Ida (Movie): a film jewel.

cristiancaicedo (65)in #films • 6 years ago

Ida won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

"Ida" is a Polish film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski that lasts barely 80 minutes and has a simple plot: Anna is a novice about to take the vows that, at the request of the mother superior, is going to visit her aunt, the only live relative she has. This aunt, a former communist and alcoholic prosecutor, didn't want to take care of Anna when, after being orphaned, she was handed over to the orphanage and that's why Anna isn't very excited about visiting her. However, she does so and discovers a dark secret about her identity: Anna is Jewish, her real name is Ida and her parents died in the days of the Nazi occupation, two decades ago. From there, Ida and her aunt Wanda begin a journey that will lead them to their old house, to the graves of their relatives and to discover themselves through the company of the other, narrowing between them a relationship that didn't existent until recently.

Looking for her parents

It is a dramatic film with strong emotions, but not exaggerated. Ida, perhaps because of her life in the convent, is almost always calm, undaunted, we do not see her screaming or raging, her serene face only sheds a silent tear when she decides not to take the vows the day she had planned to do it and her face looks desolate after the suicide of the aunt and in the last sequence of the tape. The protagonist women suffer guilt, hopelessness, impotence, remorse, doubts; History is a bit slow, but intense and leaves room for philosophy and reflection. Like the sentence the aunt tells Ida when she finds out that she's never been with a man:

“You should try ... otherwise, what kind of sacrifice are those vows of yours?”

However, what elevates this film from being good to being great is the way it's filmed. To begin with it was recorded in black and white, something unusual in these modern times but which gives the movie starkness. And the other thing, and in my opinion the most remarkable thing, are those static and asymmetrical scenes present throughout the film. In many shots, the characters are shown in a corner of the screen or at the bottom, creating beautiful postcards like these:

Link to IMDB	Link to IMDB	Link to IMDB

Then there's the static shot. Ida, or her aunt, moves around the space, sometimes momentarily exiting the shot to re-enter a few seconds later, but the camera never moves. Stays fixed, focusing the environment, the wall, the forest. Only in the last sequence of the film do we see the camera moves. Ida, after the suicide of her aunt, puts on her clothes, smokes a cigarette, drinks from a bottle and sleeps with a Jazz musician she had met while traveling with Wanda searching for the whereabouts of her parents.

Ida in her aunt's room, after her suicide

Although we see her lying in bed, quiet, next to the musician, when she returns to the convent one can perceive the internal agitation in her eyes and the camera, just this once on the tape, moves at that pace, walks on a path of earth, advancing on her back, as if accompanying Ida and reflecting her inner turmoil.

It's with these small details that a film director and a modest budget film can achieve memorable wonders and capture the attention of the industry and the demanding public, claiming the seventh art that has less and less of the latter. For the excellent direction, the rightness of a different proposal and how well taken care of are the details of the staging, I give this film 9/10 on my scale. I hope you see it and enjoy it as much as I did.

@cristiancaicedo

Ida (Movie): a film jewel.

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