A subtle and dramatic road movie, awarded the Oscar for best foreign film. The film was severely criticized, especially by our domestic audience, because the quiet chamber “Ida” beat “Leviathan” Zvyagintsev in the nomination. What did Pavlikovsky do that can touch and captivate?
"Ida" is a multifaceted work, like a collection of film images. It touches on post-war Poland, the Jews, but the main thing is different. This is an adult film that tells the story of the novice Anna and her search for her past without teaching. Pavlikovsky made a surprisingly cinematic story with a minimum of dialogue. The inner world is transmitted through the setting of the frame. The heroine is never in the middle of the composition, hinting at its closedness and alienation. Styling for black and white old movies conveys the atmosphere of emptiness and loneliness in which Anna, aka Ida, feels. Separately, I want to emphasize how skillfully it succeeds - the fact that this is a modern movie, you will only tell the high quality of the picture, but everything else will plunge into the 60s.
Where is the growing-up movie in this monotonous and boring movie (as some have praised it)? The film touches on the small story of a girl – a victim of Nazism, who comes out of the usual world of the monastery to her aunt and learns not only an alien world, but also her faith. Ida is far from our world and viewer, lost. With the help of Wanda, the heroine collects herself in pieces, learns and experiences new emotions.
The contrast between Ida and Wanda perfectly highlights the young girl’s insecurity about her faith. Only visually it seems more close to religion, but its detachment from the frame and environment, say the opposite – she is one, but not the other. Ida and Wanda’s journey together underscored this.
This film is not only about the Holocaust and the guilt of Poland in it - it is about the impact of fate on specific people of different social classes. There is no difference between a strict life in a cool monastery and a carefree life in the wild, when you lost all loved ones who are dear, and in the soul emptiness and loneliness. “Ida” can be categorized as a “little big movie” because such an oxymoron perfectly describes the content and significance of “Ida” for world cinema.
If you read the reviews of the audience, and then watch the Polish film “Ida” in 2013, you will probably have doubts whether you watched the same film.
Ida is an Oscar-winning black-and-white drama, recognized as the best foreign language film of the year in 2014. It was shot by the famous Polish director Pavel Pawlikowski.
The plot of the film is very simple. Poland, 1960s. Preparing to become a nun and spent all her life in a monastery school, the girl goes to meet with her aunt. This woman she had never seen before, and the nuns reported that she at one time refused to take her from the shelter.
The women meet and the girl learns that she is Jewish, and her parents were killed during the Second World War. Together they travel to a nearby town where their family used to live. They hope to find out where the remains of their relatives are.
"Ida" is the most conventional film. It concerns historical events and unfolds in the specific socio-political structure of the country. But he does not moralize, criticize or interpret the events that took place in Poland in the 1940s and 1960s.
But far from rosy portrayal of Polish society during the existence of Poland within the USSR and manipulation of images of a Jewish militant communist led to fierce criticism of the film.
In Russia, for example, one can often find a comparison of "Ida" with "Leviathan" by Andrei Zvyagintsev. Both films were Oscar nominees in 2014. And people who are critical of both of these tapes write: Ida won because it tarnished its country even more than Leviathan.
Yeah, I guess "I'm going" is easy to judge as black. There would be a wish. But it's actually a poetic and detached film. The main character, a beautiful young girl, preparing to become a nun, immerses herself for a short period of time in the everyday world of people. She sees the sweet and attractive aspects of life, which she is deprived of in the monastery. But she also sees unfortunate people forced into military, political and social strife. And this fight is terrible. They kill the spirit and push people to do what is completely unacceptable and inexcusable from the point of view of religion.
Idu has been called one of the best films of the 21st century. And it's really worth watching. If you wish, you will see in it a beautiful and sad story about the moral choice that in one form or another stands before every person living on Earth. Or you will see an unjust black woman insulting Jews, Communists, Poles, believers and many others. The choice is yours.
The movie "Ida." The Black and White Road of Poland.
The film “Ida” by Polish director Pavel Pawlikowski from the first minutes is built on the opposition of black and white. This is the first film of the director, shot in his homeland and showing the difficult historical period of Poland, filled with dramatic events, to experience and accept which in the homeland of the director are ready not all.
The film is a kind of dialogue between the director and his country about the path that Poland chooses for itself. In my opinion, the main character of the film - novice Anna for the director personifies that beautiful and bright Poland, which will see the communist regime in its most unsightly form, face the horrors of war, persecution, inverted ideas of good and evil.
According to the director, before taking a vow of monasticism, Anna meets with her aunt Vanda Cargo and learns from her about her real name - Ida Lebenstein, and that her parents are Jews who were killed during the war.
The prototype of another heroine of the film Wanda Gruz is a real person – Polish Jew Helena Wolinska-Brus, known in her homeland for her death sentences “enemies of the people” and nicknamed “Red Wanda”.
The film begins with a scene where novices of a Catholic monastery carry a plaster image of the Savior and install it on the site of a former fountain. The scene was filmed as if there was a funeral procession. Involuntarily there are associations with evangelical events, when the wives of the myrrhbearer bury Christ and the Great Sabbath comes. At a time when humanity does not yet know about the subsequent Great Resurrection of Christ. Thus, the director seems to make it clear to the viewer that all subsequent events of the film occur because of the absence of God in people’s lives, and the main event is the Resurrection only has to happen.
Dialogues are minimized, thereby forcing the viewer to think about what is happening and choose. In fact, the theme of choice is key in the film. There are no random events in the film. Each scene is valuable in itself and filled with a deep meaning, which, like a good book, opens to the viewer gradually after the work done by himself.
The film "Ida" with an open ending. We see how Ida experiences a rethinking of her life, plunges into temptation and again finds herself faced with choosing her own path, on which she has yet to meet God.
Whether this meeting will take place, the director deliberately leaves behind the scenes, thereby leaving the viewer and the history of Poland to make their own choice.
It is difficult to say whether Pavel Pavlikovsky hoped for an Oscar when he put “Ida”. The film is difficult to correlate with public moods, does not raise the problem, does not cause tear glands, a lump in the throat and other manifestations of sensitivity, causing cameraman frame-by-frame, poorly memorable and not comparable with the viewer. In general, there is a huge pile of question marks – “why did this happen?” Five years after the film’s release, there are no answers.
Let’s say it’s all about religion and faith. Movies that question it are isolated, Powell, Dreyer, Bergman, Bresson, recent Schroeder, can be enumerated for a long time, in fact, this is a sphere that looks infinite and will never be a tracing paper passed from author to author, because whether part has a philosophical, unanswered. In Pavlikovsky, the emphasis on the heroine’s acceptance of faith does not add up – toss, hesitate, decide, suffer and return – even the course of the character’s reasoning is swallowed in the film, and there are no mechanisms behind the apparent motivation. The viewer is faced with a fact, with a headline in a newspaper article, under which there will be no text. Hence the extreme distance of the film from its audience.
