Comment on 'Ida' takes an unlikely road to the Academy Awards

Despite his best efforts to make, he chuckles, an impregnable art-house movie with unknowns, ''Ida has mesmerized moviegoers around the world with its beautifully spare images, its deliberate pacing and its uncommon economy of storytelling. For many, "Ida" represents the power of a classical, stripped-down cinema, distilled back to its raw elements with electric compositions and resonate silences. "Ida" first premiered inauspiciously at 2013 Telluride Film Festival (one of the first trade reviews turned out to be one of the few negative ones) and the rollout wasn't aided by the usual funnels of international cinema. After the Venice Film Festival turned it down, "I thought to hell with festivals," says Pawlikowksi. [...] Ida" slowly gathered force with moviegoers; the Oscars are just the final stop. At a time when many filmmakers mistake running time for ambition, none of Pawlikowski's films have exceeded 90 minutes. The black-and-white, 4-by-3 academy ratio look of "Ida" was also inspired by old family photographs and what he calls their "slightly incompetent framing." During production, he began tilting the camera up to the sky, filling the frame with gray skies and adding to the movie's vertical spiritual perspective. "Every year there are these films that make you step back and go, 'It's still alive,'" he says of a personal, handmade cinema.