Ida (2013)

Nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography

"Ida (2013 film)" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

That might be the first (and possibly only) time I've ever actually sourced a poster.  Usually, I just drag and drop but I'm on a different computer right now so I had to use HTML.  

Anyway, this is my first foray into the Oscar's foreign film selections this year.  This is probably my second favorite category, behind Best Animated Film.  I always find it interesting which films are submitted by their respective countries.  For some reason, I find foreign dramas more palatable than American ones.  Maybe because so many American films fall into melodramatic tropes rather than just telling a story.  

Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a novitiate, or nun-in-training, at a convent in Poland where she has lived since being placed there as an orphaned baby.  She is due to take her final vows in a week, when the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczynska) delicately informs her that she has a living relative, an aunt, and that Anna should probably go visit her before making a life-altering decision.  Anna agrees, despite her reservations against seeing a woman who refused to claim her.  Her aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), is a judge under the socialist government in place after WWII.  She is also a bitter, chain-smoking alcoholic who is not terribly thrilled to see that her niece is a staunch Catholic.  See, Anna's birth name is Ida Lebenstein and she's Jewish.  That would be enough of a bombshell for anyone, but Wanda goes on to tell her that her parents were murdered by Nazis and no one knows where they are buried.  Ida née Anna must then decide who she is and who she wants to be.

Netflix referred to this movie as "understated," which translates to boring for the vast majority of people.  It is subtitled, filmed entirely in black and white, and concerns themes of grief, identity, and self-determination.  I don't want to scare anyone off the film, because I found it very accessible, but I think you should know all of this before going in.  

On a side note, it's nice to see the Academy finally moving beyond their obsession with WWII.  Yes, this does still tangentially reference the Nazi occupation, but it is set twenty years later and doesn't feature so much as a flashback.  This allows so much more freedom to deal with the long-term psychological effects of war, not just the immediate trauma.  Wanda is scarred by her experiences, burdened by grief and anger.  Ida is aware of this but cannot intuit enough to be sympathetic simply because she lacks commiserate experience.  How can she mourn people she never met?  She knows that what happened to her parents was tragic but she cannot feel their loss the way Wanda can.  But, the more she is around her aunt, the more she can imagine what her family would have been like, forging a connection to a past she never knew she had.  

Typically, I concern myself with stories and characters and not the technical aspects of film-making.  I just don't know enough about it to feel comfortable passing more than the most general of judgments.  I will say that the cinematography did jump out at me due to the fixation of the action towards the bottom of the screen.  There were vast amounts of white space arching over the heads of the characters, especially Ida, and it kept making me wonder why.  Was it conveying saintliness?  An openness of spirit?  Emotional blankness?  I couldn't decide.  But I did notice and it did make me think, so maybe that's the point.  Again, I'm not technical so I can't say with any certainty.