Kritiken

For Pawlikowski, working for the first time on film in his native Polish, this is more than a return to form after 2011's The Woman in the Fifth: it's immaculately, even a little self-consciously, a masterwork. There's something eerily perfect about it, quite complete.

What rankles—what is in fact, grueling—about this perfectly well made art film is how little it risks. Its title character's realization of her Jewish heritage (and attendant spiritual dislocation) is so predictable—and acted with such requisite woman-of-marble blankness by non-pro Agata Trzebuchowska—that any frisson is purely conceptual.

Ida, from a certain perspective, is an unusual, wisely and economically told coming-of-age story; an unbiased, depoliticized and relatable portrayal of in fact a very particular, local, politically and religiously involved, yet universal subject matter. Pawlikowski lets the silence speak; and it does, proving that less is sometimes not more, but everything.

There are echoes of Bergman and Wenders to the film's measured pacing, minimalist design and religious undertones, yet no real auteurist comparison does the film justice. Pawlikowksi has crafted a uniquely spartan film that charts the ripple effect of history on the everyday person, proving that secrets can be repressed only for so long. The film also suggests that faith and sin can exist in the same moment without shame or judgment. Reducing life to one or the other feels like a cheat.

[Ida] is a spare, haunting piece of minimalism, opening in silence on a black-and-white close-up of a young novice, the broad planes of her face calling to mind a young Renée Jeanne Falconetti. But if this convent-set overture primes us to expect a meditation on faith in the style of Dreyeror Bresson, what we get is both far simpler and even more profound, a still water that runs unspeakably deep.

It's Pawlikowski's use of the Academy ratio that solidifies the connection to early-60s eastern European cinema. Throughout Ida Pawlikowski emphasizes the height of the screen by placing characters near the bottom of the frame and reserving the top two-thirds or so for negative space. This approach to framing recalls Czech director Frantisek Vlacil's groundbreaking early features The White Dove (1960) and The Devil's Trap (1962), as well as the 1960 Polish film Mother Joan of the Angels...

What matters is not the ring of truth but the ring of specificity. The movie is dematerialized; it never conveys the sense that "this happened" or "this is happening," but, rather, that "this sort of thing happened." Nothing in the film is a solid thing or an action; everything is an example... The evenhandedly editorializing accusations that Pawlikowski builds stealthily into the movie are repellent.

Bressonian in its austerity, Ida is Pawlikowski's most beautiful film yet. Though unleavened by humor, it makes a few concessions to 1960s modernity.

In a smart bit of casting, Pawlikowski pits a professional against a non-actor, but you cannot really tell which is which. A powerful personality to rattle Ida's faith, Wanda is vibrant and ferocious. She puffs cigarettes forcefully, exhaling in tight-lipped streams of smoke aimed down instead of skyward... Ida, meanwhile, has a quiet stoicism, silently conveying surprise, pain, dread, pensiveness, and wisdom, playing off against Wanda's boisterous frankness.

Riveting, original and breathtakingly accomplished on every level, "Ida" would be a masterpiece in any era, in any country.

Ida is a much more worldly and hard-edged film than it initially seems. What's more, at a concise 80 minutes, it doesn't linger more than necessary on any shot, Jaroslaw Kaminski's editing bringing the drama a bracingly crisp edge... Ida still doesn't give us a clearer idea of who Pawel Pawlikowski is—but it's good to see him on his best form in some time, whether or not he decides to continue as the reborn Polish director who's made this compelling quasi-debut.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida," set in Poland less than 20 years after World War II, has the precise, image-building control of a short story. The film is both delicate and unforgettable. The black-and-white compositions and the lighting at times evoke religious paintings, even as the cars and shabby nightclubs announce that the 1960s are here.