Ida (2013)
Country: POL/DK/FR/GB
Technical: bw/1.33:1 82m
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Synopsis:
Poland in the 1960s, and an orphaned Jew brought up by nuns prepares to take her vows. Before doing so, she is advised to make contact with her last surviving relative, an aunt and former state prosecutor.
Review:
The situation in time is calculated: the war is recent enough to be an open wound, the Communist state apparatus established enough for every corner of society to be permeated with its drabness (a foreign packet of cigarettes here passes for luxury). A film certainly not to be taken at face value: a Catholic interpretation might posit the cloistered life as the only sane recourse for a girl whose past and future seem circumscribed, foreclosed. But the images of that life in the film do not appear to penetrate beyond the disconsolate or unyieldingly physical hardship involved. And what, then, of the aunt, whose life choices - tobacco, alcohol, sex and the Jupiter symphony - might be the stratagems of a Tennessee Williams heroine, but whose resolve gives out? It is a film of questions rather than answers, including the final shot, a long slow walk with J. S. Bach, but to where? What is extraordinary about it is the finesse with which it appears to step from another era and yet be very modern; the aspect ratio and off-center compositions epitomize this tension.
Country: POL/DK/FR/GB
Technical: bw/1.33:1 82m
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Synopsis:
Poland in the 1960s, and an orphaned Jew brought up by nuns prepares to take her vows. Before doing so, she is advised to make contact with her last surviving relative, an aunt and former state prosecutor.
Review:
The situation in time is calculated: the war is recent enough to be an open wound, the Communist state apparatus established enough for every corner of society to be permeated with its drabness (a foreign packet of cigarettes here passes for luxury). A film certainly not to be taken at face value: a Catholic interpretation might posit the cloistered life as the only sane recourse for a girl whose past and future seem circumscribed, foreclosed. But the images of that life in the film do not appear to penetrate beyond the disconsolate or unyieldingly physical hardship involved. And what, then, of the aunt, whose life choices - tobacco, alcohol, sex and the Jupiter symphony - might be the stratagems of a Tennessee Williams heroine, but whose resolve gives out? It is a film of questions rather than answers, including the final shot, a long slow walk with J. S. Bach, but to where? What is extraordinary about it is the finesse with which it appears to step from another era and yet be very modern; the aspect ratio and off-center compositions epitomize this tension.
Country: POL/DK/FR/GB
Technical: bw/1.33:1 82m
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Synopsis:
Poland in the 1960s, and an orphaned Jew brought up by nuns prepares to take her vows. Before doing so, she is advised to make contact with her last surviving relative, an aunt and former state prosecutor.
Review:
The situation in time is calculated: the war is recent enough to be an open wound, the Communist state apparatus established enough for every corner of society to be permeated with its drabness (a foreign packet of cigarettes here passes for luxury). A film certainly not to be taken at face value: a Catholic interpretation might posit the cloistered life as the only sane recourse for a girl whose past and future seem circumscribed, foreclosed. But the images of that life in the film do not appear to penetrate beyond the disconsolate or unyieldingly physical hardship involved. And what, then, of the aunt, whose life choices - tobacco, alcohol, sex and the Jupiter symphony - might be the stratagems of a Tennessee Williams heroine, but whose resolve gives out? It is a film of questions rather than answers, including the final shot, a long slow walk with J. S. Bach, but to where? What is extraordinary about it is the finesse with which it appears to step from another era and yet be very modern; the aspect ratio and off-center compositions epitomize this tension.