Ida, released in 2013, is a black and white film about self-discovery, betrayal and family set against a backdrop of 1960s Poland. At the time, the landscape of the country was grim, suffering from economic downturn and failure to recover after the world war. The film follows the journey of Ida and her aunt, Wanda. The two are brought together for the first time after the convent that raised the orphaned Ida urges her to visit Wanda, her only living relative. They embark on a mission to uncover the truth behind Ida’s parents’ death. Her father was Jewish and had been slaughtered with his wife and nephew, whom we later discover to be Wanda’s son, by their neighbor. Their killer believed Ida could pass as a non-Jew and left her with the priest of the local chapel.
Days away from completing her vows to become a nun, Ida, paired with her secular, promiscuous aunt, discovers life outside of the convent: smoking, drinking and jazz. As she and her aunt get closer to finding the burial site of their family, Ida starts exploring herself and her femininity by looking at herself in the mirror or bringing her beautiful hair out from under her nun’s veil and chatting with a young saxophone player. These small moments of temptation create doubt in Ida’s mind as to whether or not she is prepared to fully commit herself to a life as a nun.
Throughout the film, we see elements of the western world, suggesting that even through the Cold War era, the progress of the West has rippled through to Eastern Europe: a “Bar” sign in a small village, and the most prominent feature throughout the film, American jazz.
The common thread is music. In fact, the film is defined by it. Sometimes the tempo is fast and lighthearted, in scenes such as the evenings attended by Wanda and Ida in the hotel’s basement. Other times its tone is melancholic and grey.
There are also scenes in which the camera does not follow whatever character it is focused on, and as this person exits the shot there are some seconds of suspense in which our focus is fixed on inanimate objects rather than the living, breathing characters.
Towards the end of the film, Wanda is overcome by sorrow: the son of the neighbor who killed their family has shown them where he buried their relatives. Here Wanda finds the bones of her infant son – she had left him in the care of her sister, and had joined the resistance against Germany. Her choice had taken her son from her, but it also allowed her to become a state prosecutor, and ultimately a judge; it had turned her into an essential “comrade” of the new Polish order, and had given her status. However, this does not seem to give Wanda strength. On the contrary, it eats at her, as though it were all for nothing. She refers almost sarcastically to the other Poles she’s sentenced to death in her position of power, as though the words should carry an important weight. Instead all they do is make her feel cowardly, like a traitor.
Felix, the man who murdered her son, is also overwhelmed. In the small ditch he’d dug to bury the family, he crouches down in pain, succumbing to the guilt he feels over his past actions.
Once Ida leaves her to return to the convent, we see Wanda spiraling into despair by drinking more, smoking more and bringing more men home with her.
Just as her son’s murderer is desperate after years of carrying the weight of his past actions, Wanda enters a state that is increasingly similar to Felix’s. Their despair is reflective of the Polish times the film is set in: after a temporary surge of success that brought them a new regime and new hope after the tragedies of WWII, the country had fallen into a dark pattern that no false hope could alter. Wanda had fought for a better Poland, now she was merely a tool of the Communist regime. Her ideals were shattered: she’d given up her child for nothing and was left feeling empty and desperate.
At the peak of her sadness, Wanda plays one of her Mozart symphonies where the tempo is fast and loud. She goes about in regular routine, smoking a cigarette, opening her window, putting on her coat as if ready to go out. Then, with chilling speed, she walks up to the open window, steps onto the ledge, and jumps out. The scene happens so quickly, paired with the liveliness of the music playing in the background and the nonchalance with which Wanda steps off the ledge, that it is shocking to the viewer like a sudden electric shock from a loose wire.
After separating from her aunt, Ida shows increasing signs of doubt in her commitment to her faith. She begins giggling in the middle of a meal, a traditionally silent affair, and stares ambiguously at another nun that is bathing in front of her, leading us to believe she is, as Wanda put it, having “sinful thoughts.” This climaxes in her confessing to a statue of Jesus that she is not ready and asking for forgiveness. By the time she returns to the city, her aunt is already gone.
Ida moves into Wanda’s now vacant apartment, and simultaneously inhabits the space as well as the identity of her aunt: she puts on her aunt’s clothes, tries a cigarette, consumes a bottle of vodka. At her aunt’s funeral, she is reunited with the charming saxophone player she had met on her travels with Wanda. After meeting him at one of his gigs, they return to Wanda’s apartment, and spend the night together.
The abrupt change in Ida’s character seems to signify her haste in cutting ties with the life she had always known, of chastity and devotion to God. It seems as though she is on the verge of changing for good – that she will follow her new romantic partner to the seaside where he is scheduled to play with his band, and as he suggests, get married and start a life together.
It seems as though the “happily ever after” we are promised in most modern-day cinema is nearing. Instead, just as quickly and harshly as Wanda took her life, Ida changes her own narrative in a completely unexpected way: as morning comes, the young girl retrieves her convent clothes, retires her hair once again to her veil, and quietly slips out of her late aunt’s apartment, leaving behind her lover and the life they could have had together.
Some may interpret this ending as a sad one, as though we have been cheated of the romantic ending we were expecting. In truth, the ending reflects a great deal of what we have seen throughout the movie: the dynamic between a saintly, quiet girl, and a woman wrecked by loss. Ida chooses solitude and salvation: she chooses her loyalty to her family at the convent, the ones that had raised her, rather than following in the footsteps of her bereaved aunt.
There is power in this ending. It almost seems as though she is moving toward a life that serves a greater purpose than serving as a man’s wife, a mother to his children. Instead she chooses to serve her creator, what she believes to be the most powerful thing in existence.
The final shot, in which Ida walks steadfast, almost defiantly down the dirt road, with clear conviction in her eyes, shatters the bleak trends of the movie so far. It makes one feel as though there is hope for the young girl, and by association hope for Poland. There is nothing beautiful, or romantic, about the state Poland found itself in at the time. However, Ida is a small ray of light in an otherwise grey landscape, a woman who chooses the greatness of the unknown over the safe promise of a domestic life.