Ida is one of the most photographic films I’ve ever seen. Meaning, each scene feels like people moving around within a striking black and white photograph.
Part of the intrigue of the movie is the push and pull between the long, meditative shots and the fast pace at which the story unfolds from scene to scene across a mere 80 minutes. It forces you to pay attention and keep up, even the most astonishing, pivotal moments are often blink-and-miss-it. Like many of the films in this series, nothing happens quite like you might expect.
It’s a mesmerizing watch. But while tender in ways, it also manages to be a stark, if indirect, reflection on Poland’s WWII history of collaboration and betrayal, told through the intimate story of the two main characters: a young nun-in-waiting and her hard, haunted, weary aunt.
2015 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, the first-ever Polish film to do so.
This one’s a potluck, please bring a drink and/or a snack.
By invite only, as always.
The New Yorker: “We are so used to constant movement and compulsive cutting in American movies that the stillness of the great new Polish film “Ida” comes as something of a shock. I can’t recall a movie that makes such expressive use of silence and portraiture; from the beginning, I was thrown into a state of awe by the movie’s fervent austerity.”
Financial Times: “This frugal, static film in black and white is wondrous with life and drama. [A] cinematic puzzle-poem about love, displacement and a human being’s quest for identity.”
New York Times: “Though it takes place in Poland in 1962 — a weary, disenchanted country grinding along under gray, post-Stalinist skies — Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida” has some of the structure and feeling of an ancient folk tale. It concerns an orphan who must make her way through a haunted, threatening landscape, protected only by her own good sense and a powerful, not entirely trustworthy companion.”