giving up what one never had
by
Douglas Messerli
Paweł
Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewic (screenplay), Paweł Pawlikowski (director) Ida / 2013, USA 2014
Paweł
Pawlikowski’s 2013 film, Ida, is a
movie that seems to come out of nowhere—particularly given the facts of
Pawlikowski’s own career, previously consisting of thriller-like British films
such as The Last Resort and The Woman on the Fifth (although he was
born in Poland, Pawlikowski moved to England as a teen-ager and was educated
there) in relation to the issues this new film explores, set in the early 1960s
when Poland firmly remained part of the Communist bloc. Similarly, its central
characters, a young novitiate raised in a Catholic convent, Anna (Agata
Trzebuchowska) and an older judge (the brilliant actor Agata Kulesza), a
fervent former state prosecutor known by her supporters (and probably
detractors) as “Red Wanda,” not only appear as, what a musician hitchhiker to
whom they give a ride, describes as “an unlikely pair,” but seem totally out of
place in the world into which the narrative takes them, a small decaying former
Jewish community that, after World War II and the death of most of the native
Jews, has been taken over by small-minded Christian farmers, men and women who
have almost greedily usurped the properties their Jewish neighbors left behind.
But it is just these disquieting connections that help to make Pawlikowski’s
black and white, nearly square-framed film, so mesmerizing.
The young, simply dressed Anna, in a plain
habit, is stunning beautiful, with a memorable dimple centered between her thin
lips and and rabbit-wide eyes. Her hair, hidden for most of the film, is, we
are told, evocatively red. Although Wanda has clearly seen better days, her
body revealing the excesses of sex and
alcohol, the middle-aged woman, whom we discover is Anna’s aunt, is still a
stunning looker; and her brittle wit, regularly vented between deep inhalations
of cigarettes, is something to be reckoned with. Her insistence, when
challenged by male authority figures, that “I could destroy you,” is
believable, even if she were not to draw upon her high position in the Polish
government. She is a powerhouse blending of body and intellect.
Yet by the end of that first day, the
timid and frail being has not only assimilated the facts, but is able to ask a
question that will change both of them forever: “Where are my parents buried?”
Of course that question presumes a reality that could not have existed. Burial
presumes a shared institution, a community desire for remembrance and
sanctification. Where? Wanda snarls, “in the woods,” in some isolated burial
dump. There were not buried but
hidden away, the crime of murder covered up.
The stubborn girl, however, is determined
to travel to her parent’s home town, to ask questions and discover any possible
facts. Even a monster like Wanda, we realize, cannot permit that, and the aunt
soon determines to join her in the search, taking the two on what some critics
have suggested is a “road trip”—usually an almost aimless journey of
self-discovery, but here presented as a voyage not only into the past but into
the dark side of the Polish cultural identity.
Pawlikowski, however, never presents his
revelations as part of a documentary-like look into the cultural horrors of the
holocaust, the way Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah
might brilliantly present them. Like almost everything in this film, facts
are revealed is obscure asides, hinted at in momentary lapses of cultural
etiquette. Little is spoken openly, and, until the very end of this tale,
nothing is outwardly admitted. Although, strangely, the truth is apparent from
the beginning, the figures this strange pair encounter are like chimeras,
figures so fantastical that they lie even to themselves. Certainly no one in
the world Wanda and Ida enter knows anything about the “Jews.” Nobody even
knows or has known anyone who was Jewish.
Despite her original disavowal of
knowledge, however, Wanda obviously knows more than she reveals, visiting the
family’s original home to find a hated poacher within, a man whose father once
cared for and helped Wanda’s sister and family. Their search for the
inhabitants elderly father, however, leads nowhere—in part because of Wanda’s
hard-fisted threats. She will break, so she insists, the son who has taken over
the family home.
The search for the family remains,
however, is only half of Pawlikowski’s story. Perhaps the more important search
is for Anna-Ida’s own identity. As she is first presented, she is nobody, an
empty slate who herself later admits, has “been nowhere” and, as Wanda insists,
has “done nothing.” Suggesting that Ida join her for a jazz concert which
features the handsome young saxophonist whom they have bought into town, Wanda
rightfully argues that the girl should at least have some experiences with life before, as a nun, she disavows
them. And we realize, in turn, that Ida’s problem will not develop from a loss
of faith but from a loss of living anything she might regret, a lack of doubt.
It is easy, Wanda scoffs, to give up what one never had.
The rest of Pawlikowski’s moving tale
alternates between the two women’s search for information about the past—which,
in the end, Anna-Ida succeeds in uncovering simply because of the locals’ trust
in her as a woman of the cloth. People ask her to bless their children and even,
when Wanda is arrested for drunk driving, Ida is given a small but comfortable
bed. Ida’s inner turmoil, as she tentatively comes into contact with the world
around her, is revealed mostly through her always wide-open eyes, but also
through her almost speechless encounter with the saxophonist, who with a gentle
kiss becomes her first love.
The two—Jewish aunt and self-identified
Christian niece—working together, moreover, eventually do discover the truth,
not only finding the bodies but their family’s murderer. And, in this sense,
the director suggests that if only the two seemingly opposed elements of the
culture might work together, they might resolve and even rectify the horrors of
the past.
What we also discover in the unearthing of
the bodies, moreover, is that Wanda has also given away something that she
never had. Having left behind her own son for her sister to raise, she is now
faced with the skeletal remains of his head, memorial to her own guilt. Driving
to Lublin, the two women break into the Jewish cemetery where they inter the
unearthed remains.
But for truth teller Wanda, the burial is
merely symbolic. The blood of her own child remains forever on her hands. And
soon after Anna returns to the convent, presumably to be initiated, the
seemingly implacable “Red Wanda,” drunk and depressed, calmly, and almost
gracefully steps out of her apartment window to crash into the street below.
The last scene of the film shows the young
woman with whom the film began on another road trip, suitcase in hand. But this
time, she moves forward somewhat stridently, with great determination,
appearing to have finally made her choice. If nothing else, she now has had
something to sacrifice for her religious beliefs.
Los Angeles, June
9, 2014
Reprinted
from International Cinema Review (June
2014).
*Coincidentally,
I saw Luis Buñuel’s film Viridiana a
couple of days before attending Ida.
It is worth noting how similarly constructed these films are, particularly, in
their early scenes, and in the suicide of the visited relatives, uncle and
aunt. In both cases, radical changes occur to the individuals sent out of the
convent to a visit to their previously unresponsive family members.
Viridiana came at once to my mind. I saw Ida last evening in Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteThe similarities are striking.