Then let’s say everything from the Holocaust, curved lines of destinies and human unity, to rebuilding one’s past. This evenly fits the behavior of Wanda - she had the opportunity to know before, had the opportunity to relate and self-flame. Did the main character have the opportunity to do this? Does the viewer, for whom the story is sold as a local cut, have the opportunity to do this in relation to one already strangely existing family? Pavlikovsky is stingy and uninteresting in each of his questions in seemingly broad topics. Preparing to gird the entire distance between human sin and righteousness, he shrinks to the level of an inconspicuous supporting character. Heroes are maximally silent and grotesque in the old-format black and white silence, everything that works on intonation is camera techniques, perspectives, landscapes, stairs and hairstyles of characters rushing from one corner of the frame to another. Should the camera capture the mood of the characters? Absolutely. Does it? Not at all.
This is reflected in the Ida, which seems to move away from church cells to worldly joys, but in fact, has no idea what it needs. Maybe turn around, go back. The truth is nowhere to be found. Then maybe Pavlikovsky filmed his picture about this despair in the search for faith with the process of knowing life? The unknowability of the future? Awareness of your “I”, nationality, history of your life? Again, the need for such feelings for the heroine is absent as a class, and what she really feels is the uncertainty of Pavlikovsky, who returned to his native side after decades of work abroad and decided to finalize what was silenced fifty years ago. It was too quiet.
The genre is as ancient as our civilization. With one hand Homer held the cup, the second hugged the heter, and the story of the road adventures of Odysseus became more interesting with each sip of wine. Then, instead of a hetera, I had to take a stylus in my hands, and then both hands were needed: hold the camera. In general, the genre of "road Movie" worn as that hetera, about the path of a person to himself, through space, time and of course adventure.
Only there will be nothing like this in this film, there will be a road, there will be a film, but you will not find any “to yourself”, there will be no adventures. It is the path of memory that leads one heroine to despair and another to renunciation.
Ida and Wanda, niece to aunt. Two very different men, bound together by family ties and history, one for all Jewry, but for each Jew his own.
From the very beginning of the film, black holes of the eyes, without blinking, watch us, we together with them learn the world beyond the borders of the monastery, watch the transformation of the Catholic novice Anna into Ida, a Jewish girl. Gradually, overgrown with memory, history, tragedy, Ida ceases to be just a spectator of her life, she begins to act as if from a template doll fashioned by craftsmen by nuns she turns into a person with doubts, feelings, pain and joy.
The brighter and more violent seems Wanda, open to all vices and passions. Her impulses are pure passion. The subject of action, constantly in conflict with reality.
Having accepted and understood each other, they find a common story. The tearing up of the grave of the woman’s relatives exposed the terrible past. And then moved and buried again, already in the family burial. What is a metaphor for the historical memory of the Polish people? Or maybe all the peoples of Europe? Pavlikovsky does not give an answer, he neatly poses questions that the one who wants to look for answers considers.
The question that sounds at the end of the tape: “And then?” haunts each of us, because if you ask it long enough, in the end the answer will be: “death.”
10 out of 10
How strangely intertwined in postwar Poland are the age-old religions, communist ideas, war, crimes. Against the background of devastation and a fake communist facade, ghost people wander, looking for themselves: their roots and their souls.
Perhaps the worst thing that remained after this war is the atmosphere of the sunken world. It really sank. Eastern Europe will never be the same as before the war. Disfigured by bombing and rebuilt after the war cities. And, most importantly, people, in the hiding places of the soul of which there are many secrets that they would like to forget forever.
The film is very beautifully shot. The black and white minimalist picture addresses us to the era of black and white television. The Jewish theme, largely obliterated by dozens of other paintings, is presented here softly and rather delicately. As well as the description of Catholic rituals and everyday life.
But the main thing, because of what the film left a deep impression, is the matchlessly selected actresses – the contrast of their images in many ways made the atmosphere of the film. The human drama of these two women, though perceived differently, does not make them cynical or aggressive. They remain human and in this life choice lies an invisible and noble feat.
P.S. One last thing. On my aunt’s wall in my apartment, I saw a painting depicting the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, apparently during the siege. It's also quite a touch.
The history of the Jewish people is tragic and throughout the history of mankind there is no nation that has experienced so much horror and pain. This is 400 years of slavery in Egyptian captivity, medieval persecution, but the bloodiest of them is the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews. Ida tells the story of a Jewish girl who grew up in a Catholic monastery and always thought she was a Pole and an orphan. Before taking a vow of service to God, the nun informs her that she has an aunt Wanda. The girl decides to meet her. From her, she learns the true story of her origin. It turns out that Ida is a Jewish woman who miraculously escaped the hands of the Nazis. Her entire family died in concentration camps. Wanda also lost her entire family, and does not know about the fate of her young son. Together with Wanda, they find their former home, where both their families lived. While they travel, Ida decides to learn the charms of life, following the example of her aunt, she doubts that she wants to remain a nun.
I must say that the picture was shot amazingly beautifully. Classical European cinema in its most beautiful sense. Literally, each frame is a masterpiece, the level of Andrei Tarkovsky or Andrzej Wajda. The expressiveness of the picture is emphasized by the monochrome tape. The whole course of the film is very calm and even everyday. And amid this calm, we learn the horrific story of Ida and her aunt and the many, many other Polish Jews who were victims of the Holocaust. We see the indifference and even hostility of the Poles who occupied the house taken from Ida’s family and who ended up killing her family for fear of punishment from the Germans. But it was then, everyone did it, now no one touches the Jews. Why bother with past events? Humanity continues to live as if nothing had happened. So comfortable and so calm. But this screaming silence is the cries of millions of men, women and children choking in the gas chambers or starving in the ghetto, children who will never grow up, start a family, or bring new scientists, doctors or musicians to the world. This movie is about remembering so that it never happens again. It turns out that Wanda's son was killed, and she couldn't bear it. Ida returns to the monastery, because it is impossible to continue to live in this world as if nothing had happened. She becomes a nun, walks away from the real world as if she had never been there, as if she had died with her parents, died for this world that deserves no forgiveness.
This is a silent tape about an uncomfortable silence, the cries of which cannot be drowned out by the passage of time, no money and compensation to families, but only by deep remorse. Today, the Polish government passed a law prohibiting the accusation of Poland of the Holocaust. And let anti-Semites around the world shout that this did not happen, it is not true, they find evidence of this. But I decided to write this review on this day, the day of memory of those who died in the Holocaust, so that people remember and do not forget what a person is capable of.
I will end the review with an excerpt from a beautiful poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko “there are no monuments over the Babi Yar”. It's not about Poland. But it doesn’t matter here, it’s about all of us.
Over Babi Yar rustle wild grasses.
Trees look terrible, judicially.
Everything is silent here screaming, and, taking off his hat,
I feel like I'm slowly graying.
And I myself, like a soundless scream,
Over thousands of people buried.
I'm -
Every old man here is shot.
I'm -
Every child here has been shot.
Without the past, there is no present. You cannot move forward without knowing and accepting what has happened. Both Wanda and Ida are on their way to meet the past. But, this trip turns for them the way inside themselves, the identification of their “I”, after which none of the heroines will be the same, and each will make their own personal choice.
Without the present, there is no future. You cannot move forward without accepting and understanding what is. First of all, you are yourself. And Ida tests herself with “carnal knowledge” to get to know herself real, make sure that the decision is correct and make a meaningful step forward.
