PS-Style as Appreciation of Space vs. Time

[MWollaeger]

I have rewatched Ida.

In the beginning of the movie, it’s very hard for me to notice Ida doing anything. Even anything holistic.

But, after she…

Spoilers about the end

returns to the convent, she compares the life in the convent with the life she could have were she to live like her aunt. There is nothing “spacial” about this. It’s comparing two processes, and seeing how each one feels. I found that to be very holistic too, on top of her asking “and then? … and then?”

…As for the feel of the entire movie, it felt very much like we were going to see how things were going to play out. There was a goal that the Protagonist was after, but somehow it never felt like that was the focus of the movie in any way. Achieving the goal was not attached to the feeling of the movie ending, so to speak.

the 'goal'

By Goal, I’m referring loosely to “finding out what happened to the family”… which happens around the midpoint.

[Flight]

@MWollaeger - so glad you took another look at Ida - great thoughts!

Replies to Spoilers - TLDR Warning :wink:

There is nothing “spacial” about this. It’s comparing two processes, and seeing how each one feels.

Yes - great observation, that’s how I saw what she was doing as well - comparing the two ways she could live her life - but I hadn’t thought of that as being exactly what’s been described in this thread as holistic thinking. Nice.

There was a goal that the Protagonist was after, but somehow it never felt like that was the focus of the movie in any way.

I’m taking it that Aunt Wanda is the Protagonist, yes? Wanda sets the goal and Ida is just along for the ride on everything to do with finding the family.

Achieving the goal was not attached to the feeling of the movie ending, so to speak.

That would be consistent with the way I understand @jhull has been speaking about holistic stories for the last couple years - they aren’t about the specific goal so much as a “goal” of re-balancing?

I see a couple of different “goals” in the story - probably one’s the goal, the others are Requirements, MC Concerns, and so on - but I see them as all contributing to the ending:

The Mother Superior tells Wanda to visit her aunt:

“You should meet her before you take your vows.” (quotes are from the subtitles transcript at https://www.scripts.com/script/ida_10595

All I know about nuns and vows is from movies, so “before you take your vows” may mean “before you’re cloistered” or just mean “go visit your aunt before the next event on the calendar”, but I’m taking it to mean “you should see (know) something of the world before you take the plunge”. Which is exactly what Ida is up to at the end.

Okay, I see I may have been wrong about Wanda as the Protagonist on the Finding the Family goal -

Ida: I want to visit their graves.
Wanda: They have no graves.

Ida does initiate the search, but Wanda takes it up immediately, and we find out the reason for that later.

But Wanda also asks
W: What if you go there and discover there is no God?
I: God is everywhere, I know.
W: I’ll drive you there. We’ll go together.

To me, Wanda’s question is the whole point of the movie and her real goal, or focus of the movie, or wherever it fits - to test Ida’s faith against Wanda’s knowledge of what the world is really like if Ida only knew.

So although Ida is pretty darn passive on that journey, I see the whole movie/storymind as an extended test of those two views (or processes) of a world with a loving God in it vs a world where a loving God cannot possibly exist.

[MWollaeger]

Listening to the podcast on Ida won’t resolve any of the questions you and I have posed. We never settled on exactly who the Protagonist is, for instance.

I think what happens at the cloister/convent is all MC. The OS kicks in when Ida and Wanda are together, and somehow I think what happens in that Ida’s presence forces Wanda to stop denying the past (making Wanda the Protagonist, in that case).

But it’s such a slight movie, that there may not be any definitive way to pin it down, and sometimes I think it’s not always worth it. The storyform isn’t the gold standard; sometimes just talking about the movie is more important.

[Prish]

I’ve read unexplicit romances where the OS was so minimal that it came to a few sentences here and there … I swear. This sounds like a MC/IC tradeoff several times with the OS only being the physical walking of her body into the nunnery building, or some such. (tongue in cheek, but I get your frustration … haha)

[MWollaeger]

I’m not actually frustrated. I don’t think she’s doing much! She’s incredibly passive.

[Prish]

Forgive the levity of the previous post.

I looked at the plot summary in Wikipedia. The discovery of her family’s true heritage sounded like a powerful ongoing absorption. I went through something like that having grown up in Indiana, but with family from South Dakotan and Nebraskan farms since the 1880’s and others from the Spanish-American land grant areas in Colorado and New Mexico going back 400 years, and thrown into the mix American Native previous generational family members as orphaned children taking shelter of the land grants during the ‘re-settlements’. Believe me, there are quiet but deep plate tectonics shifts taking place while learning real history. You might look the same, but knowledge creates a new consciousness. Doing the same but not being the same? Somehow acting with knowledge seems like a deeper life, i.e. more determination to see the joy because it is your life at stake and at play now.