Tonight I will be participating in a panel discussion at Columbia University about Pawel Pawlikowski’s brilliant film Ida (Wrote a bit about it here. So far, it’s the film of the year for me, albeit with some pretty stiff competition. It’s been a helluva movie year so far.)
The evening will start at 8:30 with a screening of the film, followed by a discussion with panelists Matt Zoller Seitz, Stuart Leibman, and myself. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Michal Oleszczyk.
Here are the details for tonight’s event.
In any case, see Ida, whatever you do!
How was this? I’d be really interested to know what the Polish perspective on this movie is … as an outsider I picked up on the legacy of the sheer agony the war caused and the effect this has had on Wanda, but I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff that only someone from Poland would see.
Helena – it was fascinating.
One of the nuances I learned last night: The Wanda character – people like her – is a scar in the Polish psyche – people like her were responsible for so much of the misery during the high Stalinism of the 1950s. The POST-war trauma. And characters like that have often been portrayed in film as vicious caricatures (with an anti-Semitic bent).
So what I learned was that the humanizing of Wanda – was quite revolutionary, and very new for Polish cinema.
It has opened up a space to talk about “people like her” – to talk about that whole period – in a way that just did not exist before.
One of the other panelists who is an expert in Polish cinema said that Wanda was quite “redemptive” – in a way that just has not existed before now.
There was much more I learned! I was on the panel to talk about the acting in the film, primarily – and what the style of the film provided for the actors (I think it’s a GREAT “actor’s film” – just as it is also a great “cinematographer” film).
But the audience was full of Polish people, and a couple of Holocaust survivors – who shared their own stories afterwards.
A woman like Wanda is usually portrayed as a bogeyman – an out and out villain. These Stalinist prosecutors … many of them Jewish … created a toxic environment in that post-war period, exacerbating the anti-Semitism, and creating a wall of silence and terror. To see her as a human being … is RADICAL.
This is one of the things I learned last night.
It was a great evening and so great to talk to all of these Polish people – many of whom grew up in the time period of the film.
The humanising of Wanda is an incredible insight – I’d never have got this insight of this new perspective on her ‘type.’ You can tell she’s feared, disliked and despised, but also that she’s actively tried to anaesthetise the incredible, bottomless pain that’s slowly erupting as the film progresses.
Anything else you care to share about context would be welcome. I just thought it’s an incredible, miraculous film, from every perspective.
I know – that was a revelation to me as well. Because I (not being Polish, not having that history) immediately FELT for Wanda, and could see that she was drinking/smoking/fucking her pain away – and so I felt for her. But understanding the larger context – that characters like her were a hated/feared element in Polish culture for 40, 50 years – and she was usually represented as a sneering Jewish villain …. a visual manifestation of the pain people like her inflicted on the Polish people.
Totally revelatory for me.
People like Wanda made choices – to collaborate with their new overlords – and Wanda was good at it, a zealous believer in socialism and being on the right side of that argument, putting people to death, hounding them into their graves – but ultimately she was in service of something totally empty. And maybe she seemed to know that.
Accepting that someone like Wanda could be wracked with guilt/pain over her actions was – challenging, I guess – Poles still had a knee-jerk reaction to her (at least the ones I talked to last night did), but they said the film (and that actress’ magnificent performance) overpowered them.
Kind of amazing, yes?
The whole film is kind of amazing.
The idea that Wanda is actually bogeyman for Poles adds an incredible richness to the film and to the actress’s performance. Basically as the film went on I couldn’t understand how she had managed to live that long and what she does at the end makes perfect sense: she’s faced up to her past, had the courage to reopen terrible wounds … and then she does what she does, because yes, it’s absolutely unbearable. That scene where she butters and sugars bread, sugars it, determinedly chomps it down with bared toothy bites …
Shivers!
Oh my God, yes, the way she chomps into that bread!! And stabs the butter onto it! I love that you brought that up. Incredible gesture. Especially considering what comes after.
Shivers, totally.
What a phenomenal actress. The performance has really cracked open some secrets the more times I’ve watched the film (last night at the screening was the third time I saw it).
There’s an early scene where she is talking to the guy who co-opted her family’s home – she’s questioning him in the dining room – “I know you know what happened to them’ – and Ida is in the other room looking on. And there was a steely focus in Wanda’s questioning, a totally certain “I will not accept No for an answer” kind of thing – which seems inspiring when it comes to finding out what happened to Ida’s parents – but then I realized that no, what we are also getting a glimpse of is how Wanda worked over the “criminals” – how she questioned them so hard they didn’t even know their own names anymore. There was an inhuman quality to that questioning. A glimpse of who “Red Wanda” was at her most fearsome.
There were all kinds of details I missed in my first viewing. Extraordinary!