Ida (Paweł Pawlikowski)

Saw this earlier tonight after hearing rave reviews from all sides. It's a very impressive film, one of the years best. At the very least.

I was a bit shocked at first when I saw the aspect ratio on screen. I thought that there had been some mistake. Nearly every single review had mentioned the films cinematography as one of it's main selling points. I shouldn't have fretted. The film is filled with one beautiful arresting image after another. For a film that has such an austere and even occasionally grimy setting it is a marvel how it manages to be such a feast for the eyes. Time and time again if you were to add up components of certain shots, the end result should amount to suffocating torpor. But instead of recoiling I found myself being drawn into visuals that evoked a spare type of elemental beauty.

One particular image springs to mind- A static shot of a car, weighed down with grim history in the trunk, beside a decrepit roadside café, under a barely crepuscular light from a sun hidden behind omnipresent overcast. All of those visual elements, under different circumstances, would make me usually grow apprehensive for the turn the story may take. Horror and further despair would seem not too far off. But, in this instance I felt a sense that the shot was conveying a message of the fact of the survival of hope and the ability to remember things which seem long forgotten. The point wasn't that the sun was hidden behind the clouds, but that that it was still there, shining despite all attempts to blot it out. Pardon me for getting highfalutin here, but that one quick individual moment genuinely moved me and I think the film is filled with high grade visual poetry throughout. So it's worth writing about.

I can understand how some viewers may be left cold by the film. Along with its aspect ratio, the narrative has a pared back minimalist feel. Elliptical and jarring cuts replace a more standardised retelling of events. As the story unfolds it would be at times too easy to be underwhelmed by the sometimes emotionally stunted reactions of characters and moments of subtlety in storytelling that are left deliberately vague and open to interpretation. But the films mix of eye popping images and its desire to deal with difficult themes gives it a cumulative power. A film like this, so bereft of histrionics and of such brief duration should have no business possessing this kind of impact. The magic is that it does.

The more I write about it the more it grows in my mind. Initially, in the first few moments after the credits rolled, I thought “that was pretty good”. Now I think it's maybe the best film I've seen all year. The two lead actresses are a study in contrasts. One possesses quiet serenity, whose gigantic expressive eyes speak of a sheltered life mixed with quiet intelligence. The other seems dried out and embittered by the world. But despite their different circumstances, both seem linked in that there's a lot going beyond that very first impression, even if their attitudes and actions are decidedly different.

The films ideas are huge- The intrusion of history into peoples lives, the price of integrity, the reliability or otherwise of faith, the usefulness of truth, whether there can ever be a proper response to tragedy.... I could go on. It seems to contain multitudes. Human in scale but borderline cosmic in themes. When a film manages those two differences of scale it registers as a stone cold classic for me. A marvel really. Hopefully as time goes on it will find it way to more people than the relative minority of the film going population it's playing to right now.