“Ida” is, despite the importance of the themes of war, the Holocaust, repentance, primarily a film about choice. Personal choice and choice of path.
Reduced in its asceticism and conciseness to the purism of form, compositionally almost geometrically calibrated, with amazing mise-en-scene shot mainly frontal, static middle and long-range, striking crystal clarity and transparency of the frame, the film at its best resembles the unforgettable Bresson and Dreyer.
For all the external differences between Ida and perhaps Pavlikowski’s most famous former work, My Summer of Love, they paradoxically line up with their feminocentrism and free-thinking in matters of faith. The first, by the way, brings together the Polish director with the singer of uncommunicability Antonioni.
Rare for modern cinema timekeeping in 80 minutes with a ponytail once again confirms the thesis that if the author has something to say, it is not necessary to shoot long pictures, behind the ornate facade of which a deep and fresh thought is rarely hidden. “Where there are few words, there they have weight,” said the classic. It's about "Ida."
8 out of 10
Before taking monastic vows, the novice Ida goes to her aunt to find her parents killed during the war.
Another opus about the Holocaust is more aesthetic than substantive, strongly reminiscent of the White Nights of Visconti, the Antonioni trilogy, the films of the “average” Bergman and Bresson. This is a cold, but spectacular, black and white picture. And meager dialogues, from which events are difficult to reconstruct. Finally, these are not immediately guessed 60s in the frame.
And, if to make inevitable comparisons, then on the picture and technical execution (with, oddly enough, incomparable budget) Ida will be stronger than Leviathan. Another thing is that Zvyagintsev takes a larger scale of ideas - neither more nor less biblical, throwing them like kittens into modernity. Pawlikowski will be more modest, but maybe that's his strength. His story is not a generalization, but a private experience, judging by the interview. And more precisely, the experience of generations on the theme of the absence of everything after Auschwitz. And not just poetry. For Pavlikovsky, it seems that what is more interesting is not the tragedy of the war (he does not deny it), but the first post-war generation – carriers of jazz, love and freedom (this follows from the interview). Because the war left a dead mark not only on those who died, but also on those who were just beginning to live at that time - and Ida realized that. I realized I couldn't live. And it’s not just the difficulties that will come after 40 years. Wanda cannot live either - much sin, original and acquired, carries within itself. And those who killed Jews for their home and land are certainly not residents either.
As a result, the main problem of Ida is its dryness, emasculation. It is an aesthetic, intelligent, but almost emotionless movie (although the last scene with the bloody Wanda evokes certain emotions). This movie is about a lot of things, but about the Holocaust, not even in the first place.
In front of us is a black and white drama by the Polish director Paul Pavlekowski called Ida. The story of the film is deep and dramatic, resembling a wound that heals for a long time and will never heal. The film is unquestionably unusual and there is something about it that I liked. The film received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as a number of prestigious nominations and awards. I thought about this film for a long time and compared it to another Academy Award nominee, Leviathan. Finally, the view is fully formed.
We see the story of a young and innocent girl named Anna. She is an orphan and was raised in a monastery. Before taking dinner in a nun, the girl goes to her only relative - an aunt. Anna learns the terrible truth about the death of her parents and the fact that she is Jewish. The heroines go together to where the secret of the death of Anna’s unfortunate parents is kept. The harsh reality is so painful and hard that the attitude in this life to everything, and most importantly to the very belief in something in Anna forever changes.
The movie looks in some abstraction, and this is a good idea of the director. I remember the camera work, it was curious, and this film was a great fit. The story in this picture is definitely dramatic and sad. Everything is filled with pain, injustice, something cold. The movie was like a hard punch, something painful. Together with the main character, the viewer follows the story of full pain and loneliness, harsh reality and a certain darkness, in which there is not even a ray of light. A heavy film, definitely heavy, and critics appreciated its depth.
Despite the depth of this film, I did not leave the method of comparison when watching, and I always compared the film “Ida” with “Leviathan”. This Polish film definitely deserves praise, BUT "Leviathan" Zvyagintsev I liked it better. That movie is even deeper, even bigger. It gives more food for thought, it is stronger, it is deeper. This is my personal opinion and perception. As a result, "Leviathan" received the Golden Globe, and "Ida" Oscar, although I would have done the opposite.
"Ida" is a heavy drama of 2013 and a resounding success of Paul Pawlikovsky. His film was hotly received, and he deserves attention, but the picture is not for a large audience of viewers, it is specific and not everyone will appreciate it.
You're Jewish. They didn't tell you? Your real name is Ida Lebenstein. You are the daughter of Chaim Lebenstein and Rosa Hertz.
7.5 out of 10
Yesterday we watched the Oscar-winning and loud "Ida" by Pavel Pavlikovsky. In artistic terms, the film strongly reminded of “Helena” Zvyagintsev. Purely European cinema. Undoubtedly, the film is good. Strangely simple. Later it turned out that the authors deliberately chose this everyday presentation of material.
But something was missing. Aftertaste of disappointment.
It is clear that Ida is a future nun who has already learned to keep her feelings under control. About them we must guess slightly, reading a few seemingly random details. But these details, in my opinion, were very few. What she was worried about and what she was looking for, and whether she was looking for anything at all, everything remained hidden from the viewer behind dense curtains. I wanted to see the process of consciousness breaking. Yeah, something's happening to her. She lies to the priest that she has Jewish roots. It's hard. Here she doesn't want to wear a dress to a party and tries to read the gospel through the power. Stops listening to jazz. She fell in love for the first time. Here she was for the first time at lunch. Here she removes the bottles and soon applied to the bottle, discovering unknown tastes and sensations. But... But what's all this about? I find myself wondering why her aunt, not her, Ida, is going through photos of her departed Lebenstein family. She's not interested? After all, it seems that recently it turned out that she comes from a completely different pack, but Idu is not worried at all. She silently struggles, but somehow not with this new understanding. She struggles with the attraction of the world. Of course, the topic is important, but, as for me, it is not interesting.
Much more dramatic, lively, and therefore more memorable was the image of her aunt - Wanda Cargo - performed by Agatha Kuleshi. Convincing pain. Although the author, most likely, on the example of Ida and intended to show how in religion a person can hide from himself, from fears, primitivizing and simplifying the reality around him.
I did not feel the political background, the slap on the Poles. This is not the message of the author.
And if we leave aside the themes of the confrontation between secular life and monastic life, the themes of finding one’s Jewish roots and conflict with the church, there was also the topic of the abandoned single child and the search, acquisition and loss of one’s parents. It's drama. But the movie wasn't about that either.
First of all, I would like to leave the advice, despite the acutely social sabzh, not to perceive cinema in such a “color”. In the worst case, all the cinematic “poetry” of the broken characters of this picture will dissolve in a hopeless long-playing scale. Such a level of tragic sophisticated work, an inspiring contemporary of traditional works of the “bergman” or an adherent of the phyological student baggage of Pavel Pavlikovsky, will not be comprehended by any inquisitive moviegoer. Contemporary art, I will say, is the most subjective thing of all cinema epochs.
