Review: Ida
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: A-] Stark and stone-faced, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida reveals itself slowly.
DIVINE INTERVENTION: Before taking her vows to become a nun, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) meets her only living relative, a worldly woman who tells her the truth about her origins.
City Paper grade: A-
Stark and stone-faced, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida reveals itself slowly; the secrets it hides are not only those of its characters but of exactly what this story is and where it will ultimately lead. In its opening minutes it appears to be a near-silent Bressonian drama set in a Polish convent.
But then the young, pretty novitiate known as Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is called before the mother superior, who encourages her to visit her only living relative before taking her vows. Thus Anna meets Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a former state prosecutor who informs her niece that her name is not Anna but Ida, she’s Jewish, and her parents were killed during the Nazi occupation. (Ida covers some of the same territory as the controversial Aftermath, which explored the killing of Polish Jews by their neighbors in much more melodramatic fashion.) The pair set off on a road trip to find their graves, providing Anna with her first exposure to the outside world, including “carnal thoughts,” anti-Semitism and John Coltrane.
Set in early 1960s Poland and shot in stunning, severe black and white and Academy ratio, Ida looks like it could have been released at that time, resembling the European art films of the period. The Paris-based Pawlikowski, returning to his native country for the first time in his career, keeps the focus on the two women and the subtle ways in which their journey changes them. At first they’re bemused by one other; Wanda stifles laughter at her niece’s unsullied innocence, while Ida reacts to her aunt’s cynicism and provocations with the self-satisfaction of the genuinely faithful. These small gestures are indicative of the film’s tone, which faces unfathomable horror with subtle grace, making its conclusions all the more harrowingly resonant.
