Next year we are planning an Anti-Communist Film Festival. One of the films I’d like to screen is Ida.
Ida tells the story of Ida Lebenstein, an 18-year-old Polish nun. It is 1962, and Ida is on the verge of taking her vows. Adopted by a convent when she was an infant, she discovers that she is Jewish and that her parents were killed during World War II.
Directed by Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski and in black and white, Ida won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2015. Ida, played beautifully by Agata Trzebuchowska, is given permission to leave the convent for a brief time to visit her only remaining relative, an aunt named Wanda Cruz. Cruz was once a judge for the Communist show trials after World War II. While still feared, she has sunken into alcoholism and promiscuity – the “world of tomorrow” promised by the Communists has failed.
Ida is a subtle yet very powerful film. It is not loud or showy. Images are used effectively to convey ideas and relations of power. An obvious reference point is Diary of a Country Priest, Robert Bresson’s 1951 somber black and white masterpiece. “Ida” doesn’t achieve the power of Priest, but it is stylistically similar. Both films also used unknown actors, and in both cases, it works dramatically well. In “Ida,” Agata Kulesza is especially brilliant as the disillusioned apparatchik Wanda. In her self-loathing, she embodies the rot at the core of communism, yet also makes the audience pity her. She spent her career “dispensing the people’s justice” and imprisoning a lot of dissidents, but was not able to smother her own conscience. The only thing left is to try and smother it with vodka.
Agata Trzebuch is fantastic as Ida. She has soft, empathetic eyes and quiet body language, but rises to challenge Wanda when Wanda drunkenly attempts to mock the Bible. Trzebuch’s best scenes come late in the film, when Ida becomes attracted to a jazz musician. This musician, who is unnamed but played by Dawid Ogrodnik, offers Ida a chance for a family, house, and dog – “You know,” he says. “A life.” The scene where he teaches Ida to slow dance after hours in a jazz club is gorgeous. As happens throughout the film, director Pawlikowski doesn’t use a lot of quick cuts or multiple angles. He prefers to let the drama unfold naturally in a single still, well-composed shot.
One of the things that first appealed to Ida about the jazz musician was his version of “Naima,” the lovely ballad by John Coltrane. It’s the first time in the film that Ida says she likes something “very much.” John Coltrane was a questing musician who recorded an entire album, A Love Supreme, as a prayer in praise of God. What is offered in Ida are two different versions of the spiritual. The jazz musician is offering Ida marriage, a home, a life. Ida feels called to a life with God. This is a wonderful film that concerns itself with ultimate questions. Hopefully, we will get to screen it at the festival.
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