Beautiful film by Pawel Pawlikowski, IDA immediately struck by the quality of the images in black and white. Real pictures, between shadow and light, every shot seems carefully thought out, worked and radiates an aesthetic uncommon. Filmed in Poland, in a setting covered in snow and places inspiring the loneliness, the actors are as lost in a corner of the frame, as if submitted to a higher power. Pawel Pawlikowski, when it does not favour the larger plans, offers in his film laws aesthetic little in common : two-thirds of the plans are held by the decor, often austere : a wall, inside a convent, a staircase, etc… are like the guidelines of a composition in which the man appears to have drowned, small, or even crushed.
The character of Anna, a young orphan, is beautifully played by Agata Trzebuchowska. Kind of baby bird fallen from the nest – in the case of the convent where she grew up – Anna is temporarily housed in his aunt Wanda in this time, which precedes the pronunciation of his vows. In “torque” that tends towards a quest of origins, the two women form a tandem majestic by the strength of their opposition. While the silent Anna is required timidly by his righteousness and a straightforward gaze and determined, her aunt Wanda seems to be free, talkative, fickle and loving the music and the alcohol. However, as these tunes grandiloquents hides a vulnerability, a wounded woman and flayed alive by a past shame that it will soon put the day with her niece.
IDA is a film that is steeped in emotions, feelings such as courage, self-denial, but also of doubts and despair. The two women, in total contradiction in their mode of life, look at themselves in the mirror and go find a semblance of complicity to finally get closer in the horror of a family history of common. At the heart of the forest, while Anna seeks the grave of his parents, Polish jews, both investigate to discover the truth about their death.
IDA has an aesthetic beauty, which lightens the darkness of the theme without to annihilate a dimension of deep and serious. Wanda (Agata Kulesza), perceived distress, is a character alert, charming and seductive, just like Lily, as Anna observes in the corner of the eye and including the talents of saxophonist brighten up the evenings of the two women during a stage in the city. IDA is bathed in musical references sharp both in the classical than in jazz, which is not to displease the fans… (note the beautiful appearance of Joanna Kulig sublimated into diva yéyé).
“This is a film steeped in emotions, feelings such as courage, self-denial, but also of doubts and despair. “
The film is very touching in the sense that the encounter of Anna with her aunt is going to be a determining factor in the future choices of the young girl. While Anna has overshadowed his life all thoughts of the guilty, and its share of femininity, she is going to suffer deeply the influence of Wanda, at least enough to question her religious vocation. The strength of character of Anna in an apparent juvenility will gradually reveal flaws : is she really ready for the sacrifices that lie ahead? An orphan, she has never had female role models like this aunt that the gauge in any potential dating or even his mother Ida in which she discovers the face on an old cliché. As much by love for his aunt than by a desire to escape, it will metamorphose as a parenthesis necessary for the confirmation or non-confirmation of its choice, such that shy smile that she dares to Read and illustrates the beginnings of a hypothetical change.
What remains troubling – without revealing the end of the film – is the final choice of Anna, marking well the weight of the catholic religion in Poland seems to be asleep.
In the Poland of the 60s, before taking her vows, Anna, a young orphan raised to the convent, meets her aunt, the only member of its family life. She then discovers a dark family secret dating from the nazi occupation.
Diane
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