Pawel
Pawlikowski’s 2013 Ida, is
not a good film. Which is to say, it’s a GREAT film, the most breathtaking
cinematic work of art I’ve seen in a very long time. No wonder that, even in
competition with Russia’s Leviathan and
Argentina’s delightfully twisted Wild
Tales, this import from Poland was awarded the Oscar for best foreign
language film.
Ida, set in 1962,
reflects what happened to the Jews of Poland during and after the second World
War. Its title character is a devout convent-bred novice, on the brink of
taking her final vows, who unexpectedly discovers that her dead parents were
Jewish. Though Holocaust dramas are sometimes rather cynically seen as awards
magnets, it’s narrow-minded to look at Ida
solely through its depiction of the murderous treatment of Polish Jews
under the Nazi regime. Pawlikowski,
a native-born Pole who has long lived and worked in Britain, has even more
complicated matters on his mind. In contrasting naïve young Anna with the bitter
Jewish aunt she didn’t know she had, he explores the wavering line between
religion and politics, innocence and guilt, life and death. Aunt Wanda, the loving
sister of Anna’s dead mother, somehow survived the Holocaust, but it’s taken
its toll on her outlook. A judge, Wanda spent the early post-war years as a
dedicated Communist, one who committed herself to rooting out deviance from the
party line. Now, however, she’s no longer certain about the cause she’s
championed for so long. The twists and turns of her family story have left her
cynical, even angry. That’s why she drinks, chain-smokes, and seeks out casual
sexual partners . . . but the film
unearths a secret that explains even further why the past has such a hold on
her.
Against all odds, Wanda and Anna forge a relationship based
on their common bonds. It’s one that takes the film in an unexpected direction,
one that I won’t betray. Suffice it to say, though, that Anna (née Ida) turns
out to be more surprising than we might have predicted. She may have been
raised to know nothing more than convent life, but her brush with the outside
world makes its mark. Not—I hasten to add—that she exactly chooses a modern
path. We’re left, finally, with more questions than answers.
In the service of his characters, Pawlikowski has chosen
filmmaking techniques that are highly unusual. The film is shot in stark black
and white, using an old-fashioned aspect ratio that often reduces characters to
a small speck in the bottom corner of the screen. Moreover, from scene to scene
his camera shows virtually no movement. So what we’re seeing, as we cross rural
Poland, is fixed pictures, in which the
characters are merely blips inside their all-encompassing environment. Many
years ago, Roger Corman instructed me to read Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of Film. It’s a long, rather
ponderous book, but it makes the point that the magic of cinema is all in its
visuals. This film illustrates Kracauer’s belief system in a way that’s not
ponderous at all, but rather powerfully dramatic.
Not only is Ida visually
static, but it’s at times almost silent. Dialogue is next to nil: by contrast, it’s
fair to say that most Hollywood films -- dependent as they are on bright verbal
exchanges -- seem downright obstreperous. Often, watching this film, we know
what’s happening through what is not said.
It’s a method that draws the viewer into the film, making us pay close
attention to nuance, to facial expression, to glimpses that we may or may not
have seen. Bravissimo.
Here's a link to a very smart New York Times review of Ida.
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