Cold War

A musician and his muse carry out an on-again-off-again romance in the two decades following WWII.

"Cold War" left me feeling like my lack of understanding about Poland and post-war Polish identity prevented me from fully appreciating this movie. The whole time I was watching it, I felt like there was something I was missing. But I have to judge a movie based on my personal reaction to it, and this one left me cold. The two leads have little chemistry, and the movie doesn't make a compelling case that these two damaged souls can't live without each other. We're just told they can't, but we're never shown. Because I didn't care about their relationship, and I didn't much care for them as individuals (we never learn very much about either of them), I never felt vested in anything happening and I couldn't care less about whether they ended up together, apart, alive, or dead.

The film has some rapturous followers, so I'll have to just live with the fact that I missed the boat on this one.

Nominated for three Oscars at the upcoming 2018 Academy Awards: Best Foreign Language Film (Poland), Best Director (Pawel Pawlikowski), and Best Cinematography.

Grade: B-

The first thing to state about this beautiful movie is that it's monochrome. So stunningly so that at times you feel you are in a photographic gallery rather than a cinema. The quality of the cinematography is quite extraordinary thanks to Lucas Zal.

It's also in 4:3 format. Not the square format of Instagram, but close.

We don't see 4:3 very often these days but Wes Anderson used it to immense effect in Grand Budapest Hotel and so did Lazslo Melis in Son of Saul.

It's an engaging format that draws you in. It suggests a time before cinemascope (16:9 etc) and only really works in period cinema of a time.

This time.

But it also lends itself to incredible framing, such as when our female protagonist floats down a river gradually disappearing out of shot, and later in the movie when the chief protagonists leave a bus and walk out of frame in a composition that Henri Cartier Breson would be proud of.

It's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in many years.

In truth that's probably its biggest strength.

It is, but it isn't really, narrative driven. More episodic than story driven but it does tell a tale about director Pawel Pawlikowski's parents' love affair set against the Cold War backdrop in his native Poland.

It's fairly sordid in a way (his mother was abused by her father as a child) but without anything shocking to see.

Imagine, yes.

The two leads ( Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot) are magnificent. Brooding, beautiful (although unconventionally so) and real.

Lucas Zal has a great time dwelling on three particular things. Crowd shots. Amazing, Dance sequences. Amazing. Joanna Kulig (the lead). Amazing.

In particular, Joanna Kulig has a stand out performance. She's not one to show her enjoyment in life. Sullen most would say. But it is an immense performance.

It's a love story, set against the challenges that Cold War Poland put in front of people of artistic belief where communist doctrine made creativity very difficult.

What Pawel Pawlikowski achieves is a mood piece of exemplary, peerless really, detail.

And it's a musical.

I was constantly drawn to comparing it to La La Land, yet it is so NOT La La Land. Partly it's down to Kulig who shares the unorthodox looks (beauty) of Emma Stone. Partly it's the framing of Zal.

And the music fuses from Polish country folk to French basement jazz (which La La Land would have been so comfortable with).

This is an Oscar nomination shoe in. It's absolutely brilliant.

And, at 88 minutes, certainly does not outstay its welcome.

Bravo!

A Straight 10 from me.

From the Academy Award-winning director of Ida comes another cold, stark & emotionally distant feature, this time centred around a couple that can neither stay together nor live apart. Taking inspiration from his own parents' turbulent history, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest is a tale of cursed love in cursed times.

Set in the ruins of post-war Europe, the story concerns a musical director who discovers a young singer and helps her refine her talent. The plot follows their romance over the years as their different backgrounds, varying temperaments & politics of the era keep separating them apart & bringing them back together.

Co-written & directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, the film definitely benefits from its splendid camerawork & wonderful music but the romance aspect is both stale & soulless. Watching the same episode repeated time n again in different places & years gets old & boring real soon, plus we never even grow to care about them.

The two lovebirds have no individual lives of their own. The story never digs into that aspect, for it only shows us the segments that brings them together before driving them apart again. And the repetitive nature of it makes sure that we are never invested in them or their relationship or the troubles they find themselves in over the years.

Difficulties of living in exile or under totalitarian regime are only glimpsed at but never explored. Joanna Kulig & Tomasz Kot do well with what they are given and while their work looks impressive, it doesn't truly resonate on an emotional level. It's a good thing that the film is only 85 minutes long and ends before it becomes an ordeal to sit through.

On an overall scale, Cold War is beautiful to look at but its story doesn't stimulate the senses the way its arresting imagery does. The frame composition, greyscale photography, crisp camerawork and excellent musical choices actually turned out to be its saving grace, for without them, this Polish drama would be no less than an absolute chore. In a word, underwhelming.

I must admit that the movie is not bad. The black and white color style creates a romantic and nostalgic atmoshere, during the era of the beginning of the cold war. There are some impressive and well-played scenes (and that is something the director must be praised for, his visual aesthetic), especially in the beginning of the movie, showing the life in Poland after the war and the folkore culture. The perfume and sense of old times and the illustration of another era are so clear. This is the good side of the movie, that reminds us something of the old romantic movies. On the other hand, a movie that could simply be a masterpiece, it just ends to be "nothing special". The main reason is that, although it considers to be a love-film, love is not clearly illustrated. The spectator cannot really understand why their love is so strong, why these people are so stuck to its other. They continue to move all the time and make love and argue, while there is not enough "heaviness" to their relationship. It becomes boring at some point, just to watch people go around and argue and love each other without a reason. In cocnlusion, while I liked the way that the director presents the capitalist world, giving emphasis to the differences between the east and the west ethics and culture, I didn't like the way of presentation of the communist side, because he concentrates only to authority, power, jails and no freedom at all. The movie just left me with a sense, that I was expecting something more.

This superbly shot and acted black-and-white drama from Poland is a worthy film from Pawel Pawlikowski. It doesn't quite live up to his outstanding previous film "Ida," but it comes close. Like "Ida," this film runs a fleeting 90 minutes and is shot in black and white using simple (but gorgeous) cinematography. For a film of such short runtime, "Cold War" is deeply ambitious, and for the most part, the ambition pays off. It is set over a considerable period of time both inside and outside of the Iron Curtain, and centers on a love story between a man and his student who meet at a state-run music academy in communist Poland.

The film's use of a variety of filmmaking techniques to depict the history and culture of postwar Europe through using historical context is outstanding. The simple and very powerful music is beautiful, as is every key shot in black-and-white. The two leads both give excellent performances, mixing desire for purpose in life with an intense feeling of passion that is prevalent among ambitious individuals in the era. Some of these strengths in the movie are even combined together to excellent results, such as a chilling scene when young women from the state music academy sing songs pledging absolute loyalty to Stalin on stage in performance. The juxtaposition of the different scenes in the movie is also done very well, as each scene simply cuts to black before the next major scene (set in a different region or area of Europe) begins. The only real complaint I have about this film is that while I really appreciated the ending for the most part, the tone of the film's finale felt slightly anti-climactic. Otherwise, this is a gem. Gladly recommended. 8/10