Anna, a pupil of a Polish monastery, who served there during her life, in the picture appears to be a part of a spiritual substance, who was completely devoted to worship. The very place of the “god” within her was emphasized more than once by allegorical overtones. Starting from the scene of the reconstruction of His “figures”, revealing to us the arbitrary spiritualized bestowal of the Supreme (as an artist to his painting), possibly rooted in the place of its “non-existence” in this environment. The same fact of that “substance” was the rhythmic pattern of church activity, manifested in relation to a single function. The viewer himself does not find anything for himself in the image of Anna, even in the external representation (because of the share of camera contrasts and thickening colors, the very fact of the existence of red hair is doubtful).
Soon she receives an alert about the next meeting with her relative Wanda. Wanda is the opposite figure in their comparative relation. Behind its character is the image of post-war Poland, shaken by a mass genocide of its kind. One scene reveals the fact of their innocent conflict fracture, the notation of the whole film, the “interaction of soul and faith.” Anna wore a protégé of a religious non-communicative person, from the world of everything, and Wanda was doomed to a long confession soul.
The same “confrontation” on the end of the shocking information about the death of her matter was reflected in the same way on Anna. However, her aunt is already burdened with an inner self-torturing path to a hopeless finale. For Anna herself, the inner conflict took the sign of the manifestation of her spirit, namely, in the form of a characteristic inherent in each subject - the fragility of human nature. At the end of the film, the sign manifested itself in a one-time shaking of faith, through an inhuman bloodline inherited by it. Like any fragile creature (especially at her young age), the very rejection of the vow took on the motive of her premature dedication to bitterness. Therefore, one bottle of alcohol, a smoked cigarette and loss of virginity was enough to consciously claim her procedural “rehabilitation” as the final sign of awareness of existence.
Such festival work deserved no less honor to receive its promised award, especially being in the same boat with the multifaceted religious and at the same time daring film epic Zvyagintsev. In such a more controversial comparison, Ida looks like an innocent, fragile flower to its international audience. Unlike Leviathan, the film does not give up a loud whip, but a bitter gingerbread, but only on conscious perception.
“Ida” is a cold and correct story about hopelessness: the created atmosphere repels, penetration into the characters is unpleasant.
The film tells the viewer a black and white parable about nudity, revealing the deep inside through the merger of the two main characters against the background of the family drama of Holocaust victims. A young girl, Anna, who spent her colorless and still unconscious life in the monastery, before taking a vow meets with her aunt-judge Wanda, covering up the tired reluctance to live with imaginary pleasures. The first is a symbol of an unexpressed, yet unformed desire, faceless, cloudy. The second is the personification of conscious despair and naked pain, powerlessly striving to find justice. The second judge, the first accept. And none of them are in their place, because none of them has their place.
According to the plot of the film, it turns out that Anna is Jewish, her real name is Ida, her family died as a result of persecution during the war. Women, deciding to find out more about the death of relatives, go in search. The beginning of the journey at the same time as the beginning of Ida’s awakening is the beginning of Wanda’s revelation in Anna: a rebellious, desperate passion under the guise of forced humility.
A journey into the past brings neither comfort nor satisfaction. Wanda, exhausted by the fight against anger, broken by pain and injustice, commits suicide. Anna, feeling the strength not to take tonsure, becomes Ida and tries to enjoy worldly pleasures. But neither satisfaction nor a sense of belonging to such a world comes, and from despair, restless, unfounded meaning to fight, unwilling to be herself, Anna returns to the monastery.
And to understand my sadness, look at the empty sky.
“Ida” is a film by P. Pavlikovsky, awarded this year’s Oscar, shot with great attention to the visual side, but, unfortunately, is completely conceptually not thought out. Using the possibilities of calligraphically sophisticated presentation of black and white images, the director creates an extremely anemic film, emotionally dry and stingy in the choice of expressive means. Trying to achieve Bressonian laconism in a formal sense, Pavlikovsky does not cope with the task, aggravating the perception of the picture by long static plans of silent heroes.
Silence is very cinematic and can stun the viewer with a storm of feelings, bubbling inside restrained heroes, but it has a suggestive effect only in detailed, rhythmically calculated climax scenes (remember, for example, the episodes of the painting by I. Allegra “Such a beautiful little beach”), but trying to build the whole film on them is an impossible task even for such a virtuoso of silence as Antonioni, who asked his performers to think in the frame that saturated the pictorial vacuum of what was happening, and Pavlikovsky’s characters – no emptitudes, no features.
The basic binary opposition on which the structure of the film is built is the images of Ida and her aunt, and if the latter is marked by albeit negative, but still existentially authentic characteristics (cynicism and disappointment in life mask spiritual emptiness), then the central image only simulates true faith, but does not express it. Many outstanding films ("Supplement" by K. Zanussi, for example) destroy the widespread atheistic cliché regarding churched people, perceiving them as puppets running from their freedom under the wing of external authority: the life of a believer, if he is spiritually sober, can be rich and bright, full of torment and joy, overcome sometimes not easily, but always with God's help.
Pavlikovsky shows life in the monastery as something automatic, mechanistic, dead, the plastic of Ida is robotized, but hides not an abyss of unrealized desires, but a vacuum, the absence of a spiritual dimension as such. Ida is a shell, an empty image, not connected with the reality of the inner world of the Christian, especially the novice. The way Ida is shown in the film sows serious doubts in the soul of the viewer about her ability to pray in general. After all, prayer is not relaxed meditation, but the concentration of all spiritual forces, the consolidation of the will, the cutting off of all foreign thoughts and images in the name of living communication with God. All this is inaccessible to the heroine, so she, as in oblivion, easily goes to sin, and then, as if nothing had happened, back to the monastery. What is this nonsense?
Of course, the viewer already in the first scenes sees Pavlikovsky’s attempt to establish an intertextual dialogue with L. Buñuel’s Viridiana, but if the heroine of the Spanish film was crushed by life’s trials, her dreams and good thoughts were trampled by human cruelty and selfishness, and that is why Viridiana is one of the greatest tragic images in the history of cinema, then Ide has nothing to lose, this is a spiritual invalid, an image artificially created by the imagination of the director of the postmodern era, unable to aesthetically convincingly recreate the spiritual torments of the believer because they are not understood by him.
The words from the Soviet song in the title of this article very accurately express the artistic results of Pavlikovsky’s painting, the reason for its dull, funerary intonation. There is neither tragedy nor even drama in Ida, despite all the enormity of the events told in it, there is only the longing of an unbelieving director who took on the impossible task of talking about incomprehensible objects for him. Ida, being a novice, learns that she is a Jew, and that her parents were brutally murdered, but this does not change her internally, despite the efforts of the director, who tries to dramatically saturate long general plans with exquisite camera techniques, and all because he is not available to the mystery of faith that allows a person to pass through the fire of any, even the most terrible ordeal (remember another picture of Buñuel “Nazarin”, which tells just about this).
Having chosen the inexpressive performers, bound their play with anemic contemplativeness, which has nothing to do with prayerful concentration, pedaling the photographically elegant but bombastic beauty of the general plans, Pavlikovsky made a picture, vainly trying to find an answer to the question: “What is it that drives Christians?” But in order to answer it, one must have at least a partial experience with the life of the Church. Then we will know who is driving us.
