The Reel World: On the road

If you’ve seen “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (1987), then you have a good picture of my experience trying to get to Providence this past Friday afternoon to see my best friend. That is, if you substitute Steve Martin’s exasperated businessman with me, a hungry college student, and replace John Candy with my extremely heavy backpack and suitcase. The afternoon transpired something like this: I called an Uber only to see it zoom past me and cancel the trip, forcing me to sprint to Davis and get onto the T. I arrived at Back Bay Station, asked if the train on the platform was headed to Providence, was told yes, only to be told later that I had gotten on a different train to Providence and had to pay an extra fare. Luckily, I did not accidentally set fire to a rental car. Traveling alone is hard.

However, along with love and war, travel is one of cinema’s never-ending wells of stories. It is not a coincidence that so many of the movies that I find myself thinking about again and again are road movies; they concretize an internal journey and force characters to confront whatever they have hidden inside themselves. In turn, the journey becomes an indelible part of them.

In that vein, I believe the best road movie of the past five years is Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida” (2013). Set in early 1960s Poland, the film follows an orphaned novice nun called Anna, played by Polish actress Agata Trzebuchowska, as she looks for to her aunt Wanda and to learn about herself before she takes her full vows. Her aunt, who is her only relative, tells her that she is actually Jewish and that her real name is Ida Lebenstein. Together, they venture into the countryside, still sparse and withdrawn from the destruction of World War II, to find the truth about what happened to their family.

The reason “Ida” resonates so well is not the characters but the journey. As the two women travel further into the searingly wounded countryside of Poland, the film – through the tragic story of Ida and Wanda – reveals the intricate story of the land itself, ravaged by war and unspeakable human evil. Nothing is stated; in black and white, the shots seem wistful and defeated and the country is quiet, barren and melancholy. This contrasts with the characters, who, knowing the truth of their family’s past, must find a way to move on with their lives in this crestfallen place.

“Ida” particularly interests me now because it finds the title character and me at such a similar — yet so different — point in our lives. Both of us have left the place where we spent our first 18 years and we are now “on the road” — a journey that will force us to confront the truth about who we are and what we want to make of our lives in light of that knowledge. I am, however, glad that the similarities end there, because I like to eat out and I never stop talking, and I don’t think those qualities are well-suited to convent life.