User reviews

This film is recommended.

Anna grew up in a Catholic orphanage, never knowing her parents. Deeply religious, she is slated to become a nun within a few weeks. However, before taking her vows, Anna must leave the convent and visit her only living relative, a cold and distant aunt. Upon their first meeting, she is told that she is really Ida, a Jewish niece. So begins their relationship and journey to find her past and specifically, her parent's unmarked graves.

With an unusually short film length of less than 90 minutes, Ida is an extremely well made film, sensitively directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Under the backdrop of 1960's Poland, the film's premise of presenting contrasting religions and lifestyles is its main attraction. The screenplay by the director and Rebecca Lenkiewicz has much to say and tells its linear narrative concisely and without any flourish.  Ida is a fine film that could have been a great film had its script added more dimension to its central character. Anna, or Ida, is mainly a saintly conduit, a devout presence who never seems to be real in any sense. She begins as an enigma and, surprisingly, rarely displays any strong emotional reaction when confronted with disturbing news.

Agata Trzebuchowska plays Ida / Anna and she is physically right for the role. The actress invests the right degree of innocence and vulnerability. Even more effective is Agata Kulesza as Ida's bitter and alcoholic Aunt Wanda. Her role has far more depth and the actress makes subtle choices in underplaying the anger and hostility within her complex character. It is a strong and memorable performance.

The film, beautifully photographed by Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal, might have a smaller budget than most movies these days, but one never notices any lapse in quality as production values are of the highest caliber. With lovely black & white images and a lyrical score by Kristian Eidnes Andersen, Ida is superior filmmaking, even if some of the transitions and editing seems slightly abrupt. The film effectively deals with powerful themes that will resonate with any serious film-goer and deserves to be seen. GRADE: B

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Greetings again from the darkness. Writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski films in his homeland of Poland and presents a familiar topic from a most unusual perspective. This film has been very well received on the festival circuit and it's easy to see why: it's beautifully photographed, very well acted, includes terrific music and presents an emotional story for intelligent viewers.

We first meet Anna as a novitiate nun on the verge of taking her vows. Her Mother Superior has one requirement. Anna must visit her lone surviving relative. Her Aunt Wanda is everything Anna is not: worldly, cynical, direct. In the first few minutes of their visit, Wanda (Agata Kulesza) informs Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) that she was born Jewish with the name Ida, and she was sent to a Catholic orphanage when her parents were killed.

After this bombshell, the two set out on a journey to discover the truth and trace their roots. It's a journey of discovery not just for Ida, but also for Wanda, who carries her own burden. Questioning one's faith and one's true identity is nothing new, but this makes for quite an unusual buddy road trip. Wanda is rarely without a drink in hand and Ida has had no previous exposure to the real world.

This is the debut of Agata Trzebuchowska and her porcelain look and big eyes convey a quality with which we find ourselves comfortable with, while Ms. Kulesza evokes empathy from the viewer despite her harsh edge and beaten down outlook on life and people. Hers is a standout performance.

Two exceptional pieces of music are used to perfection: Coltraine's "Naima" and Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony. The storytelling and look of the film might be austere (stunning black and white photography) but this music hits us hard in two separate scenes.

While French artsy-critic magazine "telerama" gave it an ecstatic review, there is one thing I wasn't prepared for: the quality of the images. Set in an almost-but-not-quite faded black and white, of about completely square format, I was sure the movie, set and shot in Poland, was using some obscure last reels of some obscure special negatives, developed in a forgotten cold-war era lab... Well, according to the credits, that was all digital, from start to finish. All the haters of DDD processes out there (I'm one of them), we can now be assured the modern film-maker has today the ability to really work on grain, under-exposure, blurred shadows and all that; Wiene, Murneau, Dreyer, Eisenstein and Lang be damned.

I was stunned. This, and the quite audacious camera angles, the ever so close close-ups that only half a face remains visible. I even noticed what should be considered an error (walking in the forest, you only see the characters up from their ankles, missing their feet labouring trough the undergrowth)... And it just works because of the richness of the various tree trunk's winter greys.

