Who is Ida? It’s the question that persists from the haunting opening scene of Ida to the determined final one. Is she Anna, set to take her Catholic nun vows? Or is she the Jewish Ida Lebenstein that her aunt labels her? She’s reserved and quiet, a good nun-in-training despite the chaos around her– until she’s not. The unreadable female teenage lead is a common figure in cinema, and searching for clues in Anna/Ida is how Ida grips you until the very end.

As the film opens, a reluctant Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is embarking on a journey from the convent in which she was raised, out into the world to meet her only living relative, her aunt Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza). Wanda is a deeply conflicted, suffering woman, living with the half-repressed memory of her son and family killed in World War II. The contrast between Anna and her aunt is jarring; though their interactions are brief, it is clear that Wanda represents all that is sinful in the eyes of a convent-raised Anna. Given Wanda’s assertive nature, the low-playing western jazz, the half-naked man in her bed and her insistent questioning of Anna– “Did they tell you what I do?”– viewers are left to question, just as Anna must, the purpose of her journey to meet this unknown aunt. When it’s later revealed that Wanda  was a Communist resistance fighter, the contrast between Anna and Wanda transcends the differences in their behaviour; it becomes a clash of ideologies. As the film progresses and their unlikely relationship develops, this clash becomes crucial to our understanding of Ida.

Anna’s reaction to this confrontation with her newfound aunt is striking, because it’s minimal. As Wanda bluntly reveals that Anna is in fact Ida Lebenstein–and that’s she’s Jewish, not Catholic– Ida doesn’t cry or ask questions, she merely looks on, her heavy breathing the only indication of distress. Perhaps Trzebuchowska’s lack of professional acting training explains her convincing portrayal of Ida; it’s not overdramatised or artificial, it’s human.

Although the audience repeatedly sees close-up profile shots of Ida throughout the film, her expressionless face reveals no answers to her identity crisis. As Wanda and Ida pursue their mission to find the bodies of their deceased family, shots of Ida lying in bed, taciturn as ever, offer no insight into any inner turmoil she may be suffering. In a film that maintains a fast pace by its repeated interlude of short scenic shots, these lingering moments alone with Ida grow mesmerising as we search her expression for any indication of her inner turmoil. Despite our best efforts, Ida is inscrutable.

Searching for her family’s remains is crucial to Ida’s development; it prepares her to take her vows as a nun. Through the journey that results for the two women, the audience is offered a glimpse of post-war Polish life. The impact of the war on Poland by the numbers– the loss of a fifth of the Polish population– is not explicitly mentioned in the film; instead, its human consequences are portrayed through the tender relationship that develops between Wanda and Ida as their ideologies converge. Wanda is initially resistant to Ida’s Catholicism and pokes fun at their contrast– “I’m a slut, and you’re a saint”– but their journey to find their family and achieve peace exposes Wanda’s inner turmoil, and she is unafraid to express herself in a manner that directly contrasts with the unreadable Ida. Ida’s only true outburst comes when Wanda mocks her Catholic faith, but with Wanda’s encouragement she opens up to Lis, the musician hitchhiker they attract on their journey. As Ida has learned to take lessons from her aunt, Wanda, too is moved by her niece, and by the knowledge that Ida was spared her family’s fate due to her fair skin and ability to pass as a Catholic. Their tender hug as Ida returns to the convent following their journey points to a subtle convergence of their clashing ideologies.  It also suggests that war has shaped Polish society in ways that transcend statistics.

So when we try to understand Ida’s identity, we are also trying to understand Poland’s.

Paweł Pawlikowski seems to suggest that Ida and Wanda are embodiments of the post-war Polish experience. They have had to adapt after a war in which life and death were decided upon by factors beyond the individual’s control. The film reveals, however, that both women ultimately decide to take control of their fate. When Ida Lebenstein was orphaned and left to be raised in a convent, her family, history and identity were stripped from her. Having discovered the truth, Anna finds it comical to return to her life in the convent; her once unquestioning demeanour cracks and she chuckles during the convent’s rituals. Admitting she’s “not ready” to take her vows, Ida briefly plays the role of her aunt and explores life beyond her Catholic faith, donning Wanda’s clothes and dancing with Lis.

Despite being the film’s namesake, Ida is given significantly less dialogue than even the film’s minor characters. Her interactions with Wanda are brief and her narration is minimal, and  Ida’s body language and brief moments of outburst become more meaningful as a result. The most poignant moment in the movie comes in her conversation in bed with Lis, where he proposes they “have children” and “live life as usual”. She asks “after that?” “After that?” is perhaps the question on the minds of the Polish, expected to return to life “as usual” following a tragedy Poles often refuse to acknowledge.

In the final scenes of the movie, it seems even Ida does not know who she is. In typical Ida/Anna fashion, she dares not give the audience a visual clue to her emotions– in the morning she leaves Lis, swiftly dons her novice habit, and presumably sets out to return to the convent ready to take her vows. As the camera follows her face, it’s hard to ignore the subtle change in her expression, as her once unreadable demeanour is replaced with a now relaxed one. In all the ambiguity, the pressing question, “who is Ida?” remains. We try to decide who Ida is, but can’t, just as it is impossible to characterise Poland in the wake of its tragedies.