Pawel Pawlikowski on IDA
Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young girl brought up in a convent, is just about to take her vows and become a nun. Before she does, her Mother Superior insists that she try to reconnect with her last remaining relative, her aunt Wanda, who an intellectual and strong woman. After some initial hostility, the two set off on a road trip looking for the place where Anna’s parents were executed and buried during the Second World War.
This is the story of Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest work, which picked up the Best Film award at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. “There were many reasons for me to make the film,” explained Pawlikowski at a Q and A session on the film, which took place during the festival. “One was that I had wanted to make a film in Poland for a long time. I was also interested in the transitional period in which the film takes place. The communist era was beginning to open up; jazz and other cultures were beginning to show through the cracks. It was the Poland of my childhood that somehow sank in quite deep. The sounds, the songs that somehow you never forget. Particularly the jazz, which has always been an obsession of mine. I liked that clash between one period finishing and another one creeping in.”
The director also talked about his interest in the two leading female characters, Sister Anna and her aunt Wanda. These two characters are interpreted wonderfully by the two actresses Agata Kulesza and Agata Trzebuchowska, who share a touching and wonderful chemistry in their moments of soft-spoken melancholia and pathos as we following them through their very personal harrowing and often painstaking journey.
Sister Anna is a young nun who suddenly discovers who she really is and what it means to be Polish and Jewish. She has faith and somehow manages not to lose it. The other character had a more personal connection with Pawlikowski, who had met a prototype of Wanda while studying in Oxford. “She was an old Polish lady who was very charming, witty and warm. She used to invite me to supper once a week when I was a bit homeless at the time. About two years later after I met herI heard on TV that the Polish government was ordering her extradition for crimes against humanity. It turned out that she had been a state prosecutor in the early fifties and was responsible for the death of thirty thousand people. She had been a Leninist and Marxist in her twenties. The fact that she had led these two different lives left a big mark on me.”
One of the best features of Ida is its stunning and unique black and white photography, as well as a peculiarly delightful frame composition, which is opened up and often leaves plenty of headspace, a choice that forces the viewer to look at the images from a different perspective from the usual one. Furthermore, it uses a 4:3 aspect ratio, which squeezes the format and often works by not showing rather than showing things. “Most films show everything all the time and give you all the information you need. This 4:3 ratio was a way of frustrating the audience a little bit but also make them really look at the images. Also, there is no camera movement until the last two shots.”
Considering the wonderful cinematography, the fact that the director of photography Lukasz Zal was a last minute replacement in his narrative feature film debut is more than surprising. “It was a desperation measure. The DOP fell ill at the start of the production, so we ended up shooting with this camera operator who turned out to be brilliant. Lucasz was totally fearless, he wasn’t intimidated by my ideas. A DOP with a reputation would have had some restraints, but he didn’t. What he lacked in experience he made up for in energy, openness, courage and general excitement, which helped me out a lot.”
Despite the political inclinations of the plot that feels as much as a journey of individual characters as it feels a journey through the meanders of Poland’s cultural and historical conscience, Pawlikowski insists that he does not want Ida to be considered a political film. “I don’t know how people should react. I just want them to enter this film and the experience. What I would like to avoid is people turning it into some sort of a political ball. It’s not a film made to settle accounts and none of the characters represent an idea. My main desire is that people watch it and don’t leave the cinema half way through.”
- Matt Micucci