rcashdan

This b&w film is engraved in my memory.

The producer told her audience at the Guanajuato International Film Festival (Mexico) that finding funding for a b&w film took a long time. How wise she and the director were to hold out because b&w gives the film its period feel (the events occur 1961-62).

The story, occasionally too linear, is believable overall, at times all too believable. Its subtext: coming of age, Communism's excesses in Poland, peasant-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, worldliness vs. faith. And yes, they all work.

The aunt is played by a justly renowned Polish actress, the novice nun by an amateur who despite the film's success in Poland doesn't want to continue to act.

I don't want to spill over into spoilers, will sum up by saying that viewers will see a complex film simply told, set during Poland's painful post-war years and a no-holds-barred look at how various Poles treated Jews during the Second World War.

Ida played to large audiences in Poland where the film was generally praised, despite receiving flak from a few detractors as either anti-Polish or anti-Jewish, a fact reinforcing my view that the film owes part of its power to avoiding stereotypes. A compelling, technically excellent film worth the care lavished on it.

I came into this movie several minutes late so missed the opening scene of the waving grass but I can imagine it. Herzog evoked in an uncanny way what it feels like to be at the mercy of people you don't understand and who don't understand you, in other words a crazy situation that has its own rules. I know I was taken back to a buried time in my life that had never surfaced before.

How did Herzog do it? By his choice of Bruno S, of course; by the brilliant work of his cameraman; by his depiction of 19th Century German society and its conventions; through the music. I could keep on.

Why then a nine? Maybe because I don't know German (although I think the version I saw with Spanish subtitles was probably excellent), maybe because I thought during the last few minutes the balance between perception and realism was upset. The ending shot? Perhaps like the end to a Shakespeare play, reminding us that what we have seen was an artifice made from a historical event.

Forty years after it was made, still an unforgettable film.

Forget the favelas of Rio, this film has the texture of the everyday life (or at least everyday emotions) of a retired policeman whose past haunts him. Antonio Fagundes as the policeman and the two actresses who play prostitutes are credible throughout. The photography and rhythm of the film contribute to making this a superior film. The movie has a political subtext both past and present that take it beyond the apparent story. This was one of two Brazilian films I saw with Spanish subtitles at a film festival recently. The other, Alice's House, won an award at the festival. This one didn't but it sticks in my memory because of the characterization, underscored by subtle lighting. The end is in the tradition of the famed Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. I think even dubbed the film would be engrossing.