Watch Ida For Free

Too much of everything

Absolutely Fantastic

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Pawel Pawlikowski's beautifully-shot film 'Ida' is a sparse, yet unconventionally structured, film about a young nun's discovery of a hidden past in 1960s Poland. The Poles suffered terribly in World War Two, but the relationship of the Christian majority to their Jewish neighbours was complex and far from unsullied, and post-war, there was never a public accounting in the way that took place in the aggressor state of Germany. The film addresses the aftermath of this, and does so in an appropriately complex way.The style is familiar from Pawlikowski's other works, like 'Last Resort', and the aesthetic is powerful, even though it always seems a little like cheating to shoot a film set in the past in black-and-white (I should note that in his early works, Kieslowski used colour - and it's absence - wonderfully without resorting to monochrome). Perhaps it's the black-and-white which also reminded me of Jarmusch's 'Stranger than Paradise', although 'Ida' is less a self-conscious film. It won at the Oscars, although one senses that a film of this type can only win at the Academy in the category for foreign-language movies - American Oscar-winners are rarely this indirect and bare. Agata Trzebuchowska is good in the title role, but Agata Kulesza steals the show as her troubled aunt.

I don't know if the Polish foreign flick "Ida" deserved the Best Foreign Film Oscar last year, but Ida tell you that it was a moderate piece. Director Pawel Pawlikowski's movie stars Agata Trzebuchowska as Anna, a young nun who resides in a Polish covenant. Through circumstance, Anna finds out that her real name is Ida, that she is Jewish, and that her parents were killed in the war. Anna/Ida goes on a quest to find where her parents are buried, and she meets her reckless aunt Wanda, brilliantly played by Agata Kulesza. Both Ida and Wanda try to find some answers on what really happened to Ida's parents, and then... Ida not tell you some more, cause Ida know how angry one gets when they reveal movie spoilers. Anyways, Pawilkowski did not wowski me with his direction of the picture, but enough to moderately recommend it; if for no better reason, Kulesza's performance and the film's stunning cinematography. Maybe Ida see this movie again to capture more of it, but Ida tell you that it's not near the top of the best foreign films I have ever seen. I'm Ida here! *** Average

I first heard of this Polish film during awards season, and then of course it went on to triumph, and I had all the more reason to see it when it was added to the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically in 1960s Poland, young Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is an orphaned who brought up by nuns in the convent, she is now a novice nun and knows very little about the outside world. She is due to take her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, all to commit herself to God, before she can do so however Mother Superior (Halina Skoczynska) tells her she has an aunt, her mother's sister, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), her only living relative. When they meet, like she is told to, Wanda reveals that Anna was actually named Ida by her parents, who were killed in World War II during the German occupation, and Ida is in fact Jewish, she is surprised that the nuns never told her of her true origins. Together Ida and Wanda set off on a journey together to learn more about her parents during the war and their tragic story, where they might be buried, and along the way a profound effect happens for both women. The bones of the parents are found and placed in the Jewish cemetery family burial plot, but Wanda and Ida part ways, Wanda ends up drinking and sleeping around until she commits suicide jumping from a building roof. While Ida gives into sexual urges, going against her future vow to remain celibate, and sleeping with hitchhiker Lis (Dawid Ogrodnik, but she dons her habit and leaves him, it is unclear whether she returns to the convent or being caught between two worlds. Also starring Jerzy Trela as Szymon, Adam Szyszkowski as Feliks, Joanna Kulig as Singer and Dorota Kuduk as Kaska. Non- professional actress Trzebuchowska proves herself a good choice as the innocent nun given home truths that change her future, but Kulesza almost steals the show as the aunt who appears world-weary but hides vulnerability, I admit having to read subtitles I could not stick with it all completely, but what I could keep up with was interesting, challenging beliefs and other issues, and the black and white colour adds to the feel of melancholy throughout, an interesting drama. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it was nominated for Best Cinematography, it won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, and it was nominated for Best Cinematography, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Worth watching!

I'd read a lot about Ida and it has taken me until now to catch up with it. I am so glad I did.This is the first work of director Pawel Pawlikowski that I have seen, and he has crafted a masterpiece.It is a movie set in the very stark times of 60's Poland, and its black and white theme set the scene magnificently, as I'm pretty sure a lot of others who remember that time period will agree. (Although not familiar with Poland, I spent some time in communist East Germany in the 60s and 70s, and the scene felt very familiar to me).I found all of the characters very real, even the most minor of them, and my only small criticism would be Ida's lack of any kind of emotion upon learning that she is Jewish, despite having spent her whole life in a Catholic convent.The story unfolds in an unremarkable, but believable way as its two major characters meet and begin to bond, regardless of their differences, chalk and cheese, but related by blood, one of them very much of the world and scarred by events from the past, and the other young and innocent, and alive almost by chance. Together they set out to find out the whole truth.This could and probably should, have been the most depressing of stories based as it is upon events which probably did occur from time to time during the second world war. But its intimacy draws the viewer into the heart of the story and its outcome.For one of the characters the whole truth is too much to bear. For the other, having sampled life outside in the world for a short while, we seem to be led to believe, returns to her cloistered life, the one she has always known.