Nuns are boring. There’s not really any getting around that. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – what is the worst generic thing you can see on film? Sleeping? No, praying. Because even when somebody is sleeping, there’s a chance of action. Nothing happens when people pray, and this is the most common activity of cinematic nuns.
Little orphan Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) hasn’t gotten her nun license yet. She has all the tools, but isn’t quite there — pretty sure she lacks the ruler-to-knuckles merit badge. With a week left to take her vows, Anna is ordered by Mother Superior to hang with her lone remaining relative, Aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza. Really, both leads are named “Agata?” Do the Poles not know that name is evil?) Wanda is a little different. To put it kindly, Auntie is … not going to take her sisterly vows anytime soon. She smokes, drinks, swears, sleeps around, and is not the slightest bit shy about any of it. When they meet for the first time, there’s a man in Wanda’s bed. Wanda makes no motion towards hiding this or chasing him away. 1960 Iron Curtain Poland was a tad freer than I would have guessed.
Wanda has the pleasure of informing Sister Anna that she’s Jewish, her name is Ida and her parents counted among war holocaust victims. “Say, want to see who killed your parents?” “Do I?! Road trip!” Pretty sure the Polish was poorly translated. What evolves is a form of the buddy road pic where the saint and the sinner go have subdued black & white adventures. Had the rating gone beyond
PG-13, Ida would have been a barroom punchline.
I never got a tremendous feel for either woman. Anna never really lets down her guard, so Wanda is the one spurring the action alone; she melds investigation with drinking, dancing and carousing – you kinda get the feel Wanda goes a bit overboard just to show Anna what exists outside the convent. It is exactly this excess, however, that keeps Wanda out of arm’s reach. I feel for the plight of these two, but I never cared for either woman.
Ida is the kind of film critics love for relatively unexplored points of view and raw exposure to tragedy. Black and white and Jewish all over tends to lead there. This film reeks of self-importance without real engagement. Ida, to me, is the kind of film that empowered its antithesis in the form of the romcom where dumb people make bad mistakes and everything resolves nicely to Natalie Cole‘s “This Will Be (an Everlasting Love).” Wish I’d been watching one of those instead.
Ah’m a taking out my nun for a walk
She don’t do nothin’, so we’ll sit and talk
It’s kind funny tryin’ to make her squawk
After those five minutes, you have to watch the clock
Rated PG-13, 80 Minutes
D: Pawel Pawlikowski
W: Pawel Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz
Genre: Buddy road nun pic
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Critics
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Teens