Add to that the settings, the aesthetics of semi-derelict post-war communist décor, and the odd 'innocent girl meets nice boy' arch-cute scene, but that was to be expected from the start, even if it is just about perfect. The Hotel is... A graphic masterpiece in itself.

So yeah, the movie is worth it's weight on that alone already, and then there is Agata Kulesza, so absolutely right every part of her role as Aunt Wanda, so whole and complex inside a movie that doesn't otherwise spend lengths on character's backgrounds that she just draws you inside, whether you know her story, her past, her issues or not. A jaw-dropping performance.

This movie should not be called Ida, but Wanda.

In the 60's Poland, a few days before pronouncing her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to end her probation period and officially become a nun, Anna, an orphaned young woman, learns by chance the existence of her aunt, Wanda. The Mother Superior propose to Anna to meet Wanda. In this respect, she offers her to take all the necessary time. This encounter will turn her life upside down, via a journey of self-discovery and a road trip through rural Poland, in search of lost time. Lost forever...

Shot in gorgeous black and white, this film is a disconcerting beauty while remaining simple and pure, with a neat photography, elegant and appropriate framings highlighting the emptiness and the sadness of certain existences, and a careful treatment of natural light. Then, the two main actresses, Agata Kulesza and Agata Trzebuchowska, are prodigious and complement each other wonderfully. Finally, the script is excellently and soberly written, and, even if the film is hard and deals with an unpleasant subject, the staging is simple and anything but egghead. As a synthesis, the film is a masterpiece.

Ida is magnificent, it will stay with me a long time. The narrative is powerfully compelling and yet if it had been a non-narrative film I would have been spellbound by the images alone. They should make a coffee table book of stills from it. Huge emotional issues are dealt with in a remarkably understated, unsentimental, but appropriate way. The use of music (often my pet peeve in these days of Hollywood formula) is enlightened and illustrative. I don't think the ending is ambiguous, I'm not sure the writer who wrote that understood it. Perhaps there is something slightly facile about the way things wrap up in the last 15 minutes of the film, but this is only in comparison with how beautifully they are laid out before that. Enough, this is not really a review, it is an exhortation - Go see Ida!

Although 'Ida (2013)' achieves a cold, isolating effect, it actually struggles quite a bit when it comes to thematic or emotional resonance. Its story, which ought to be wrought with emotion, doesn't really hit home. Perhaps that's because we feel at a distance from our core players despite always being in close proximity to them. Of course, there is something to be said for the flick's delicate exposition and otherwise subtle storytelling. It mostly works to an enigmatic effect. However, it's sometimes too subtle. Much of the lead's inner machinations are left up to interpretation, as she moves through the narrative with a blank face and only the simplest of dialogue. That's not to say that the film is particularly uninteresting. In fact, it's often rather intriguing. The issue is that it isn't all that engaging. Despite its great cinematography and understated camera-work, it isn't moving in any real way. It isn't so much boring as it is slow, though. I wish it was more captivating than it is, as it's a well-crafted movie with an under-explored setting, but it's worth a watch if you know what you're getting into. 6/10

Ida (2013) is a Polish film co-written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. This brilliant film follows a few days in the life of Anna, a young novitiate nun. Anna has been raised in a convent, and she plans to take her vows and stay in the convent for the rest of her life.

However, before this can take place, the mother superior sends her to meet her only living relative, a woman named Wanda.

The pair could not be less similar. Ida is quiet, gentle, thoughtful, and shy. Her aunt is tough as nails--she has real power as a judge, and she knows how to use it. She's a heavy drinker and a heavy smoker. She's also a Jew.

In the first few minutes of the movie, Anna learns that she's Jewish. As a very young girl, she was taken to the convent, where the nuns raised her. (Her real name is Ida, which is why that's the title of the film.)

Wanda and Anna set out to return to their rural home, to solve the mystery of what happened to their family 20 years earlier. Why did Ida survive, when her family--other than Wanda--did not?

