Sam Woolf’s 10 Best Films Of 2014

5) Ida

With its remarkable black and white cinematography and classically mismatched leads, Ida is a captivating paradox. How does a film use rarely more than a third of the frame to develop such richly detailed imagery? How can camerawork that’s 99% static feel so lively from the first frame to the last? How can a deeply personal trek through the thorny landscape of post-Holocaust Poland often be so funny, sexy, and lively?

Half the answers lie in director Pawel Pawlikowski’s framing, which makes Ida look like a film that never moved beyond storyboarding because it never needed to; who needs technical trickery when you’ve got negative space, and faces that know how to use it? The rest of the answers can be found in the performances from stars Agata Trzebuchowska, as the titular church mouse on a journey of self-discovery, and Agata Kulesza, as Ida’s hard-drinking and harder-hewn aunt.

Like the rest of Ida, stark opposites bump combatively against one another until black and white dissolve into something in-between. Dichotomous as it might be, it’s the trio of director and actresses in Ida that make every profile a marvel, and every two-shot an act of sharing more than just space.