TIFF '18 Film Review - Cold War

Director Pawel Pawlikowski has a comfort zone for making films. It's Poland behind the Iron Curtain, the events are bleak, the format is monochrome yet the visuals are beautiful. In his follow up to 2013's Ida that one can only hope is the middle stanza of a mid 20th century trilogy Pawlikowski starts out in the winter chill of rural Poland circa 1949. Wiktor (Thomas Kot) is leading auditions for a touring traditional coordinated singing and dancing group. His current flame Irena (Ida's Agata Kulesza) by his side along with driver Kacmarek (Borys Szyc) whose willingness to perform underhanded deeds will lead to an upward climb in the Party. Zula (Joanna Kulig) a farm girl with a checkered past turns up to audition obviously catching the directors interest the moment she enters the room. The story then pitches forward to 1951, Zula is the star of the show, always centre stage singing positive socialist numbers as Party members look on from the balcony. Wiktor wants to get away from this world asking Zula (Joanna Kulig) to go with him to the West.

No real spoiler to report that Wiktor plan does not work out. He ends up in Paris alone, meeting up with Zula periodically as the next decade progresses. He's playing in Jazz bands, doing score music for film and falling in with the original beatnik crowd in Paris. Zula arrives for her longest spell at this point having married an Italian who is nowhere to be seen. The pair is passionate but that coin does turn as they argue leading Zula leave for what seems to be for good. Wiktor knowing that she is the love of his life decides to make a significant sacrifice just to be in the position to possibly see her even if it may in a controlled setting.

Pawlikowski shines when he tells stories of a few individuals struggle to survive under the harshness that was the Communist rule in Poland. No one escapes strife but there are moments of happiness and joy normally related to music. The best instances of this is a long cut sequence with Zula and Wikor in a Paris dance hall here as Rock Around the Clock his the speakers compelling Zula to hit the dance floor sharing moments of the song with different partners as a steady cam follows her around the hall. The other, a performance of the Mazurek troupe for important Communist Part members featuring Polish dancing spins and lifts with Zula at the forefront.

Cold War is the telling of a classic story of star-crossed lovers separated by time, space and politics. Joanna Kulig is the classical mid-twentieth century free-spirited modern woman ala Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita, Sophia Loren or Marilyn Monroe. But in all these cases unhappiness lurks just below the surface. Cinematographer Lukasz Zal's vision gleams incredible shifts between light and dark on the black and white canvas. The overall tone is a melancholy deliberately paced sharply edited production spanning parts of three decades that I can highly recommend.

*** 1/2 Out of 4.

Cold War | Pawel Pawlikowski |Poland/France/ U.K. | 2018 | 88 Minutes.

Tags: Poland, Eastern Bloc, Polish Folk Music, Mazowsze / Slask, East Berlin, Border Crossing, Paris, French Jazz, Yugoslavia, Bill Haley & The Comets.