While watching "Ida", the feeling did not leave - "I have already seen it somewhere", it did not leave me until the end of the viewing. Interesting 20 minutes of the story of the nun who came to find out about the fate of her parents, for me lasted a very long time, well, a very long time, but this is small compared to the fact that the whole production itself is nothing special.
Though the picture is beautiful, the meaning of faith, symbolism is clear, but the film, unfortunately, is simply sluggish, and all its plot twists are “slightly” primitive. By the way, it is not the fault of the writer, not the cameramen Ryszard Lenchevsky and Lukash Zal, who did their work on encore (strong footage), but only the director Pavlikovsky, who I think, the material was not interesting. There was a feeling that the author simply took the right Jewish theme (the same one), but forgot to add himself to it, and as a result, a far-fetched story came out, deservedly, because of its content, which received many awards and awards. Only if you put them aside, there is nothing interesting, especially new, here. Unless you can admire the black-and-white view of post-war Poland and see Agatha Trzebukhovska, an actress whose naive face is the main decoration of ordinary drama, whose end is predictable and not evoking any emotions.
It just so happened that the first time I sat down for a film exactly a year ago, intending to see all the Oscar-nominated films. But in the tenth minute I decided to postpone Ida for later, and now, eleven months have passed, and I am again trying to understand and not condemn a nun girl named Anna, who struggles to accept the truth about her origin.
I had that feeling a year ago.
Now, after watching, I mentally applaud Pavlikovsky for the impossible simple plot and for his tragicomism.
To retell what is written in the description of the film does not make sense. If you decide to watch the film, then I am sure that neither my review nor the review of someone else will create the weather for you.
And yet the amazing thing is peace. And no less amazing is the family, about which we sometimes know absolutely nothing, but we should, because it is also a small universe.
And how ridiculous is the lot that falls on our fate and we dutifully accept it, only eventually understanding what awaits us ahead.
10 out of 10
The film is one of the few where you do not want to know how much time is left until the end and sincerely surprised to see the black and white credits.
The first thing to say is that the filmmakers were right. "Ida" deserves an Oscar. Well, that's my amateurish mindset.
Leviathan is losing against her background. Although no, landscapes still wins, but otherwise, no one needs Russian black. And perhaps not yet understood by any of the prosperous Europeans. Well, the hut... well, the hut with the edge... well, the showdown... the hero is confused and goes against the system... at the same time and drinks, confirming the already entrenched myth about the Russians.
What's good about IDA. Elegance, verboseness, beauty of each frame (!) and even the most desperate shots are shown so that you admire.
If you compare the film with the picture, then everything is made light and yet large strokes. Everything seems simple, predictable, recognizable, but beautiful! And this beauty fills inside, and at the end of the film you are already full of these shots, a little surprised by the finale and ready to reconsider once again this black and white Polish story.
I don’t know what the magic of this movie is. The plot is simple, if not everyday, again all about Jews, about persecution, etc. The girl-heroine is not a screen star, the director (as the Poles told me - unknown in Poland), and the plot is not original.
But good. Just fine. Maybe because there are no problems and there is no desire to conquer the film academics, turn out before them, as it was done in Leviathan.
Elegance, lightness and subtlety. Here are three words to start watching this movie.
And that's just good. Very good.
Ida is a young novice, preparing to take a vow. The abbot sends her to see her only relative, Aunt Wanda. She tells Ida the truth about her background and that her parents were killed during the war. Two girls go on a journey to find the burial place of their ancestors.
Painting Paul Pavlikovsky received the award "Oscar" for the best film in a foreign language, beating our "Leviathan". Despite the fact that “Ida” became perhaps the highest-rated film of the year and received many awards, at home (in Poland) it was subjected to all sorts of attacks, and the director was almost called a traitor to his country.
"Ida" - black and white drama film, which can even be dubbed as a road movie. The length of the tape is only 82 minutes. The film became a hit, by the standards of Polish cinema and grossed $ 11 million at the box office. It is surprising that such a picture attracted such close attention not only from critics, but also from ordinary viewers.
It's hard to tell the secret, perhaps in a special contrast, in the magic that the director and the cameraman created. After all, “Ida” is an amazingly balanced movie, where everything is in its place. You can’t call the film “audit”, but you can’t say that it is “simple”. Making “Ida” in black and white, the creators thereby recreated the atmosphere inherent in Poland in the 60s. Simple scenery, unremarkable rooms also complement the overall landscape. The right mood is set by quiet music and dark nature. It turns out that "Ida" is the most that no atmospheric movie can eat.
The length of the tape is slightly more than an hour, but even during this fleeting period of time Pavel Pavlikovsky managed to show more than many in two hours. There are no drawn-out scenes at all, screen time is used wisely, the director does not waste it. Pavlikovsky himself admits that it was not without the influence of Godar and Bergman. This is especially true of the latter.
The film is very sparing on dialogue and action. But the interesting thing is that there are enough emotions here and no words for this to do. In "Ida" a lot of attention is paid to the internal state of each character. Separately, it is worth noting that the main character is in doubt all screen time, she refuses to act, she only observes. People around her help her understand the right choice, on which her whole life depends.
Separately, it is worth commending the operator’s work. Even with a black and white palette, Ida can be called the standard of cinema. An interesting camera trick was that the characters are always at the bottom of the screen. Actors are also worth mentioning, especially the lead actor Agata Tshebukhovskaya, for whom this role was the debut. A worthy pair of her is Agata Kulesha, who played very eccentricly.
Ida is a very deep film that asks the right questions and partially answers them. The Oscar win is well deserved, and in my opinion Pavel Pavlikovsky’s picture is stronger than our Leviathan. That's my personal opinion, of course. If you haven’t seen “Ida,” I recommend correcting it soon, after all, the film is really worth it.
Young Anna spent her entire short life in a Catholic convent, spending time in prayer, obedience and almost silent communication with her sisters. When the time comes to take tonsure, take vows and forever abandon the world, which, apparently, Anna had a very vague idea, the mother abbot sends her to Krakow to the only soul in the world - Aunt Wanda, allowing or punishing to stay with her relative as long as necessary. The aunt turns out to be a severe strong-willed woman with a tragic fate, in proud despair burning through the remains of her former beauty and health. Anna learns from her that she is from a Jewish family, that her name is not Anna at all, but Ida, that her parents died in the Holocaust and where their grave can only be known by people living in their old family home – and that these people may well have killed them.
To be honest, I don’t think I have the right to particularly discuss (and even judge) the topic of the Holocaust or analyze the peculiarities of certain confessions, but I will try to share some thoughts or impressions from what I saw as a normal viewer. Any serious work of art (and this film is definitely one of them) has countless facets of perception by those who come into contact with it. In my opinion, there is no side, theme or any human action in this story that receives a strict and, in the end, simplifies the author’s verdict, so it will probably be very convenient for everyone to view the “Ida” from their bell tower. Is it possible to see God’s motives here? Maybe if you're interested. Is Catholicism or monasticism condemned? I think someone will make fun of themselves. Are the victims of the war mourned? Of course. But still, the strength of this story lies in its conciseness and specific living characters. For me, for example, the path that Anna-Ida made seems quite conscious and consciously chosen from beginning to end, even the aunt’s reproach that “what a sacrifice from all your vows, if real temptations were not passed” seems to be learned and overcome by Ida to its logical conclusion. Without overcoming this last temptation, she does not feel ready. And after succumbing to it and seeing a “normal” human life ahead, she confidently packs her suitcases and moves in the opposite direction to where other people are rushing along the road in cars and on motorcycles. Let this film be about loyalty and compassion, which is expressed in the willingness to draw at least a little someone else’s pain from the already closed (because the person is gone forever), but eternally bottomless well of despair. And the murderers will be briefly in the graves of their victims and no-no-yes and ask for forgiveness.
