“I’ll Ask Around” – A Tenth Anniversary Review Of IDA

Introduction

In the bottom left corner of the screen, three nuns try to erect a statue of Jesus as snow falls, with the convent standing huge behind them. A woman knocks on the door of a hospital room, towered over by the corridor’s high walls and ceiling. Two women and a man holding a shovel walk to the woods, miniature against the sky. The characters in Ida (2013) can seem overwhelmed by the world.

The smiling director Paweł Pawlikowski declared that “life is full of surprises” as his 2013 film received the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. At just eighty-two minutes and effectively a two-hander, it is a small film that is full of vast ideas.

Synopsis

Ida is set in Poland in 1962. Anna, whose real name we soon find out is Ida, is a novice nun about to take her final vows. The priest tells her that before she can do so, she must visit her aunt Wanda, a chain-smoking hard-drinking Warsaw judge with a haphazard sex life. A trip that begins as an obligation of ecclesiastical bureaucracy becomes an odyssey into Ida and Poland’s past.

The conversation on which the whole film hinges lasts less than a minute. Ida tells her aunt that she wants to visit her parents’ graves and Wanda replies that they don’t have any. Ida hesitates then says that she’ll “ask around”. Her Aunt offers to drive her and their journey begins. As far as the viewer knows, Wanda hasn’t searched before for her sister’s resting place. She asks Ida “What if you go there and discover there is no God?”. She may be teasing her devout niece but she understands the seriousness of such a search. And yet she instantly offers to go, a weighty decision made in a moment.

An Uneasy Peace

We think of war being followed by peace but Pawlikowski shows how conflict lingers. Almost two decades after the war ended, untold stories still hang heavily and neighbors who committed crimes against neighbors have to find a way to live next to each other.  When Ida and Wanda get to Piaski, where Ida’s parents live, they find a town of uneasy stares and some threatening gazes. In a place where the present has required the past to be ignored, no one is more unwelcome than an outsider who wants to “ask around”. 

Digging Up The Past

Films often portray finding the truth as an unalloyed good but Pawlikowski doesn’t suggest anything so straightforward. Anna and Wanda seem to find the truth but no closure and, in their own very different ways, they struggle to return to their lives. It’s no easier for either character to live with what they’ve discovered than it was to live with not knowing. At least when searching, they had a clear purpose. To quote Lis, the saxophonist they meet, Ida and Wanda are “a funny couple” but their search makes them a duo and they find a sort of contentment on the road. 

Finding Ida

It was a long hunt for Pawlikowski to find the actor to play Ida. After months of searching theatres and drama schools, Agata Trzebuchowska was discovered in a cafe reading a book. The director later stated:

“Not only was she not an actress, she was one of those very rare young people these days who had absolutely no desire to go into acting – perfect for Ida”

It’s not unusual to have actors of different levels of experience working together but it would be reasonable to worry that a total novice might be exposed alongside Agata Kulesza who plays Wanda, a pro of two decades. Yet despite that gap, they share the screen as equals and match each other, shot for shot. 

Silence and Jazz 

The film is often silent or quiet. When bodies are dug up, we hear the shovel against the ground and the soil being scattered. Barring the final moments, music is heard only when it is part of a scene so the viewer hears each song through the characters’ ears.

Ida hears a band playing John Coltrane’s Naima and stands entranced, having never heard anything like it before. She tells Lis that she likes it very much. When she next hears it, she’s having a slow, awkward, and romantic dance. The song is too wistful to promise an uncomplicated bright future but in a film dominated by what has been, American jazz in Communist Poland has the thrill of the new. 

Conclusion 

My Polish grandmother spoke little about her experiences in the war. Like many Poles, she chose to focus on building a new life away from her homeland’s many ghosts. Ida is a homecoming film for Pawlikowski, who had returned to the country after decades abroad and forced himself to face its past head-on. And yet to see it as a film only about Poland would be to deny that every country and perhaps every individual has ghosts and that learning about them isn’t the same as learning to live with them. Viewers will disagree on whether or not it’s a hopeful film; few will dispute that it’s a beautiful one. 

In the final scene of Ida, the camera is close to Ida’s face and moving in time with her strides. At this moment, her face dominates the screen, the landscape is background and she’s the center of the world. 

Released in 2013, Ida had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. At the 87th Academy Awards, it won the award for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s available to stream for free on Tubi, Plex, and Crackle.

More retro reviews from Cinema Scholars:

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951): A Cinema Scholars Review

POLTERGEIST (1982): A Cinema Scholars Review