Pawel Pawlikowski's IDA explores Poland, family, identity, secrets, Holocaust, religion and more

IDA, the new film from expatriate Pole, Pawel Pawlikowski, is one of the most beautiful movies, visually, that I have seen a long while. Its black-and-white cinematography (by Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal) is scrumptious, with compositions -- one after another after another -- that are so stunning and attention-catching that you can only marvel at their alternating power and loveliness. TrustMovies dearly loves good black-and-white cine-matography, and so, for this alone he would not have missed the movie. Its story, too, is a humdinger of sorts:

A young novitiate in a convent is suddenly thrust (forced, really) into a visit with what's left of the family that she has not seen since early childhood. Under duress, she does this, and secrets are soon revealed. Co-writer (with Rebecca Lenkiewicz) and director Pawlikowski (shown at right) has taken these secrets -- there is but a single important one, but this leads to the discovery of others -- involving heritage, family, religion, the Holocaust and the meaning of identity itself, and from them built a sturdy but suprisingly swift, 80-minute movie.

Ida is but Pawlikowski's fifth film in fifteen years, While Last Resort is said to be his best by far (till now), I have not been able to see it, though it has remained, unfulfilled, in my Netflix queue for over a decade. The films I have seen -- My Summer of Love, The Woman in the Fifth and Ida -- have been interesting and often beautifully filmed, but they seem nowhere near the level of praise accorded "Summer" and now Ida.

While one can cetainly give the filmmaker points for managing to pack so much so quickly into this new film, there is to Ida an awfully schematic, almost heavy-handed sense of story-telling. The performances are quite good, so the actors cannot be faulted, and, because giving you specifics would ruin the suprise in store, I'll just use a single example:

The good-looking young hitchhiker (above) the two woman pick up en route to their destination turns out to be a game-changer (below). Surprise? Hardly. Just about everything that happens in this movie is a game-changer. Ida does not even last the length of the standard 90-minute film, yet the simplicity of the story -- in which enormous events unfold rather quickly (the present time frame takes place in but a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, although the history of these people goes back a couple of decades) -- borders on the simplistic.

And as good as the actors are, we get the kind of standard characterization in the screenplay that quite fully explains motivation and action yet does not allow for the kind of specifics that reveal in-depth characterization. This is particularly true of the character of Ida/Anna (the lovely Agata Trzebuchowska, who may just have the darkest pairs of non-special-effects-induced eyes in the history of cinema). Raised in a convent, Anna/Ida would not, it is true, be one for much small talk or explanation. But still, for us in the audience, inquiring minds want to know.

Her aunt Wanda is another matter. We get everything we need to know of her, distilled just about to its essence. As played by the beautiful, and beautifully sour actress Agata Kulesza (below). Wanda is the picture-perfect renditon of a woman who placed social/political duty/revenge above family, repressed it, and now finds it suddenly taking over her life. How this character/situation works itself out is a case study full of facts, excellent performances, and a screenplay offering pre-arranged resolution rather than messy life.

If I sound a bit down on Ida, this is more a reaction to some of the overly effusive praise lumped on the movie than anything else. The film is beautiful to observe and worth seeing. But a classic of any great depth? I don't think so. Compare it, for instance, to one of the late Claude Miller's fine films on some similar themes -- A Secret (which you can now stream via Netflix) -- chock full of that messy life, which Miller and his cast and co-screewriter Natalie Carter (from Philippe Grimbert's novel) turn into to moving art. In the concise, contained Ida, the secrets, resolutions and -- hell -- everything else, too, come just a little too easily.

The movie, another worthwhile piece from Music Box Films, opens this Friday May 2, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cienma and Film Forum on Friday, May 2, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. In the weeks to come the film will open all over the country. Click here to see currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters.

Agnieszka Holland's IN DARKNESS, Best Foreign-Language Film nominee, opens

There is a scene at the beginning of award-winning filmmaker Agnieszka Holland's new yet-another-look-at-the-Holocaust movie, IN DARKNESS, that has already stamped itself on my permanent memory: A group of women run naked in slow-motion through what seems like an open space in the middle of a forest. The time must be early morning, as the barely-daylight colors are muted blues and grays against  the dark green of the trees and the lighter green of the grass beneath them. Their pale white bodies are impressively voluptuous -- large hips and full breasts -- but we can't enjoy this because, from what we can see of their facial expressions, they are in terror. Then we see the German Nazis, guns at the ready, chasing them. We don't witness the massacre; we hear it, and then see the women's sprawled bodies on the grass. As I say: etched in memory for all time. This single scene, in its weird combination of beauty and horror -- Picnic on the Grass meets The Scream -- is all we need to place the film firmly in the realm of memorable Holocaust movies.

With this scene, Ms Holland (shown at right, and who has given us her share of fine films over the years) nails the awful "special-ness" of the Holocaust -- the horror, humanity and inhumanity all rolled into one -- so that we don't need our noses rubbed much further in atrocity. Not that this movie is any kind of lark. No, it tells a narrative tale based on a true event, of a Polish man who helped a small group of Jews survive the death of almost all their friends and families by hiding them in the sewers under the city of Lvov, where he worked in sewer maintenance.

This man, Leopold Socha, memorably played with a fine combination of Christian entitlement and greedy sleaze by Robert Wieckiewicz (above), only very slowly warms up to his hostages, who've agreed to pay him all they have. One of  the movie's arcs is that of a man changing enough to discover his humanity via that of the "other." His sweet, sometimes sassy wife seems more understanding than he early on, as she reminds him, to his surprise, that Jesus was a Jew. But even she, very well-played by Kinga Preis (below), has terrible misgivings when she learns what he is doing.

