Not
wanting to see “Transformers” or “22 Jump Street” or “Think Like A Man
too” I was hoping I would see a gem going to The Gateway Theatre and
seeing “Ida”.

“Ida” is a Polish film photographed as if it was
filmed in 1962 when it takes place. Three stories are intertwined with
one being political regarding communism, Catholicism and being a Jew in
Poland during WW2, the second regarding a novice about to take her vows
and the third story regarding her aunt, who she wasn’t even aware of,
who is Jewish as her mother was making the novice a Jew.

Aunt
Wanda (Agata Kulesza) drinks too much, smokes too and has too much
random sex due to her past as a zealot communist prosecutor, now a
cynical judge, and other happenings, the exact opposite of her niece,
Ida, (Agata Trzebuchowska) who wants to learn what happened to her
parents during the war and why/how she ended up in a convent, before she
takes her final vows.

I wasn’t interested in the political
aspect of the film and except for one segment the story of Ida wasn’t
that interesting to me as I wanted to learn more about her parents just
as I wanted to know more about Wanda, her life before we met her and her
family during the war. I wanted the movie to be all about Wanda as I
found Agata Kulesza a fascinating actress but it isn’t my film but the
director Pawel Pawlikowski who also co-wrote the script with Rebecca
Lenkiewwicz.

In all fairness I must say most critics and people
(oh come on, do you really think critics are people?) have been raving
about the movie but then they liked Dawid Ogrodnil as a sax player in a
band and I thought his part was just added on to show,  not prove, a
point.

Though a short movie for these days, only an hour and
twenty minutes, the director lingered too long, too often, on many
meaningless scenes such as cars on roads.