P.S. And this film can be framed in an album or hung on the wall - and you get a gallery of incredible black and white masterpieces.
This film is in black and white, which probably fits the theme. Once again, this is genocide. Jews in Poland during Hitler’s time. The main character is a “Jewish nun”, as she is called. And it turned out so because, saving from destruction, she was given to a Catholic orphanage. My brother had to be destroyed. He was black-haired and looked like a Jew, and most importantly circumcised. The Jewish family was first hidden by the Poles, then, in order not to be destroyed by themselves, they had to deal with the “heated” Jews. The whole film is the path of the heroine in search of the grave of her dead parents, then she intends to take tonsure. Along the way, she meets a variety of people, their past unfolds with laconic frankness. But the film ends with such a high light note, muffling the pain from all the previous ones. And again, it seems that this cannot happen again.
Usually, before watching a movie, I read a bit of criticism about the film, but I try not to go into it, so almost everyone describes the film in their comments, its essence, and thus it becomes not interesting to watch the picture, and I do not know why everyone writes the content of the film, and few people write on the merits. . .
I watched the movie and I feel like I haven’t seen anything. No emotions, no compassion (in theory, this is a drama), no interest in the heroine herself, negligent attitude to the aunt of the heroine.
The topic itself has been revealed for a long time. Crying, whining hundreds of times. I don’t know what the reward is...
Only if the abstraction can be... Not badly removed post-war Poland, and all ... nothing more!
I looked to the end, I thought maybe somehow the director will save his picture, but I was disappointed.
I put 3 factors, abstraction, the essence of the film and the acting and put:
5 out of 10
In 2013, director Pavel Pawlikovsky released his new film called Ida. The film visited various film festivals and received many prizes. The picture was also enthusiastically received by critics.
According to the plot, a young novice Anna (she is played by actress Agata Tshebukhovskaya), on the advice of her abbess, goes to visit her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesha), who reveals to her some secret. Wanda says her niece's real name is Ida and that her parents were murdered. She also reports that Ida is Jewish. After that, the main character wants to find the grave of her parents, and she and her aunt go in search.
For a long time I have not seen this in modern cinema: not only is the film black and white (you can find some good black and white films recently). For example, “Son” by Arseniy Gonchukova or “Artist” by Michel Khazanavicius, so it is also shot in 3x4 format. In this format, almost no one shoots. Almost everyone switched to the 16x9 format. Only some filmmakers still sometimes work with the old format. These include Pavel Pavlikovsky. According to the director, he chose this style of shooting because “for faces, portraits, it’s a great format.” Bergman liked to use it. Landscapes are vertical. The big, bottomless sky. Each frame is important in itself, not just as a stepping stone to the story. Actually, the dynamics of the action is much less important to me than the opportunity to enjoy the composition of the frame.
The presence of small active action and non-verbal dialogues give the film a certain rhythm and style of the director. Actors with total dedication give themselves to their hero. This is especially evident in the main character. For Agatha Tshebukhovskaya, this role became her debut in the cinema. And she hardly expected that the debut will be so stunning.
When Ida finds out about her parents, she wants to find their burial place. That goal comes first. For this she even agrees to give up the rights to the house where her parents used to live, so that one knowledgeable person will escort Ida with Wanda to the right place.
The most incredible thing in the movie for me was the ending. It was so unpredictable that I didn’t even expect it to happen.
Polish films have always been different. And this picture was no exception. Pavel Pawlikowski managed to delightfully convey the spirit and atmosphere of Poland in the 60s. "Ida" is a new movie with a capital letter. "Ida" is the progress of Polish cinema.
The Holocaust, his forgiveness, Wanda and Ida are the background of a work of art. The first plan is the author’s view of the problem of the naturalness and meaning of Christian self-denial.
At first, there is total indifference between Vanda and Ida. Wanda is too intelligent, vicious and independent for any kindred sentiments, her life is devoid of any meaning and Ida causes only irritation. Still, Wanda sniffed at Ida, and found in her kinship exciting notes for herself, she reached for Ida, as a saving circle for her soul, as to the last hope will cling to at least some meaning of the life that is happening to her. She flaunts her intellectual superiority over the primitive forms of existence around her, she tries to find vulnerabilities in the religion of Ida, but she does not blaspheme, she is not sure of her superiority, and therefore does not burn bridges to possible repentance for her soul. She wondered how natural it was for Ida to pursue Christian self-denial. Ida protects from Wanda the hermetic world of her Christian faith, she does not let Wanda with her barbaric intellect into it. But, God, what's going on? - Turns out Ida needed Wanda too! They both need each other like heaven and earth. The antagonism of their relationship takes us into a third dimension, forcing us to evolve our usual ideas of good and evil.
The aunt and her niece have two opposites: Wanda’s intellect is dominated by a sharp mind that cuts any hermetic ideas and stereotypes, while Ida’s intellect, on the contrary, is dominated by spiritual integrity and self-sufficiency (in the form of the still blind instinct for the self-preservation of her soul); Wanda squeezes all the juices out of carnal pleasures, trying to anesthetize the bleeding ulcer of emptiness, gaping in her soul, love pleasures and wine, Ida not only does not touch this side of life, but does not even look in that direction at all; Wanda has importance in society and material well-being, Ida is an ordinary orphan. Wanda is an abyss of despair, arrogance and ruthlessness, in a word ' Red Wanda, remorseful of a sudden factor of conscience' Ida is mercy, compassion and purity, her spiritual coziness is so natural that no deliberate fanatic asceticism is felt in her, she is like a good fairy - a fabulous, not a real character.
They are both strong personalities, but their strength is manifested in different slices of reality, they coexist relative to each other in completely parallel realities ... these realities converged at one point in their memory of the Holocaust. The common memory of the main tragedy of their lives brings their souls closer together, they become relatives of each other. Vanda thanks Ide again felt like a living person. But her nature has already undergone pathological irreversible changes, her spiritual wound is not curable.
The God-fighting dialectic of the Polish film director is multidimensional, and one of its measures passes through the truth that I express for myself as follows.
One cannot take advantage of a world in which phenomena such as the Holocaust occur without demanding immediate repentance for the complete renunciation of mass armed violence. Wanda accepted this world knowing about its monstrous wormhole, she never even bothered to make an attempt in many years to find the ashes of her relatives destroyed by the Holocaust, she used this world for herself in the form in which it was given to her, squeezed all the juices out of it and gave nothing in exchange. Moreover, she aggravated things in her desire to make career progress in this world, she was known as Red Vanga and sentenced to death several political prisoners. She is the unwitting creator of the next 'Holocaust'! Ida does not accept this world in its traditional form, because she comes from the Holocaust, the monastic dinner for her is her demand for unconditional repentance for this world.
