Yes, I know” IDA” is
receiving sparkling reviews and awards.
But director Pawel
Pawlikowski’s ode to his homeland is not only puerile, it’s also insensitive to
Jews and Catholics.
But, boy, does his film
look terrific!
It is shot in gorgeous
black and white, and formatted in a 4:3 ratio that makes it look like it was
filmed way back in 1962,
the year in which the story
is set.
It also displays two amazing
performances by Agata Kulesza and newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska. The latest - a
fresh-faced teen who was discovered – shades of old Hollywood – in a Warsaw
coffee shop.
Not only is she of a
gaminesque beauty, she’s also an outstanding actress, which makes it all the
more frustrating that the script by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz is shot
full of holes.
In it, Trzebuchowska plays
an 18-year-old novice nun one week before her final vows. Before that lifetime
commitment, Mother Superior insists that the orphaned travels to Lodz to meet
the communist aunt (Kulesza) she never knew she had.
There rests the first of
the script’s many holes. Why would the monastery wait so long to tell Anna
about her long-lost relative?
Yet, that might have been
forgivable if the tale didn’t turn so ridiculous… beginning with Anna learning
for the first time that she’s indeed Jewish and her real name is Ida
Lebenstein.
Again, why would they keep
that from her?
Neither does the road trip
Anna/Ida takes with her Aunt Wanda to the family village, now occupied by the
trashy clan that killed Anna/Ida’s parents during the Nazi occupation.
"What are you thinking about?” nun Anna is asked toward the end of “Ida.”
“I’m not thinking,” she replies.
As far as the viewer is concerned, her mind
may very well be empty. Because such is the dead interior
life she’s given over the film’s 80 minutes. Asked to do little more
than gaze with wide eyes at the world around her, Agata Trzebuchowska’s
character is blank for most of the film. Only in the final scenes does she
transform into something more than a passive observer.
But by then, it’s too little too late…
Along the way, the women
pick up a handsome sax player (Dawid Ogrodnik), who turns out to be a dreamboat.
And the way he plays Coltrane is just enough to persuade the virginal Anna/Ida
to exchange her habits, for a passionate roll in the sheets.
Assuming Aunt Wanda, a
Soviet judge by day, and a self-confessed “slut” by night, doesn’t get the guy
first…
It only gets worse when the
film enters an almost darkly comic third act.
There a person leaps out a
window and Anna/Ida indulges in a night of sexual and substance-abusing
debauchery, before strolling back to the convent.
Not only is it all silly,
it doesn’t make a lick of sense in the context of the story.
It’s as if Pawlikowski (director of the vastly
superior “My Summer of Love”) decided to make stuff up as he went along.
When composing his shots, Pawlikowski has,
though, the eye of a painter. He is constantly moving his
characters, and the viewer’s eyes, around the edges of the frame.
He’s a top visual stylist who understands the
virtues of letting scenes breathe. His long takes and distant framings offer
the film a quiet, observational grace.
But cinema is (for most of us) a narrative
medium.
We want stories, not visual art exhibits,
with characters who think and feel and, in turn, make us think and feel.
The point he’s attempting
to make via the two women is that one is oppressed by the Soviet regime, and
the other by a religion that’s not even her birthright.
But it all feels uninvolving,
stirring unintended giggles, instead of the tears he desperately seeks.
It’s such a waste, because the look, the mood and the subject
matter are worthy of so much more than “Ida” offers.
Which is sadly as dull and
austere as life in the Soviet countries...
By giulia dobre
