Ida - How far does the film's aesthetic qualities contribute to the film’s themes and messages?

 How far does the film's aesthetic qualities contribute to the film’s themes and messages?

Intro: Key themes - lingering presence of the Holocaust, guilt, isolation, emptiness
'aesthetics' - visual tonal qualities of the film and mood
Bones sequence, Exit sequence
Visual elements reflect the depression and guilt of the film - b&w, tonally consistent, lingering shots
Integral to tone of movie

However... dependent on content of film
Holocaust elements come through in the dialogue, and the sparseness of the film
Music, also important, but more add to the tone than create it, rarely used
Overall, visuals aesthetics for themes through tone, post-war Poland non-verbally represented, but dialogue brings nuance and characterisation

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In Pawel Pawlikowski's 2013 film Ida, he uses the film's aesthetic qualities to enhance the film's themes and messages, as the dull visual colour palette lends to an exploration into the themes of the lingering presence of the past, more specifically the Holocaust, guilt, isolation, and depression. This is seen clearly in two key sequences, one in which the bones of Ida's parents and siblings, and her Aunt's son, are dug up, and one in which the Aunt commits suicide, with both sequences using the aesthetics to reinforce the above themes, by lending the film a stylistic realism, which can confront these themes visually with little dialogue. This is all integral to the tone of the film, which needs to crush the spectator in its relentless bleakness in order to create empathy for its characters, given the disconnect between 2013 and the time period the film is set in, which requires an aesthetic explanation to make them film successful.

In the 'bones' sequence, the depressive mood is sustained through the heightening of the grey colour palette with white snow, and a woodland setting providing little dynamic differences in the film's background. Furthermore, the themes of guilt and the lingering presence of the Holocaust are integrated within the aesthetics, with the consistent tone carrying through the film remaining in this scene, despite the ramp-up in the seriousness of the content, evidencing the lack of ability for the Aunt, or the man who killed her family, to move on. The somber mood combats the initial humour in the reveal that Ida, as a nun, has secretly been Jewish this whole time, by focusing that revelation through the lens of tragedy, which is especially permanent due to the Holocaust's ghostly presence on Poland at the time. This lends to a haunted aesthetic field for the film, with horror tropes such as a barren landscape obscured by fog, or a forest full of crumbling gravestones, using familiar film features to the spectator to draw them into a sense of fear and disgust at what has happened, given the inaccessibility for most people to be able to comprehend the scale of genocide. Here, aesthetic qualities are used by Pawlikowski to bridge a divide between a very small film with such a big event, zooming in on only one the suffering of one family, and yet tonally portraying the grief and guilt of a whole country. However, visual aesthetics provide a limited and uncomplicated view of the story, which, given the intricacies of the Holocaust, is ineffectual when left alone, so they do require the dialogue of the scene, however brief it is, to bring to light elements of the plot, such as the man killing the family, and to properly deliver the messages of the film to the spectator, clearly and delicately. Despite that, the tone and mood of the film - bleak and depressing - gives the spectator a contemplative space to confront the tough themes of the film, and allows Pawlikowski to approach a sensitive topic like the Holocaust very delicately.

A more character-focused scene, where aesthetics are employed on a more specific basis, is the the scene where the Aunt commits suicide. The sequence uses a montage of slow-paced, static shots to create an atmosphere of finality, as, without knowing that the Aunt is about to end her life, the aesthetics foreshadow it. Using mise-en-scene, Pawlikowski can visually take the spectator through the reasoning behind the Aunt's suicide, with her drinking in the bath, her abundant pouring of sugar - a rationed luxury at the time - on her toast, and her passionless one-night-stands with random men, all indicating the emptiness of her life, marred by alcohol-dependency, loneliness, and, with the excess of sugar, a desire to break free from the oppressive nature of Polish society at the time, both literally with its status as a Soviet satellite state, and generally with its poor economy leading to rations and an environment of despair and pessimism. Within that, the film's aesthetics, show that the Aunt's suicide is the most freeing moment for her in the film, as the bright light shining through the window creates a heavenly interpretation for her subsequent jump. Conversely, the scene is quickly turned into another somber one, as the realisation that Ida was to return, and the sense of what could have been with the relationship between the two characters, with each being able to help each other's loneliness. The lingering cigarette smoke brings back the ghostly mood of the film, as the Aunt's presence will linger on within Ida. Interestingly, one of the key parts of the scene is the use of a famous classical piece to ironically evoke the tone of a grand exit for the Aunt, running almost contrapuntal to the unimpressive and casual jump that actually occurs, however it is debatable whether music counts as an aesthetic feature, especially as, unlike in many mainstream films, it only adds to the tone, rather than setting it. Music is used subtly throughout the film to punctuate particularly pertinent moments, or to joyously oppose the bleak atmosphere, but the use of it diegetically here indicates a reluctance for Pawlikowski to use many aesthetics that distract the spectator from the realism of the story.

Within that, the aesthetics of the film reinforce the themes of guilt and the haunting presence of the Holocaust, but embed themselves into the world of the film to put realism at the forefront, and to avoid exploiting the drama and tragedy of the dark events within the film. Even in its most stylistic moments, using the aesthetics of horror films, or using music, these features only serve to deliver tone and message to the spectator, doing so successfully, but never in a way that distracts the spectator from the story. Therefore, as a visual aspect to any film, aesthetics are essential for contextualising themes into the appropriate setting, even if they do require some degree of verbal or written explanation for a full and nuanced dissection of said themes.