Agate

Trzebuchowska

as the young nun

in Ida

"That's how I remember that time
Pawlikowski says. "You look at old family
albums, search your memory. Not mov-
ing the camera might have been a bit
risky, but it helped to suggest things [off-
screen]:"
On the other hand, when it is pointed
out that the resolutely asymmetrical fram-
ing runs through the film's 80 minutes,
he is pleased. "You're supposed to be on
edge he says.
"The gaze is steady in fixed contempla-
tion. At some point in camera rehearsals,
we tried tilting the camera in wide shots
as a way of making it more interesting:"
The film's soundtrack is no less evoca-
tive, an amalgam of period Polish pop
tunes and smoky, moody jazz, with John
Coltrane's ballad "Naima" as the center-
breakthrough in 2006, hav-
piece.
ing shot more than half of an
"I put in all my favorite music:'
adaptation of Magnus Mills' The
Pawlikowski admits. "The pop songs are
Restraint of Beasts, when he was
the ones I grew up with as a kid. I love
forced to withdraw from the
Coltrane, and I chose `Naima because I
project by his wife's serious ill-
needed a piece of music that would envel-
op [Anna]."
ness and eventual death. It was
a terrible setback, and it would
Although Ida is every bit as unblinking
be five years before he made
in its revelations of the dark underside
another film, the Paris-set The
of the Polish-Jewish collision under the
Woman in the Fifth.
Nazi occupation and its brutal aftermath,
Now he has returned to
E Pawlikowski has experienced little of the
ii nasty blowback that attended the release
Poland, apparently to stay.
Ida, which has earned awards
of Wladyslaw Pasikowski's Aftermath last
at festivals in Toronto, London,
year.
Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski
Warsaw and Gijon (Spain), is
That fictional Holocaust-related thriller,
his first film made in his native
which recently played the JCC Lenore
country; it is a somber but exquisite medi- sure I'd make the film:'
Marwil Jewish Film Festival, was inspired
tation on family, history and memory, shot
When the chance to film the story came by the July 1941 Jedwabne pogrom in
in an evocative, misty black-and-white by
along a few years later, he realized that the which the Jewish community of Jedwabne
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski.
original script "was nowhere near a piece
was murdered by their Polish neighbors
The film is set in the early 1960s, which of cinema I'd like to make:'
with the complicity of Nazi German offi-
made Lodz, a city forgotten by the pass-
He continued working with co-author
cials. The star of that film received death
ing of historical time, the perfect location.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz during the filming
threats from right-wing Polish "patriots:'
The plot is exceptionally simple although
process to strip ancillary plotlines and
"We got some flak, but nothing like
the emotions it provokes are dauntingly
added the character of the aunt. That pro-
that:' Pawlikowski says. "I think that may
complex.
cess, the result of his background in docu- be because I tried to steer clear of mak-
mentary film, is typical for him, he says.
Anna (the luminous newcomer Agata
ing a film about an issue. You lay yourself
"In documentary, I had to live my films:' open to an accusation that you're being
Trzebuchowska) is a young nun who will
he explains. "Things shift slightly all the
take her final vows in a matter of days.
crude [artistically]. I don't believe [you
What she doesn't know is that her only
time. The writing [process] never stops.
need] evil characters to make a film. I
think Ida has a more general sense of
surviving relative, a distant aunt, is about
And I work the same way on [fiction] fea-
to overturn all the certainties in her life
tures. You look at the rushes and you say,
tragedy"
by revealing that Anna was a hidden child
`I need a little more: The structure is what
Pawlikowski says that since the fall of
named Ida Lebenstein, the Jewish daugh-
it is, but the details change:'
the Stalinist regime, the issues around
ter of a woman who died in the camps.
The heart of the film, though, is its
Jewish-Polish relations have "been more
Wanda, her aunt (Agata Kulesza), is a
visual style — the extraordinary range of
out in the open:'
magistrate, at least superficially at ease
shades of gray the two cameramen find,
He adds, "It's been a battlefield, but it's a
in the middle ranks of the Communist
Pawlikowski's choice of stationary camera, healthy debate:'
regime; in reality, she is a self-loathing
off-center framing in almost every shot,
And now he has contributed an elegant,
alcoholic with few certainties of her own.
and the enforced claustrophobia of his
eloquent statement to the proceedings.
The pair will journey across rural
decision to shoot in the old Academy ratio,
Poland seeking the burial place of Ida's
the squarish 1:33-1 frame of pre-World
Ida is scheduled to open on Friday,
War II cinema.
mother/Wanda's sister.
June 20, at the Maple Theater in
"I started with the idea of a nun who
He is offhand about the look of the film,
Bloomfield Township. (248) 750-
discovers her [Jewish] roots:' Pawlikowski
which is like Babe Ruth saying he doesn't
1030; www.thennapletheatercom.
says. "I wrote it on autopilot; I wasn't even
care about homeruns.

Filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski tells the story of a nun
who discovers her Jewish roots.

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish News

L

odz, the Polish city in which Pawel
Pawlikowski has set his latest film,
Ida, has a long and checkered past
in both Polish and Jewish history. It is,
Pawlikowski says, "a peculiar place:'
"What makes Lodz peculiar?" the film-
maker is asked during an in-person inter-
view in New York, where he is promoting
the film.
"The city used to be all about textiles:'
he says, unwinding his lanky frame and
leaning into the sentence. "It emerged out
of nothing in the 19th century and became
known as the Manchester, England, of the
Russian Empire.
"In the last 20 years, since the fall of the
Communist regime, it has known noth-
ing but hard times. It was bypassed by
the wave of economic development of the
period. So it's a melancholy place, but with
a great beauty:"
Ironically, Lodz is also famous as the
home of Poland's leading film school, and,
as the director notes, "it used to be the
center of the [Polish] film industry, so it's
very cheap to make a film there:'
It also was a city with a large Jewish
population and the site of one of the most
notorious of the Nazi ghettos in occupied
Poland.
Pawlikowski was born in Poland in
1957 but he didn't attend the film school
in Lodz. At 14, he left the country and
worked his way across Europe, eventually
ending up in the United Kingdom, where
he would launch a highly successful film
career.
After developing a reputation as a gifted
documentarian at the BBC, he broke
into theatrical films with two excellent
British features, Last Resort (2000) and My
Summer of Love (2004).
He was on the verge of a major career

52

June 12 • 2014

❑