The movie's other arc belongs to those Jews, hidden in the dank, sloppy grime of the sewers, having to give up everything to hold on to what's left of life. In one devastating scene, a wife must watch and hear as her husband makes love to his mistress just inches away from where she and their daughter are/were sleeping. Just as Leopold becomes more human, these people seem in danger of completely losing their humanity. So much happens to these "refugees," in fact, that much of it would seem unbelievable had not Ms Holland and her fine cast (including Benno Fürmann and Maria Schrader) made it so immediate and involving.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Leopold, his wife and daughter entertain an old pal (who is now one of the prime Nazi helpers) as he orders a sewer search to find any remaining Jews. Other incidents pile up -- the most suspenseful of which involves that Nazi symp, Leopold and his too-talkative daughter -- making us tremble and fear that we can stand no more (this is the feeling that all genuine Holocaust movies ought to provoke).

If you know history, you'll know the outcome -- but not the specifics that Holland and her writer David F. Shamoon (from the book by Robert Marshall) have provided. These glue us to the screen so that when at last that literal light at the end of the tunnel appears, you'll know you've lived through something. What happens, who survives and who does not provides both the suspense and excitement of films like The Poseidon Adventure but also some important history and food for thought.

While I can sympathize with the belief of A.O.Scott in his NY Times review that the fact that the film "is touching, warm and dramatically satisfying" is -- given the subject matter -- exactly its problem. But no: In Darkness is much more than touching, warm and dramatically satisfying. It is also dark, ugly, horrifying and not always predictable. If it makes a couple of slightly more melodramatic choices than it might have, given all it does right, this is forgivable.

The friend who saw the screening with me found the movie well-done but said that he was tired of seeing countries such as Poland, from where the film comes, trying to co-opt the Holocaust. I understand what he means, but since Leopold Socha existed and did pretty much what the movie has him doing, we have to give that country credit for producing at least a few "heroes." Plus, what we learn from the end credits reduces some of Poland's good marks in the hero department.

Will In Darkness win Best Foreign-Language Film? Possibly. A Separation is more unusual and nuanced -- plus it's from Iran, so it would seem particularly gracious of the American Academy to bestow such an honor on that country at this particular time. We'll see. Meanwhile, view the movie and judge for yourself. After its one-week qualifying run in both cities toward the end of last year, the film opens, via Sony Pictures Classics, this Friday, February 10, in New York (at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles on February 17 at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex, Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.

AFTER.LIFE get some theatrical life, but full-length scare fests can be difficult

Making little sense on any level -- fantasy, reality, literal, metaphoric -- AFTER.LIFE, the cretinous collaboration between writer/director Agnieszka Woztowicz-Vosloo (shown below) and screenwriter Paul Vosloo, might be the ultimate Polish joke, with us viewers in the role of the butt. A creme-de-la-creme cast (Christina Ricci, Justin Long, Liam Neeson in the lead roles) tries its damndest to make hay while the dark gathers. Whatever decent moments the movie offers, thanks can be laid at this threesome's feet (with additional for the director of photography Anastas N. Michos).

Ms Woztowicz-Vosloo's debut short Pâté (unseen by me) evidently created an award-winning stir nearly a decade back. The difference between filling 30 and 103 minutes can be daunting, however, and here the filmmakers simply grab a bunch of cliches and run with them, back and forth, back and forth, until you want to cry uncle, aunt and every distant relative you can think of that might stop the nonsense from continu-
ing.  This insistently annoy-
ing, back-and-forth rhythm comes from the Vosloos' premise of an "Is she or isn't she?" plot device, the object of which, in this case, is "dead."

Now, you might imagine that a person's being dead or alive would be rather apparent.  Not to the dolt on view here (played by poor Ms Ricci).  It isn't like the Vosloos don't drop enough hints (and then repeat them): breath on a mirror, anyone? At one point the good doctor, er, funeral director, played by Liam Neeson, suggests that by looking in the mirror, Ms Ricci will ascertain her status.  She does, and of course we think -- Ah, there will be no reflection there (we've seen a lot of movies in our time, buster!).  But, wait: her reflection is quite visible in that mirror.  And it looks and moves just like Ms Ricci -- who promptly decides that, because she appears pale, OK, she must be dead.  Oy, gevalt!  Get this character a brain transplant.

I could go on (god know, the movie does), but let's proceed to film-making techniques.  Aside from the stately and often beautiful wide-screen cinematography, there are some nice editing moments: scenes change via one person bending over a mirror at a sink, another rising up from one; someone getting into bed; another getting out.  There are those de rigueur  "nightmare" sequences which we must first imagine to be taking place in real-life (now there's a surprise we haven't seen for the past two to three hours).  One of these "fantasies" is so lengthy, tiresome and silly, that it practically stops the movie in its tracks.  Ah, yes: and the suspense sequences. You've probably never seen a character trying to find, amongst a large ring full of keys, the one that actually fits the lock.  You have?  Well, then, instead of  "the suspense is killing me," try "the suspense is boring me."

My favorite moment (again, repeated many times throughout the film), is one of the Neeson character's particular line readings: "Oh, you people!" he intones, giving it just the sort of spin you'd use when talking down to Blacks, Gays, Hispanics, or, hey, Poles.  But in this case, he's talking to the "living" dead -- who are just too stupid to know their status.  Neeson makes the moment choice fun.
Would that there were more of these.

Finally, there are simply too many plot holes here, and I think they all stem from a premise that is so nitwit that it's doubtful any screenwriter/director could make it work. For now, we know that this team certainly could not.  After.Life (where is Kore-eda when you need him?!), from Anchor Bay Films, opens Friday, April 9, nationwide. I'll try to have a link to playdates, or at least a mention of cities and theaters, soon....