Ida Official US Release Trailer (2014)

The past may be behind us, but the pain remains. Even if you try to ignore it. I recently watched Ida, from Paweł Pawlikowski, the same director who gave us the incredible tragic love story Cold War. Both movies explore very painful eras in Poland’s history.

One thing Ida made abundantly clear to me was that the violence and scapegoating during World War II left some very deep scars in Europe.

Ida is about a young woman in a convent who learns she is a Jew just as she is about to take her vows. No only is she a Jew but she was left with the nuns during a wave of anti-Semitism in the 40s that left her an orphan.

She meets her last living relative, as well as the people who took her to the convent and now live in her family’s home. She decides not to take them to court over the land, but in exchange, they have to tell what happened to her parents and brother. I won’t go into detail, but it was dark.

What must it be like for those who get caught up in it, once life returns to normal. How do they live with themselves? The people Ida finds living in her lost family’s home took part in terrible crimes, but they were not inhuman.

It got me thinking about fascism. What is it? Why does it keep coming back? Umberto Eco’s 14 Characteristics are a pretty good rule of thumb for diagnosing it, but what causes it?

To me it’s a cultural autoimmune disease, where the body attacks its own tissue. I think it’s triggered when the dominant culture loses faith in the utopian dreams of yesteryear.

If it takes hold, society cannibalizes itself, starting at the bottom and gobbling up every tribe until it’s eaten itself up.

It must be pretty exciting at first. You’re gonna help make heaven on earth and damn anybody who gets in the way. You get carried away and sacrifice your soul for the cause.

But at some point you have to return to “normal” life. In the heat of one of those what they call “historical moments,” people will commit acts they never dreamed of committing. Some can live with their memories just fine, but most humans aren’t naturally that mean. They have to be lured or goaded into it.

Diseases like fascism always burn out eventually – people have to do business and raise their kids – but they inflict a lot of pain not just on the scapegoats of a society but upon those who take part in it.

I like that Schwartzenegger doesn’t just write these guys off. He sees them as people who can change. Hopefully, before they ruin a bunch of lives including their own.