- Ida
Now in its fourth week at the Music Box Theatre, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida not only takes place in early-60s Poland, but it looks like it was made then too. The jazz musician who hitches a ride with the title character and her aunt seems to have stepped out of Andrzej Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers (which screened last weekend at the Siskel Film Center as part of the “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema” series). For that matter, the aunt—a jaded, high-profile member of the Polish communist party—might well be friends with the couple in Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. But it’s Pawlikowski’s use of the Academy ratio that solidifies the connection to early-60s eastern European cinema. Throughout Ida Pawlikowski emphasizes the height of the screen by placing characters near the bottom of the frame and reserving the top two-thirds or so for negative space. This approach to framing recalls Czech director Frantisek Vlacil’s groundbreaking early features The White Dove (1960) and The Devil’s Trap (1962), as well as the 1960 Polish film Mother Joan of the Angels—which, coincidentally, screens at the Siskel Center this week.
