PG-13, 82 min.
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Writers: Pawel Pawlikowski,
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Starring: Agata
Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Dawid Ogrodnik
If you haven’t heard of the
Polish film “Ida”, then you will if you pay any attention to the Foreign Film
categories at the Golden Globes and Oscars. Considering how well it did on
almost every top ten list at the end of this year, it will most likely take
home the golden statues from them. It deserves the attention it’s getting. It
is one of those simple, beautiful films that allow you appreciate life for what
it is while reflecting on its greatest horrors.
Ida is an orphan raised in a
convent about to take her vows to become a nun. Before he can take her vows,
the Mother Superior informs sends her to her only living relative, an aunt who informs
her she is Jewish and refused to take her when her parents were killed in the
World War II. The story takes place in 1962. The people of Poland are still
coming to terms with the events that transpired during the war, in which
neighbors betrayed each other and many gave their lives while others took them.
The aunt is an abrupt woman.
She has spent the years since the war as a barrister, enforcing the laws and
helping to form the new Poland that rises from the ashes of the war. Ida is a
fragile creature in the shadow of this woman, having been shaped by the
kindness and shelter of the convent. Ida forces her aunt to face the past,
however, and sets her on a course to uncover a truth about their family that
has remained a secret since the war.
Pawel Pawlikowski’s debut
feature film is a thing of beauty. Shot in black and white, it seems to take
place in a world that is still covered in the shadow of the war. I can’t
imagine this film in color. Black and white is the only way in which to serve
this story. Pawlikowski’s camera peers into its subjects. Agata Trzebuchowska
is a natural beauty with a magnetism that cannot be described. She attracts the
attention of a young jazz musician at a hotel they stay at during their
investigation into her parents’ deaths. It’s hard to believe she is an
untrained actor in observing her ability to pull the camera into her eyes as
she quietly observes the world around her.
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