this laconic but wryly good-humoured female road movie - like Ingmar Bergman's Persona' - gains much of it's seductive visual impact from being shot in coolly glacial monochrome that looks like what you'd have got if Vermeer had worked in charcoal.

Similarly, like the Scandinavian good looks of Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Bergman's film, 'Ida' is fascinating to watch throughout simply for the strong Polish features of Agata Kulesza as the chain-smoking 'Red Wanda' and the button eyes of Agata Trzebuchowska in the title role.

In the 60's Poland, a few days before pronouncing her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to end her probation period and officially become a nun, Anna, an orphaned young woman, learns by chance the existence of her aunt, Wanda. The Mother Superior propose to Anna to meet Wanda. In this respect, she offers her to take all the necessary time. This encounter will turn her life upside down, via a journey of self-discovery and a road trip through rural Poland, in search of lost time. Lost forever...

Shot in gorgeous black and white, this film is a disconcerting beauty while remaining simple and pure, with a neat photography, elegant and appropriate framings highlighting the emptiness and the sadness of certain existences, and a careful treatment of natural light. Then, the two main actresses, Agata Kulesza and Agata Trzebuchowska, are prodigious and complement each other wonderfully. Finally, the script is excellently and soberly written, and, even if the film is hard and deals with an unpleasant subject, the staging is simple and anything but egghead. As a synthesis, the film is a masterpiece.

Ida (2013) is a Polish film co-written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. This brilliant film follows a few days in the life of Anna, a young novitiate nun. Anna has been raised in a convent, and she plans to take her vows and stay in the convent for the rest of her life.

However, before this can take place, the mother superior sends her to meet her only living relative, a woman named Wanda.

The pair could not be less similar. Ida is quiet, gentle, thoughtful, and shy. Her aunt is tough as nails--she has real power as a judge, and she knows how to use it. She's a heavy drinker and a heavy smoker. She's also a Jew.

In the first few minutes of the movie, Anna learns that she's Jewish. As a very young girl, she was taken to the convent, where the nuns raised her. (Her real name is Ida, which is why that's the title of the film.)

Wanda and Anna set out to return to their rural home, to solve the mystery of what happened to their family 20 years earlier. Why did Ida survive, when her family--other than Wanda--did not?

This film, shot in black & white, is superbly constructed on every dimension. The plot is tight, and the acting is incredible. Agata Kulesza (Wanda) and Agata Trzebuchowska (Anna/Ida), are immensely talented actors.

The cinematography is incomparable. My wife and I felt as if any frame--from the beginning to the end of the movie--would make a great still photograph.

Pawlikowski knows how to focus on his main actors, but he also lets us know that, while the protagonists are involved in heartbreaking drama, the rest of the world is going about its business around them.

This is a grim film. Anna's life is restricted by her piety. Wanda's life is constricted by alcohol and--it would appear--by lack of any close personal relationships. Everyone in Poland is restricted by horrible memories, dark secrets, and Soviet domination.

Grim or not, this is a film you shouldn't pass up if you care about great cinema. We saw it on a large screen at the LittleTheatre in Rochester, NY. However, it will work well enough on DVD. Don't miss it.

Ida is the small and simple story of a complex and terrible past that gets unearthed when a nun discovers she is Jewish. Before taking her vows, she is sent out to meet her aunt, a bitter woman who drinks too much from the life and miserable aftermath of a Nazi occupied Poland. They journey in search of Ida's murdered parents and their resting place and what unfolds is simple, raw storytelling and plotting that is never overly grim, overly dramatic or hits a false note. Beautifully shot in black and white and with a short 80 minute running time that doesn't allow a moment of fat in this narrative, Ida is a rewarding experience.

Ida is magnificent, it will stay with me a long time. The narrative is powerfully compelling and yet if it had been a non-narrative film I would have been spellbound by the images alone. They should make a coffee table book of stills from it. Huge emotional issues are dealt with in a remarkably understated, unsentimental, but appropriate way. The use of music (often my pet peeve in these days of Hollywood formula) is enlightened and illustrative. I don't think the ending is ambiguous, I'm not sure the writer who wrote that understood it. Perhaps there is something slightly facile about the way things wrap up in the last 15 minutes of the film, but this is only in comparison with how beautifully they are laid out before that. Enough, this is not really a review, it is an exhortation - Go see Ida!