This film, shot in black & white, is superbly constructed on every dimension. The plot is tight, and the acting is incredible. Agata Kulesza (Wanda) and Agata Trzebuchowska (Anna/Ida), are immensely talented actors.

The cinematography is incomparable. My wife and I felt as if any frame--from the beginning to the end of the movie--would make a great still photograph.

Pawlikowski knows how to focus on his main actors, but he also lets us know that, while the protagonists are involved in heartbreaking drama, the rest of the world is going about its business around them.

This is a grim film. Anna's life is restricted by her piety. Wanda's life is constricted by alcohol and--it would appear--by lack of any close personal relationships. Everyone in Poland is restricted by horrible memories, dark secrets, and Soviet domination.

Grim or not, this is a film you shouldn't pass up if you care about great cinema. We saw it on a large screen at the LittleTheatre in Rochester, NY. However, it will work well enough on DVD. Don't miss it.

Ida is the small and simple story of a complex and terrible past that gets unearthed when a nun discovers she is Jewish. Before taking her vows, she is sent out to meet her aunt, a bitter woman who drinks too much from the life and miserable aftermath of a Nazi occupied Poland. They journey in search of Ida's murdered parents and their resting place and what unfolds is simple, raw storytelling and plotting that is never overly grim, overly dramatic or hits a false note. Beautifully shot in black and white and with a short 80 minute running time that doesn't allow a moment of fat in this narrative, Ida is a rewarding experience.

This b&w film is engraved in my memory.

The producer told her audience at the Guanajuato International Film Festival (Mexico) that finding funding for a b&w film took a long time. How wise she and the director were to hold out because b&w gives the film its period feel (the events occur 1961-62).

The story, occasionally too linear, is believable overall, at times all too believable. Its subtext: coming of age, Communism's excesses in Poland, peasant-Jewish relations during the Holocaust, worldliness vs. faith. And yes, they all work.

The aunt is played by a justly renowned Polish actress, the novice nun by an amateur who despite the film's success in Poland doesn't want to continue to act.

I don't want to spill over into spoilers, will sum up by saying that viewers will see a complex film simply told, set during Poland's painful post-war years and a no-holds-barred look at how various Poles treated Jews during the Second World War.

Ida played to large audiences in Poland where the film was generally praised, despite receiving flak from a few detractors as either anti-Polish or anti-Jewish, a fact reinforcing my view that the film owes part of its power to avoiding stereotypes. A compelling, technically excellent film worth the care lavished on it.

Ida was a dark somber tragic story expressed perfectly in film.

I am not a big fan of black and white "art" movies done for effect, except the old black and white movies, but Ida was filmed so perfectly, and the stark black and white was so integral to the story and feeling of the movie it was really perfect.

I am not a big fan of jazz either, but again, the choice of Coltrane's jazz music for parts of this film really let you feel what jazz is all about, it was beautiful.

The story was of an orphan nun who is preparing to take her final vows to God. The Mother Superior calls her in and tells her about who she is. Ida grew up not knowing her name or anything about her family. Ida finds that she has an aunt nearby and is told to go to see her before taking her vows.

The slow, heavy and deliberate pace of the movie express the story so perfectly, and there is no pandering or cheap shots, the movie is beautifully done. This is a story that is not for everyone, or every time, but I am glad it was made and that I saw it.

I have to give it a 10/10 for pure craftsmanship and cinematic perfection.

Whereas Jacques Rivette's despairing 'La Religieuse' had been shot in incongruously pretty sixties Eastmancolor, this laconic but wryly good-humoured female road movie - like Ingmar Bergman's Persona' - gains much of it's seductive visual impact from being shot in coolly glacial monochrome that looks like what you'd have got if Vermeer had worked in charcoal.

Similarly, like the Scandinavian good looks of Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Bergman's film, 'Ida' is fascinating to watch throughout simply for the strong Polish features of Agata Kulesza as the chain-smoking 'Red Wanda' and the button eyes of Agata Trzebuchowska in the title role.

Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young novice ready to take her vows, learns through her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) that she is of Jewish parentage and must come to terms with a past she never knew existed. Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida offers no easy answers but looks at each character's complexities, leaving only a trail of ambiguity. Shot in black and white by cinematographers Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal, the film is set in Poland in the early 1960s and masterfully captures the bleak look of Communist-controlled Eastern Europe where the physical and emotional scars of World War II are impossible to hide.

Before taking her vows, the Mother Superior asks Anna to go to Lodz to visit her Aunt Wanda, her only living family member, but the visit causes her to experience emotions she had never been forced to confront. When the slender, frail, saintly-looking younger woman meets her aunt for the first time, Wanda is dressed in a bathrobe, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, a shadow of the judge and former Communist prosecutor of "enemies of the state," who routinely sent people to their death. Leading Anna into the kitchen, Wanda blurts out with little subtlety. "So, you're a Jewish nun," telling her that her real name is Ida Lebenstein and that she was brought to the convent as an infant after her family was murdered by either the Nazis or the locals.

On the surface, Wanda is the sinner and Ida is the saint, but, as the film progresses, these distinctions become blurred and each is revealed as a multi-layered human being whose mysteries are not easily penetrated. When Ida asks to visit the grave where her parents are buried, Wanda tells her that "they have no graves," but both know that they must seek to find those responsible for the crimes. Wanda is aggressive as she tries to track down the guilty, but the search is more of a psychological journey to find closure than a desire for revenge. Along the way, Ida, an innocent motivated by faith, listens to the more experienced Wanda who tells her to live her life fully while she has the chance.

While it is difficult to know with any certainty what Ida thinks about the idea, she hesitatingly samples the secular life in a romantic relationship with Lis, a handsome saxophone player (Dawid Ogrodnick) who has a gig at their hotel, removing her habit and literally and figuratively letting her hair down. When Lis invites her to go to the beach with him, she asks, "What then?" When he replies, "Marriage and a family," she asks again, "Well, what then?" His answer is that we just go on to live our life, a notion that Ida seems to recoil from, but carefully guards her emotions.

Ida is a quiet film but masks the characters' inner torment. There is little dialogue but thanks to the direction and the strong but understated performances, especially from nonprofessional Trzebuchowska, the film becomes a hypnotic, if enigmatic experience. While Ida raises the question about whether or not it is best to live with comfortable illusions or seek an often painful truth, viewers are left to decide the answer for themselves.

I had high hopes for this Oscar winning film. And unfortunately it only partly payed off. Visually the film is beautiful. The black and white cinematography is breathless, the camera angles innovative and the setting perfect. But the narrative lacks an emotional depth. It all feels too cold, too detached. You don't really sympathize with the main characters, because too much is left unspoken.

'IDA': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five)

Polish drama flick about a nun, that's about to take her vows in 1960s Poland, who first learns a disturbing secret about her family's past. It was directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. It has received almost unanimously positive reviews from critics and garnered a great deal of prestigious awards attention as well (including Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography). The film has been negatively criticized by some though, for portraying Poles as anti-Jewish. I found the movie to be interesting and beautiful to watch but I wish the characters would have been developed more.

Agata Trzebuchowska stars as Anna; an orphan who was brought up by nuns in a convent, in the 1960s Polish People's Republic. She's a novice, about to take her vows, when her superior (Halina Skoczynska) tells her she must first meet her aunt, her only living relative, Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza). Wanda is an alcoholic judge, who used to be a prosecutor responsible for sending many anti- communist Polish soldiers to their death. She tells Anna about her Jewish heritage and the two set out on a journey together, to learn more about their family's past. They both, of course, learn more about who they are now, in the process.

The movie is presented all in black-and-white and I strongly agree with it's Best Cinematography Oscar nomination. The acting is all decent and the story is compelling, but I wish it would have been developed at least a little more. We get to know the Wanda character pretty well but we hardly learn much about Anna at all, before the film is over. The movie is only 80 minutes long and it seems like it could have been so much more emotional, if we would have gotten to know both characters better. There was potential here for a really great film; but I think it's still worth viewing (for it's visuals alone).

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