Movies

simplicity, great photographs, splendid script. at first sigh, an old fashion movie. in fact, wise manner to use the legacy of impressive tradition and a great director who use, in same measure, with same precision, tension, poetry of images, atmosphere of period, cultural roots. it is a reflection occasion about origins, truth, faith and choices. a profound Polish story who reflects the identity search of an entire continent. it is , certainly, a rare gem. the cause is not only beauty of photography or admirable acting but a special flavor who remains after its end as a delicate feeling. a young woman and the courage to become here self. that is all. in skin of seductive music.

Whereas Jacques Rivette's despairing 'La Religieuse' had been shot in incongruously pretty sixties Eastmancolor, this laconic but wryly good-humoured female road movie - like Ingmar Bergman's Persona' - gains much of it's seductive visual impact from being shot in coolly glacial monochrome that looks like what you'd have got if Vermeer had worked in charcoal.Similarly, like the Scandinavian good looks of Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Bergman's film, 'Ida' is fascinating to watch throughout simply for the strong Polish features of Agata Kulesza as the chain-smoking 'Red Wanda' and the button eyes of Agata Trzebuchowska in the title role.

Ida is magnificent, it will stay with me a long time. The narrative is powerfully compelling and yet if it had been a non-narrative film I would have been spellbound by the images alone. They should make a coffee table book of stills from it. Huge emotional issues are dealt with in a remarkably understated, unsentimental, but appropriate way. The use of music (often my pet peeve in these days of Hollywood formula) is enlightened and illustrative. I don't think the ending is ambiguous, I'm not sure the writer who wrote that understood it. Perhaps there is something slightly facile about the way things wrap up in the last 15 minutes of the film, but this is only in comparison with how beautifully they are laid out before that. Enough, this is not really a review, it is an exhortation - Go see Ida!