Friday, January 16, 2015
Ida
The film is beautifully shot in black and white, although maybe too beautifully shot: the director went so far to be innovating and striking that there's hardly a regular old full-body shot in the film. More often you see a character's head in the very lower left corner of the screen.
But of course, being set in Poland, there are beautiful locations for the shots, as well--great architecture and houses.
Secondly, about the story: it's rather moving--Ida, who has lived at a convent since she was a baby, is about to become a nun. They send her off to meet her aunt before she does. The story of family discovery is compelling; the religious aspect, and particularly the ending, weren't fleshed out enough and weren't at all believable, in my opinion.
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8 comments:
Hmm. So overall, a middle of the road review? We've thought about seeing this movie. Looks intriguing.
Well, better than middle of the road, I think--lots to love and lots to hate. (Which is better than mediocre.) Plus, it's available on netflix, a big plus when you have a baby! Have you seen Cavalry? We liked that better.
I agree about the unsatisfactory ending. I thought it was an ambivalent effort to vindicate the Church's conduct in WWII by suggesting that, in politically dangerous times, the Church did what it could (take in orphans) but not more than that (fight Nazis). I got the sense that Ida's total passivity throughout almost the entire film was supposed to be an argument that the Church isn't equipped to fight against modernity (Nazism, then the individual liberation Ida tries out), only to quietly preserve itself in its midst.
Yeah--it's her passivity that bothers me--but she seems pretty passive about joining the church, as well as when trying liberal individualism. We don't see any of her motivations at all.
But you did see everyone else's motivations - her aunt's political idealism (subsequently proved to be delusions), the musician's pursuit of sex and romance (discovered to be w/o purpose), and the desire of the villagers to just get by (which results in their willingness to anything that survival might require). The Church itself doesn't have much character except as not-these, and is the best choice for that reason alone. It's just the least implicated in the crimes of modernity.
There is also the motivations that all the other characters attach to Ida - the regular Poles she encounters treat her as holy and trustworthy, her aunt despises her commitment, the musician finds her fascinating. If she's just a kind of stand-in for the Church, that too is illustrative.
But why not portray what the church is and why one might want to become a nun? This omission made me just think that the people who made the film either didn't care about it or didn't understand it. Even if you think it's all about otherworldly devotion, portray that. But there's basically nothing!
Well, yes, that omission was why it seemed like an ambivalent vindication of the Church. The message did seem to be something like, whatever the Church is, it's better than the alternatives. But it is indeed unclear what the Church is.
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