"The Odd Couple" Meets a Holocaust Survivor Story in "Ida"

A mother superior tells the young novice Anna that she must meet with her only relative, her mother's sister, in order to make her vows. Anna questions this task, but she is soon sent out into the 1960's, Communist Poland, where is meets her Aunt Wanda, who is more reluctant towards this reunion than Anna is.Wanda tells Anna that her real name is Ida Lebenstein, her parents were killed in the war, and that Anna/Ida is a Jew.

Ida is a film about identity, and devotion to that identity when faced with a conflicting background. When Anna learns about her heritage, she goes from wide-eyed to even wider-eyed, pretty much the only expressions she shows in the film. Her irises are inky black, highlighted by the elegant black-and-white the movie is filmed in. We can tell her eyes are like sponges; she is taking everything she sees in. What Anna sees and learns will affect her world view as she visits her family's graves with her aunt. Wanda knows history will unfold as they take this journey. She ask Anna, "What is you find that God isn't there?"

The film isn't completely bleak. There is some humor to the interaction between the quiet, Christian Ann, dressed in her clean habit, and the abrasive, chain-smoking, drunk driving aunt wearing her elegant dresses and furs. Wanda is constantly trying to goad curiosity out Anna with the hopes that she breaks from Christian lifestyle that Anna learned from the orphanage. Their roadtrip across Poland, visiting various sites involving their family's demise, involves a lot of hard-feeling between the two. Neither wants to be around each other, both want their behavior to rub off on the other, and yet their personalities are both needed for the undertaking at hand.

This films deals a lot with duality, highlighted by the black-and-white picture. The clean white snow and the clear, bright sky often meets with the grimy streets and rusty metal signs. Cinematographers Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal's work in the film is sublime. The picture is composed many times with the characters' faces in the lower corners, creating a screen filled with a lot of empty spaces, giving us a clear picture of scenery that has seen its share of ghost.

The film is a slow burn,  which makes it odd that the final act is kind of rushed. It's a shame, really, since Ida is about who Anna thinks she is, and who she wants to become. The film is only 80 minutes long, and I'm sure the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, could linger on her for a little bit longer. I'm saying this out of love for the characters. I was presented with a simple, haunting story where the past can still rattle your soul 20 years later, and I can't help but want to know that everything is going to be all right.