Movie Review: Cold War

Cold War **** / *****

Directed by: Paweł Pawlikowski.

Written by: Paweł Pawlikowski and Janusz Głowacki.

Starring: Joanna Kulig (Zula Lichoń), Tomasz Kot (Wiktor Warski), Borys Szyc (Lech Kaczmarek), Agata Kulesza (Irena Bielecka), Jeanne Balibar (Juliette), Cédric Kahn (Michel), Adam Woronowicz (consul), Adam Ferency (minister), Adam Szyszkowski (camp guard)

 

Cold War is a love story told in fragments over a 15 year period, from 1949-1964, between two Polish musicians. Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a conductor with a Polish theatrical group specializing in traditional folk music. He is one of the people auditioning young Poles from the countryside to be included in the troop, when he first sets eyes on Zula (Joanna Kulig) – a beautiful blonde, with a nice voice and undeniable star quality. The two are immediately drawn together – and fall in love.

 

In simpler times, this would a simpler story – but here it isn’t. Their group attracts the attention of people higher up in Soviet Poland – and they are “encouraged” to sing more about workers and the proletariat and how great Stalin is – and of course, it’s not merely a suggestion. The group starts to travel – and Wiktor decides that what needs to happen is that he and Zula should flee across the border in Berlin to freedom. When Zula doesn’t show up, he goes anyway. The rest of the film involves the few moments over the next decade when the pair of lovers can come together. When they are alone, you can feel their longing for the other. When they are together, things aren’t as rosy either. They may well be happier apart – but they don’t know how to let go.

 

The film is directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, who uses the same basic visual strategy that worked so well in his last film – the Oscar winning Ida. That film was about a novice nun, who before she is to take her final vows, is sent back to the hometown she never knew to talk to an Aunt she didn’t know she had – and it’s there she finds out what happened to her family in WWII. Both films are shot in boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, in beautiful black and white – and both films often leave large swaths of the frame above the character’s heads, unfilled. It’s a visual strategy that keeps the characters boxed in – the character’s world is closed off to them.

 

You would think that a movie as deliberately fragmented as Cold War would be somehow less complete than this one is, but Pawlikowski makes it work. He uses music to great effect – it changes as the movie goes along, beginning with those folk songs, moving to something akin to Russian propaganda anthems, and then moving into jazz – sometimes jazzy versions of those earlier folk songs. In one masterful scene – the best scene in the movie by far – even rock n’ roll comes along – with a dance number by the luminous Kulig set to Rock Around the Clock, which is easily one of the best sequences of the year. The music underlines the emotions of everything, and pulls us through from one scene to the scene, one year to the next – as the film pushes the characters together, only to wrench them apart again.

 

That Pawlikowski does all this in a svelte 88 minute runtime is kind of astonishing. Many directors seem to think that longer films are somehow better – more important and deeper. They can be, but sometimes a film like Cold War gets to the heart of what it wants to say, and does so quickly. You don’t need a longer runtime, when you get straight to the heart of it like Cold War does.