- So you're a Jewish nun.
- Who?
- When did you start drinking?
- At 12.
(C)
The abbot of the monastery demands from the novice Anna, before taking the monastic rank, she went and met with her only relative - Aunt Vanda Cruz. There, the orphan learns that her name is Ida Lebenstein and her parents were killed during World War II.
Her aunt is a stunning, mature, single woman, elegant like Coco Chanel, whose eyes “saw everything and drank everything.” Ida is an innocent angel. In this contrast, the film explodes the brain.
Together, women search for the mass grave of their relatives, traveling along the road of life. What will Ida understand? What lessons will she learn from everything? Will she accept the worldly life with all its difficulties?
Personally, I was thinking again. I am 33 years old, a single mother with almost four months of unpaid pay, and I know for sure that fairy tales, movies and books are a fictional world. Life is cruel and there is no justice. People around me take bribes, kickbacks, take away husbands from their families and there is no heavenly punishment for this. On the contrary, they live well and do not know grief.
And I thought that there is no right way either. You can drink, smoke, fuck, or pray and fast, forgive everyone. You can wait until your parents and your youngest child are 25 and walk out the window. Because you think you have that freedom of choice. You got nothing! There is Destiny. Chance. Rock. And only this nonsense decides everything in life. And only people are divided into those who can go to hack a neighbor with an axe to take his good stone house, and those who will honestly live in bare walls, eating vegetable soup and listening to Mozart and Bach.
I just finished watching this movie. And you know, I love it! I like everything about this film: these black and white tones, these simple and inexpensive scenery and rooms, this quiet and not at all noticeable music, this dark nature and some hopelessness. Yeah, it's hopelessness.
I am delighted that in an hour and an hour Pavel Pavlikovsky managed to show more than many in two hours. The film does not seem boring or long. On the contrary, he chains you from the very first shots showing Anna’s life in the monastery, this simple routine, and does not let you go until Anna, having lived the “ordinary life of Ida”, goes back. Perhaps she did not know what would happen next, because everything flowed strictly on schedule within the walls of the monastery, every hour was occupied with the same day after day. Maybe she was just not ready for this life.
But along with this, we see a side of the life of Wanda, Aunt Anna/Ida. There are parties, and alcohol, and men. And this, to some extent, is also the usual everyday life of Wanda, who at one point just finished her off.
Needless to say, from the first frames I was fascinated by Agata Tshebukhovskaya . She literally drew me to the movie and her eyes... Her whole appearance was very attractive, so simple and clean. As Wanda said, You attract people. The same can be said for the actress herself.
The wanda played by Agata Kulesha deserves no less attention. Her character is a woman with a difficult fate, who never became happy. Even though she has found her only relative, she has not ceased to be alone.
I decided to see this film for one simple reason: I was wondering why Oscar went to this film instead of Leviathan, which in turn captivated me. But I didn’t notice how much I fell in love with this film myself, and now I can say with confidence that Ida got it quite deservedly.
After our Leviathan flew with the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, I decided to get acquainted with the winner. And you know what, Pavlikovsky left near Zvyagintsev. The films share both general grayness and dullness, and excellent camera work. Thank God, even without kiloliters of vodka and blacks did. The undoubted plus of “Ida” is tightness (but honestly, you will still have time to get bored). The film touches on a not very pleasant page in the history of occupied Poland, when Jews were killed not only by the occupiers, but also by the Polish population. Without sarcasm now, any genocide is a shameful imprint in the history of any people, at any time. But. But isn't it sung, written, filmed a million times? How much can you use this thoughtful political move (and to put pressure on the conscience of the nation is an abomination, what an abomination you created 70 years ago, is it not politics?), this topic is already so worn out that it causes rejection rather than sympathy. Not exactly an Oscar winner.
The place and time of action is post-war Poland. The plot does not shine with originality, in short, the girl-obedient, who grew up and brought up at the monastery before taking a monastic vow, must meet with her aunt (in the past - the prosecutor, "Bloody Wanda", now the judge, tough and caustic). She reveals her terrible secret that she is actually a Jew, her parents were killed during the war, but the place of their burial is unknown. And so, imbued with sympathy for the young novice, using her pressure and connections, the aunt helps her find the grave of relatives. Most of the parallels "Ida" caused with the beautiful film "And everything was illuminated", also such a road Movie, but carrying echoes of the horrors of war, how much brighter, brighter, optimistic. The mood of "Ida" in the tone of black and white gamut films. This encounter of naivety and piety with the cold surrounding world.
Imagine a girl who was brought up from 6-7 years old at a monastery, practically in such a religious boarding school. Her life was determined by the schedule of church services and evening prayers, as if in an aquarium, in almost complete isolation from the world, most of which she also learned from church books and conversations with nuns, with faces as strict as those of dried fish. Now, this girl suddenly finds herself in a world where it is possible to kill people (and even babies) for a piece of land with four walls on it, and is faced with the need to find the grave of relatives. And a significant adult next to her is her aunt, who in the process of searching along the way lives not the most decent life, along the way argues about religion with a nun without five minutes, and then in general it happens that any person can think: not to retire to my monastery, from sin away ... But she told her that she was so young and beautiful that she did not need to ruin her life in the monastery. And she's thinking, maybe she's really not ready to go to the nun, maybe live? While traveling with my aunt, I saw how to live. I tried it. In an all-heavy, lightweight version. With appropriate extrapolations to their future fate.
In fact, this is the tragedy of a man who grew up in very isolated conditions, unsocialized and unfit for life. So her choice is obvious. What else can be done to an infantile naive girl, who accidentally drifted far from her comfort zone, if she knows nothing but simple existence in a monastery - eat, work, pray to God, everything is simple, like twice two, on which this cruel world falls to her. And then I can understand the heroine. But it is difficult for me to accept this triumph of grayness, isolation and dullness, submission to the cruelty of the world, fate and the system. That’s what annoyed me so much about Leviathan. But if Zvyagintsev does not give any answers and solutions at all, then Pavlikovsky gives - but also somehow joyless from such prospects. Replacing the search for the Way with avoidance and self-isolation is not the solution. Maybe this is really the idea of the director, to show this limitation against the background of the echo of tragic events, then the choice of black and white range is justified. But if not, and this is only a conscious attempt to delineate – this is good and this is bad, then of course this is the complete collapse of the “divine design in a single area”. After all, the world is actually colorful and multifaceted, good and bad things become in the eyes of the beholder, passing through the mind and heart of the beholder. And not to turn away, to accept, and especially to love, perhaps, not everyone can. I’m not going to change anything at all...
A fascinating journey into deep and hidden meanings
You heard that, Did you see that? It's done! "Ida" gave the prize, hurrah, comrades! A worldwide sensation. Such a movie!
The girl Anna is an orphan, so she spent her childhood and youth in the monastery. Before an important event in monastic life, the girl meets with her relative, Vanda. Anna learns that she is Jewish and that her parents were victims of the Holocaust. Together they go on a journey in order to find out the whole truth about the fate of the family.
