Nun too soon

One of the most emotionally potent Holocaust-adjacent films of the 21st century, Ida (2013) captures your attention from first frame to the last, despite its relatively simple plot and minimalist visuals. Set in 1960s Communist Poland, the film – directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rebecca Lenkiewicz – follows Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young orphan raised in a convent, who, on the eve of taking her vows as a nun, is told by her Mother Superior to visit her only living relative, her estranged aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza). During their journey together, Anna learns surprising truths about her ancestry and the fate of her parents, which redefine her. The story revolves around these two contrasting women: the innocent, devout niece and her cynical, hard-drinking aunt, a former state prosecutor haunted by her past.

Click here to listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Ida, conducted last week (if you get an error message, simply refresh the page).

Ida employs an old-school film aesthetic, utilizing a 1.37:1 boxy aspect ratio, a monochromatic canvas, a spare and restrained set design, and unconventional framing choices that recall the works of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, and early François Truffaut. Compositions often feature characters' bodies and faces low in the frame, sometimes falling out of frame. Perhaps this method aims to visually depict how the figures in this story are often isolated and relatively insignificant against a vast, unforgiving environment.

“…Most often deployed in static long shots, the film’s images sometimes suggest Vermeer lighting with the color taken away, and the compositions manage to seem at once classical and off-handed, with the subjects often located in the screen’s two bottom quadrants,” posited reviewer Godfrey Cheshire. “As in Bresson, the effect is to draw the viewer’s eye into the beauty of the image while simultaneously maintaining a contemplative distance from the drama.”

The narrative takes unexpected turns, undercutting any expectations we might have from start to finish. New Yorker critic Anthony Lane agrees, writing that this film is “a tale of constant wrongness – of taking wrong turns, making wrong assumptions, and inflicting wrongs terrible and small.” The first images of the titular character suggest, for example, that we’re looking at a Catholic nun who we quickly learn is named Anna. But it’s soon revealed that this girl is a novice getting ready to take her vows; her real name is Ida, she’s actually Jewish, and her parents were killed in the Holocaust. Likewise, our introduction to Wanda makes us think perhaps that she’s a sex worker.

Consider how the film turns into a road movie, but defies tropes and anticipations for a road movie: This isn’t an adventurously episodic story riven with themes of liberation or rebellion, and our protagonist doesn’t undergo a radical transformation by the conclusion. Yes (SPOILERS AHEAD), she takes off her habit for a spell to experiment with alcohol, smoking, dancing, and sex. But by the conclusion she has returned to the monastery, presumably to become the nun we thought she’d be.

The performances by the two female leads are breathtakingly affecting, with Trzebuchowska seemingly born to play her part, and Kulesza stealing nearly every scene she’s in – a wealth of contradictions within a fascinatingly diverse character.

Thankfully, audiences are spared any flashback scenes to Nazi-occupied Poland. The atrocities uncovered and talked about are left to our imagination, as seen through the eyes of Ida and Wanda, making it more personal and affecting without sledgehammering us with graphic violence.

Ida’s central message is navigating a crisis of identity. The young woman soon learns that everything she thought she knew about herself is wrong; her name isn’t Anna but Ida, she’s Jewish, and her parents were killed in World War II. These discoveries, at a pivotal time, come just before she is expected to take her vows as a nun. Likewise, her aunt Wanda suffers an existential dilemma when she takes Ida on a journey to uncover secrets about their familial past and learns terrible truths that lead to guilt and regret, ultimately compelling her to commit suicide.

This picture also examines the power of the past to shape the present and future. After traveling with Wanda and learning about her lineage, Ida silently questions her choices and place in the world. This novitiate period, with her final vow-taking imminent, is thrown into flux after Ida’s experiences with Wanda, her newfound awareness of her family tree, and her unexpected romantic interest in Lis, the arresting young saxophone player.

Pawlikowski challenges the collective audience to reckon with yesteryear and ruminate on the lessons of history. Ida’s sudden discoveries force her to step outside the cloistered world of faith and confront the morally complex, often painful truths of Poland’s—and her own—history. This coming to terms, both personally and nationally, reflects a wider attempt to confront buried traumas. This work is arguably less about what happened to Poland years ago and more about the often overlooked scars left behind, how history quietly imprints itself on the souls of the survivors, and how, by facing these truths, one might find both clarity and dignity to move ahead.

“Wanda is the embodiment of Poland’s past hopes and disappointments, the self-destruction she wreaks on herself the damning evidence that, to paraphrase Terry Eagleton, European history turns on a tortured body,” Sight and Sound critic Catherine Wheatley wrote. “Anna is its legacy, and it’s little wonder that her first response to the horrors she unveils is to preserve what innocence remains to her, sequestering herself away from the world, seeking refuge in her Catholic God…This is ultimately not a film about finding salvation through belief, and at its end we can’t be sure where Anna is going. Crafted with deceptive simplicity, riven with uncertainty, Ida has no answers to the questions it raises about how we protect ourselves and our loved ones from the burdens of the past, nor how we move forward.”

Similar works

• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) – directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
• Diary of a Country Priest (1951) – directed by Robert Bresson
• Mother of the Angels (1961) – directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz
• Viridiana (1961) – directed by Luis Buñuel
• Innocent Sorcerers (1960) – directed by Andrzej Wajda
• The 400 Blows (1959) – directed by François Truffaut
• Kings of the Road (1976) – directed by Wim Wenders
• The Ascent (1977) – directed by Larisa Shepitko
• The White Ribbon (2009) – directed by Michael Haneke
• Cold War (2018) – directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) – directed by Cristian Mungiu
• Son of Saul (2015) – directed by László Nemes

Other films by Pawel Pawlikowski

• Last Resort (2000)
• My Summer of Love (2004)
• The Woman in the Fifth (2011)
• Cold War (2018)