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Agata Trzebuchowska plays an orphaned nun in Ida.
PHOTO COURTESY M U SIC B o x FlLM S
Film ‘Ida’ keeps its focus
on a family’s history
by
D arleen O rtega
Emotional
Journey
The Holocaust continues to be a popular film subject, but
with ever more widely uneven results. To be sure, there are
many worthy stories left to be told of courage and unrectified
wrongs, and of the long-term effects of systemic evil on the
human spirit. But many such films get derailed by compli
cated plots, or they plow old ground, thereby missing the she has one living relative, an aunt, whom she must visit
universal questions lurking in stories of the Shoah.
before she takes her vows. The film demonstrates the con
Ida, the first Polish-language film of British director fines of Anna's world, and her wish to remain inside them.
Pawel Pawlikowski (a native Pole who has lived his adult life Only duty could lure her outside the convent; she little
in the UK), avoids those pitfalls in part by keeping its focus imagines the duty to which she may be called once she
particular. Its subject is an 18-year-old orphan, Anna, who ventures outside.
has a lived a sheltered life in a rural convent and is preparing
She travels to the city to meet her aunt, who is as different
to take her vows to become a nun. It is 1962, and life in Soviet from Anna as it is possible to imagine. A former state
Poland is evidently austere, but especially so for solemn
prosecutor in the political show trials of the early 1950s,
Anna. Her days are marked by work and quiet rituals, which Anna’s only living relative came to be known as "Red
she performs with devotion.
Wanda, and presumably sent many people termed enemies
Anna is not happy when her Mother Superior tells her that of the Communist state to their deaths. Wanda is now ajudge
and a Communist party insider. She also is plainly as cynical
as Anna is devout. After a brief encounter in which she
bluntly tells Anna that she is a Jew, that her real name is Ida,
and that her parents (including Wanda's sister) were presum
ably killed during the war, she sends Anna on her way, as
though there is nothing more to be said.
At first ready to leave, Anna does so -- but soon turns
back. She may lack the experience of her aunt, but she exhibits
a kind of intuition that could well be assisted by years of
spiritual practice. Wanda is ready for her. Anna strongly
resembles the sister she lost 18 years before, and seems to
have awakened something in her.
Neither woman displays any sentimentality, but Anna is
curious. Wanda tells her of her mother's idealism and her
artistic temperament. Anna wants to see where her parents
are buried; Wanda advises her that it is unlikely there will be
a grave to visit, but offers to take Anna to the home about
which it seems she had not thought to be curious. They travel
by car to the small community where Anna's parents lived,
to find out what happened to them.
continued
on page 15