Death
is not the natural enemy of love—ideology is. Academy Award-winning auteur
Pawel Pawlikowski understands that better than anyone. He saw how exile, separation,
and transience took a toll on his Polish defector parents, but it never quelled
their mutual ardor. Their story inspired the perfectly yet tragically matched
lovers in Pawlikowski’s Cold War (trailer here), Poland’s
official foreign language Academy submission, which opens this Friday at Film
Forum.
Neither
Wiktor or Zula is all that interested in folk music, but they both see Mazurek,
a traditional dance troupe, as a vehicle to help them get what they want. For
the classically-trained, Western-influenced Wiktor, it is a chance to travel
and possibly escape, whereas Zula merely sees it as a means of avoiding her abusive
father. However, they share an immediate connection that only becomes more
potent and passionate over time.
Right
from the start, their romance is a rocky one, especially when Zula confesses
she agreed to inform on Witkor as part of her terms of employment. Inevitably,
they agree to defect one fateful night in pre-Wall East Berlin. However, Witkor
slips across alone when Zula fails to met him at the designated time. By doing so,
he becomes an enemy of the state, but that will not be enough to halt their
romance.
Thus,
begins a long, agonizing period of hasty meetings, unsatisfying encounters, assorted
defections, and costly repatriations. Cold
War is only a mere 89 minutes, but it tells an epic, decade-spanning story.
Frankly, it could be considered a 21st Century Doctor Zhivago, chronicling an intimate love story against the
sweeping backdrop of historical chaos and oppression, but Pawlikowski does it
all with elegant narrative economy—and jazz.
Music
is important to this love story, starting with Mazurek’s choral performances,
but fully blossoming with the hardbop-style jazz Witkor plays in Paris and the
torchy LP he tries to produce for Zula. It all sounds perfectly era appropriate
and in the case of the jazz, smoky and swinging, thanks to Marcin Masecki’s
arrangements and piano stylings. It really helps us understand the depth of his
feelings and the melancholy of his blues.
Tomasz
Kot also seems very attuned to the music as he broods, yearns, and chafes under
authority. As Wiktor, he raises world weariness to a high art form. The romantic
rapport he forges with Joanna Kulig’s Zula is palpable and often quite painful
to witness. Kulig melts microphones with her sultry vocals and rivets viewers
with the sensitivity and brittleness of her performance. It is no exaggeration
to say they represent one of the finest on-screen pairings of the
post-millennium era.
The
design team faithfully recreates the mean cruddiness of Communist Poland and
East Berlin, but Lukasz Zal makes it all look strikingly beautiful with his award-worthy
black-and-white cinematography. Every frame of every shot is truly a work of
art. In terms of technical craftsmanship, Cold
War could well be the strongest film of the year, but it also connects on a
deeply emotional level.
There
are many good reasons Cold War dominated
the European Film Awards. It is easily the best looking and sounding narrative film
of the year. In fact, it is the best of the year, even eclipsing Never Look Away. Very highly recommended,
Cold War opens this Friday (12/21) in
New York, at Film Forum.