The question is a difficult one, as Ida and Neighbors can be viewed as either complements or separate entities, and both answers can be argued with validity. However, it was very interesting to view the two pieces as complements. I was unable to attend the movie viewing on Sunday because I had a paper due at midnight, so I watched the movie on my own. I actually read Neighbors first, and it was hard not to see parallels. Neighbors mentions that a very small number of Jews survived the massacre, Ida can be seen as a possible life for one of the few Jews who escaped. While Ida does not directly explain how and why Ida’s parents were murdered, it does emphasize the fact that a family was killed by a trusted neighbor. Much like the killings in Neighbors, local Jews were killed not by uniformed Germans, but by young and familiar Poles.
However, it is important to acknowledge the differences, as well as the complements, from both of these stories. Ida is a hauntingly good movie, eliciting feelings of sympathy, despair, and at times, hopelessness. As noted in our Method’s book, a good movie intends to draw in an audience, and needs to keep viewers entertained, moving the plot forward, and following a general storyline that includes an exposition, rising actions, etc. While a historical account still needs to keep readers interested, it is not forced to fit a mold or plot line in the same way as a movie. There, Neighbors does appeal to emotions such as horror and outrage, it is done without the need to keep the reader entertained and in suspense in the same way as the maker of a movie. Neighbors sought to tell a forgotten and covered up horror of WWII, which was that the lives of many Polish Jews were lost not at the hands of the Nazis, but by their neighbors. The book includes quotations from depositions that describe with horrifying detail the massacre of the Jedwabne Jews. However, these accounts were often followed by describing the methods by which the sources were procured. While it is important to substantiate historical claims with evidence, this slowing down of the narrative proves to be a defining difference between Ida and Neighbors. Gross uses methodology and research to uncover an atrocity of the past. There is certainly a human aspect in history, although it is still largely based in facts. A film like Ida, however, is able to create a more relatable form of history. Rather than read scattered accounts, the viewer can follow the story of one Jew who survived, largely because she had no idea of her true identity. The power of Ida was its ability to cast a light on the personal effects felt by the war, while historical works such as Neighbors makes the creation of such movies a possibility.