It just so happened that it took me a while to fully understand art house movies. I had to finish university, read a lot of literature, review a lot of movies, join the army, start a family and start working. If before I could say something like, maybe there’s something special about the movie if someone likes it... in short, I was tolerant. Now I say that a rare amateur with a certain temper will say about such a movie that it is interesting (probably the main advantage). How did you see this masterpiece? I'm probably a bit of a hero because I watched. Let me make a reservation right away that not everything that is called an art house is talentless, there are wonderful ones, from the last that the Double (2013) and The Enemy (2013) saw.
A girl from the monastery learns details about her origin and her parents. It recognizes people's names, partly their character. Rosa Kher's daughter. The father is not at all, and in general everything is not very much with the parents of the girl. And a Jewish woman, what a passion. Half of Americans can sympathize with a girl. It’s so hard to live with this awareness... Representatives of nationality are immediately remembered. The first thing that comes to mind is the great Spildberg. But if he makes a movie talented for people, then this is a movie for people. I can’t say for sure who most likely connoisseurs!
Love art house cinema, the one where the tree grows, the house where everything falls apart and bad weather, but without expression. Style, monotonous, boring and long. History does not fascinate, does not provide food for the mind. If I looked at the wall for an hour and a half, the effect would be almost the same.
The main character... I remember the song of the famous band with the words "This is who is furry there, who has grape eyes ..." That’s something you can say about a girl. You don't know if he's playing or just walking around with an amorphous look and shining his grapes.
If this movie had won the Palm Branch, I wouldn’t have murmured, but it’s an Oscar! Why an uninteresting story in a faded wrapper made such an impression on those who made the decision is a mystery. We can only say again that the ceremony is largely politicized. It is a strange coincidence that if there is no clear contender for the award, then it gets a film with themes: the war of good Americans with dissenters (oh, sorry, terrorists), unconventional love and racial inequality.
The film has a lulling effect. You want to sleep, but you can't? Turn on this work of art! Two-thirds of the film is silent. The music is instrumental, calm... By the way, it would be nice to shoot a short film with that name and no one to talk, more devastation, abandoned houses and some other unknown nonsense. Maybe a bonus. Helps with insomnia! Go ahead!
I'm shocked by Ida's movie. As pompous as it may sound, but this film seems to have been sent to me by God in a time of my searches, disappointments, doubts and painful reflections: how to live on. I read the director’s comments about his film, and it seemed to me that even he did not understand what masterpiece he shot. This is often the case with talented artists.
It's an absolutely biblical film. Even the biblical king Salomon said that everything on earth is vanity, that everything will pass. Only God and the divine truths of existence remain. Neither entertainment, nor drugs (alcohol, tobacco), nor beautiful music, nor beauty, nor the relationship of man and woman, nor family, nor even death have meaning without God. Remember what the heroine asks the young man: what then? And he answers as from the Bible: music, the sea, dog, family, children - all vanity, that is, life. A man’s life cannot be a fuss, because there is much grief, injustice in the end of his death. Only with God can we accept all these things: joy and sorrow. Everyone who, like Wanda, tries to live without God eventually fails. We can’t do anything without him and we can do nothing without him. With God we will overcome everything and help each other.
The movie doesn't say much. But everything that happens as a preaching of life and a person sooner or later must choose white or black.
Crossing the aesthetics of Krzysztof Kesliewski with the napalm of Bertolucci’s “Spider Strategy” is not an easy task. But Pavel Pavlikowski was able to do it. We are told a story in which at the forefront are not terrible and already sentenced by all possible tribunals villains, but ordinary people. The whole film is haunted by the substitution of concepts. For example, a woman who violently punishes ordinary people, rather than an angel of apocalyptic repression, ultimately turns out to be a person who is deep and soulful, and at the same time understandable. But this will happen only after the veil of the death of our heroine’s parents is opened. It turns everything upside down in the universe of the heroine, although, in truth – well, there is nothing surprising here. The war was a test for many and it was not only the fascists who proved to be absolute villains. Among the ordinary civilian population there were their “outstanding” personalities who showed incredible weakness of spirit.
However, I was confused in this film by the complete inconsistency of the two main structural elements – the incredibly beautiful and spectacular camera work and plot. They were scattered. Elegant visual solutions live completely apart from the formidable in their instructive completeness of the plot. Instead of synergy, there is a bewilderment about the lack of structural integrity. Although the film won such a boring and poor personal competition as “Oscar – 2015”, but the masterpiece of this he did not become. Though he was close. However, it is enough to refer to the primary sources to understand the true level of the tape. Both Bertolucci and Kesliewski shot a few orders of magnitude better.
7 out of 10
Absolutely abstract and politically unbiased (in light of the results of the recent Oscar-2015 and the victory in the confrontation with the acclaimed Zhyagintsev Leviathan), one can call Ida a very European cinema. Such a chamber, diligently trying on the canons of the noir genre, a retrospective rethinking of the entire European cinema in the phase of its highest heyday.
The film directly refers us to the then very young and innovative, author's cinema of the 60s, represented by the most significant examples of the French, German, Czech "new wave", Italian neorealism, as well as the iconic "sixties" of domestic cinema: Shpalikov, Daneliya, Khutsiev, Tarkovsky, Todorovsky ...
The mimicry of Ida in such a significant era for the whole world cinema is striking: the black and white palette, the picture itself, faces, costumes, entourage, musical substrate are thoroughly worked out. On the background you can hear popular in socialist Poland "songs of Soviet composers" and even fashionable in the days of my parents' youth shake "Rudy rits" (and in Russian - red). And Coltrane's jazz classic "Hire" draws a direct parallel with another cult film of the 60s: "Elevator on the scaffold" with the equally melancholy and piercing trumpet of Miles Davis.
If not for the credits, many would have guessed that the film was shot in 2013, and not, say, in 1964?
But penetration into the age is only the first, surface layer of the Ida. The new movie of the 60s, despite a rather rigidly pragmatic view of life, had more bright colors and hopes. No wonder that era is associated with spring revival, thaw. But “Ida” does not give these colors: in the palette there is only a gray autumn drizzle and a feeling of imminent loss of paradise on earth by a person.
And this is the fundamental difference between 2013 and 1964: neither the new wave nor neo-realism has ever raised a taboo for cinema and so painful for post-war Europe “Jewish” theme.
Special mention, in this regard, deserve the visualization of the images of the main characters. On the one hand, the completely otherworldly, lifeless, emotionless, medieval face of Anna Ida, as if taken from the gloomy engravings of Goya or the apocalyptic visions of Bosch: bottomless black eye sockets seem to look from the very underworld, which only adds contrast to the gray monastic fingernail. As if the author, after the classics, repeats the phrase once again that “there is no truth higher” and “abandon all hope who enters here.”
On the other hand, the furious, misanthropic grimace of the “bloody Vanga”, who knew no pity for the “enemies of the people”, who did not deserve pity for herself.
But the author is not in a hurry to put emphasis. He only contemplatively and even detachedly gives everyone this path for himself: the path of self-realization, acquisition, insight, disappointment, loss, forgiveness, temptation, repentance.
The genre of road-movie has never taken his new recruits so far from a broken country road in search of themselves.
Baddy Riggo, 26.02.2015