Directed by: Pawel Pawlikowski
Runtime: 85 will they/won’t they minutes
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War closes with a dedication to his parents. After knowing that it is loosely based on their lives I am touched, but I’m not sure I want to know their story. I’d rather leave it private. Cold War is an intensely intimate exploration of about a decade of a Polish couple who find themselves grappling with love and identity as the dust settles from World War II. It’s an aesthetically haunting film, crafted carefully with sincerity and without self-conscious preservation.
Joanna Kulig receives top billing as Zula, a talented girl with a shrouded past. There are rumours about her hurting her own father. She explains that he confused her with her mother, and that she showed him the difference. She auditions for a local entertainment troupe, commissioned by the Polish government to take local proletariat folk culture, embolden it, and help Poland remind it of its dignity after being ravaged by the Holocaust. For Zula, singing seems to be both a coping mechanism and a survival skill, and it is entwined into the fabric of who she is, or at least who she wants to be other than herself. I was surprised to discover that Kulig is 36 years old. I figured they aged her up towards the end of the film, but it turns out she was playing young. It’s a credit to her performance and ability to embody youthfulness even in trying times.
Zula immediately attracts the eye of Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), the chief composer of the troupe’s musical pieces. He’s a talented artist, stoic and pensive, but in the wake of a young woman he commits himself to loving, he loses his posture. Many great artists can turn their emotion to stone, but when it comes to love, see it turned to putty. He’s no more mature than Zula when it comes to passion, although she looks up to him as a mentor in matters of the heart. When he decides, for them, to leave an increasingly Stalinist Poland together, he waits like a wet dog for her to show up at their meeting place as she makes a far more pragmatic decision about her future.
Too often in love stories, love is good and pure without any consequence. For Zula and Wiktor, love almost seems to be a burden. It sees them cross numerous borders, back and forth, often seeing their lives get worse, rather than better. Zula eventually finds her way to France, where she is reunited, somewhat, with Wiktor, who has lyrics written for Zula by another woman in his orbit (played by Jeanne Balibar). Out of jealousy, perhaps, she finds them pretentious. At a dinner party she confronts this apparent muse and asks her what “the pendulum killed time” means. “Time doesn’t matter when you are in love” is the response. Zula thinks this is stupid, but neither her nor Wiktor seem to understand how pertinent this is to their lives.
Zula and Wiktor are two very different people. Another trope of love stories is that the parties attracted to one another surrender themselves immediately, pardon any convenient inconveniences, to the same goal. Wiktor is an older idealist. If he does not like his environment, he changes it. He is willing to sacrifice art for happiness and status for integrity. Zula is impressionable, but eventually rejects anything that leaves a mark on her. She might hate what Poland is becoming, but it is home. She is willing to sacrifice happiness for art and integrity for status. As she grows older and wiser, she becomes disillusioned by the things that once impressed her. For Wiktor, love is a way through life; for Zula it is a way out. You can begin to see where they would run into problems.
Cold War is an aesthetically haunting film. Shot in black-and-white, a character trudging through the blanket whiteness of the snow reminded me of the opening of Fargo (1996), only it’s somehow even more isolating as the white seems to swallow everything except the character walking through it. Black trees shoot out of the ground, contrasting against the white snow and grey of dilapidated churches. It also contains my favourite shot in recent cinema. The troupe have just put on their first successful show. At the formal after-party, Wiktor is standing with his dance choreographer and partner (Agata Kulesza) when an associate (Borys Szyc) approaches them from behind. He says he never believed in them, but has come around to seeing how successful they can be, and offers his congratulations. A figure in the foreground turns around, and it’s revealed that the characters have been standing at the edge of the room against a mirror, and he was standing in front of them the whole time. It says something about how these characters relate to each other, or will relate to each other, but strictly in a visual sense, it was beautiful. Pawlikowski seems to love faces, and he lingers on expressions and in moments just long enough to add them extra weight and poignancy that a script on its own just cannot lend in such a visual medium. Appreciators of the visual aspects of filmmaking—art design, cinematography, shot composition, etc.—owe it to themselves to take in Cold War and work out how it achieves its effects. The way Pawlikowski lingers on faces gives us a chance to read them, and appreciate how much more the actors say with them in this film than most others.
Anyone who has been in love will be able to tell you how much it can burn. The flames of new romance or unbridled passion, and the searing and scorching of loss as two individuals try to share one life. The more powerful and charismatic the personalities, sometimes the more pain in trying to be the same. The fires of love burnt bright even in the harshest winters of post-World War II Poland, and Cold War tells the story of one such all-consuming inferno.
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