IDA (2013)
Directed by Pawel
Pawlikowksi
PG-13 (Brief nudity),
in Polish, 80 mins.
* * * *
 |
| Pretty in Black & White |
Ida is the story
of an eighteen-year-old orphan about to take her vows as a nun. It's set in
1962, is in Polish, and filmed in black and white. Sound compelling? Stay with
me, because I'm about to proclaim it on one of the year's better films.
Our protagonist, Ida Lebenstein (Agata Trzebuch), was raised
in a Catholic orphanage after being left on a church doorstep during World War
II. All she's ever known are the silences and routines of her quiet rural
convent and these seem to fit her demure personality just fine. For the luminous18-year-old
novitiate, the process of becoming a nun seems as natural as getting up in the
morning.
Enter a complication. A lost relative surfaces before Ida
dons her habit and her Mother Superior demands that Ida spend time with her
before becoming a Bride of Christ. So Eva leaves her insular world and travels
to Lodz to meet her aunt, Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza), who shows about as much
interest in Ida as a cow shows for math. Wanda is the anti-Ida–a weathered,
cynical, promiscuous, boozy, loud chain-smoker. Gruz pays just enough attention
to Ida to ridicule her faith and to inform her that she was born Jewish and
that the two of them are the only family members to survive the Polish
Holocaust. Ida is more appalled by her aunt than by her own biographical
details, but she would like to find her parents' graves. Thus begins the
literal search to see where the skeletons are buried, and one of the oddest road
trip films of recent memory.
This is far more than a mismatched buddy film. It's
sweetness versus bile, faith versus angst, purity versus carnality, and the past
versus a drear present. It's a come-to-reckoning-with-the-Holocaust film, but
it's also one that highlights the wreckage of Stalinism. Immediately after the
war, Wanda was a famed prosecutor and defender of Poland's communist regime,
but her fame, beauty, and the promises of a socialist utopia have faded. Director
Pawlikowski chose wisely in opting to film in black and white. He uses shadows
to enhance both the mysteries of faith (variously defined) and the despair of
postwar Poland–its filthy farmhouses, drab apartments, improvised
infrastructure, and ruined buildings. He is adroit in his use of chiaroscuro,
especially when he bounces light off of Ida's pale features and lets it drain
into the gloom. His studies of shadow and streaked beams are evocative of
Bergman's 1963 masterpiece Winter Light.
Also like that film, there are long dialogue-free silences. These, of course,
befit the novitiate Ida, but they also serve to underscore just how little she
has in common with Wanda, and the what's-there-to-say bleakness of Poland.
Wanda, of course, tries to convince Ida to let down her red
hair and, at the very least, have a little rumspringa
before she cloisters herself. Hearing John Coltrane's music played by a
handsome saxophone player (Dawid Ogodnik) does arouse sensual yearnings within
Ida, but you'll have to watch the film to find out about Ida's family, the
source of Wanda's anger, and how Ida resolves her mixed feelings. I will say
this–the ending is pitch perfect. Pay attend to the answer to Ida's question
"And then what?"
Both the character Ida and the namesake film are absolutely
gorgeous, even though we spend a "long" 80 minutes in the theater. Both
the film and Agata Trzebuch recently won prizes from the Polish Film Academy.
Rightly so.
Rob Weir
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