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May 02, 2014 By Shawn Hazelett Web Exclusive

Poland, 1962. Eighteen-year-old Anna has spent her entire life in a convent and is about to take her final vows. She learns she has a living aunt named Wanda, who reveals Anna’s entire identity to be a fiction: she was born with the name Ida to Jewish parents during the Nazi occupation and smuggled into the convent before they were murdered. The two endeavor to visit her parents’ burial site—a difficult task, considering how haphazardly bodies were discarded—and the journey provides Anna an introduction to the outside world, from the youthful exuberance of 1960s Poland to the grim horrors of its past.

Ida is less about the Holocaust than its residual effects, focusing on the overlooked social repercussions, such as interactions with former collaborators, property disputes from citizens forced out of their homes, and Poland as a Soviet satellite state. Such an unbalanced political climate is ripe for opportunism. Wanda rose alongside the communist regime as a young prosecutor notorious for issuing death sentences against the party’s “political opponents”—some of whom were priests. She also became notorious for her drinking and—now a middle-aged judge—falls back on her celebrity to excuse her belligerence. Agata Kulesza gives Wanda a steely exterior, masking an unknown range of emotions behind sunglasses and a fading beauty, finding the pleasure of wine and one-night stands are becoming increasingly temporary. Her youth soured by ruthlessness, she looks longingly at Anna, envious of her youth and beauty, disheartened to see both stifled by a lifestyle she wasn’t born into.

The role of Anna offers minimal dialogue and even less emotion, but is given a charm and wonder by Agata Trzebuchowska, remarkable in her first performance. Anna claims to have never fantasized about a man and has been conditioned to look down upon Wanda’s hedonism, but the revelation about her parents sparks an inherent curiosity. Following Wanda through jazz clubs, catching the eye of a handsome saxophonist, we wonder: can she maintain her faith? In fashioning such contrasting lifestyles, a filmmaker might skew towards a preference, but co-writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski steers clear of such pitfalls. Filmed in black-and-white, his camera remains stationary, a distant observer both to quiet moments and those of extreme consequence, its subtlety matched by a beautifully crafted screenplay that navigates bleak waters without succumbing to sentimentality. Such deeply personal storytelling is often rapt with didacticism, but cooler heads prevail: in presenting characters that are easy to judge or even hate, Ida tries to understand.

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Author rating: 9/10