“Christ, I miss the Cold War” M famously spits in Casino Royale. She’d certainly be spitting if she missed Pawel Pawlikowski’s latest film, COLD WAR.
Spanning fifteen years across Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and Yugoslavia, COLD WAR meticulously recreates the era with breathtakingly beautiful black and white cinematography and an extraordinary soundtrack.
COLD WAR commences in the ruins of post-WWII Poland, where pianist Wiktor played by Tomasz Kot is commissioned by the Soviet state to form a musical ensemble to help rekindle national pride.
Whilst touring the villages in search of talent he meets the beautiful Zula portrayed by Joanna Kulig, a fiery and charismatic singer with a past. Zula comes from the wrong side of the tracks in a drab provincial town. She pretends to be from the country in order to get into a folk ensemble, which she sees as a way out of poverty. She’s rumoured to have done time for murdering her abusive father. ‘He mistook me for my mother so I used a knife to show him the difference,’ she tells Wiktor.
She can sing and dance, she has chutzpah and charm and a chip on her shoulder, and the two fall passionately in love. When a performance in Berlin offers the pair an opportunity for escape to the West, a last-minute decision finds them stranded on either side of the Iron Curtain. As the years march on, Wiktor and Zula – whether through political circumstance or personal impetuosity – struggle to find their moment in time.
Writer director Pawel Pawlikowski weaves the same cinematic magic that made his previous work, the Oscar winning, Ida, so memorable. The visual brilliance of the black and white photography – from high-contrast jazz club smokiness, to the wintry chill of the Polish countryside – sets the tone superbly, and secures a second triumph for cinematographer Łukasz Żal, after his stunning work on Ida.
Performances are top notch, with Joanna Kulig in particular as the firecracker triple threat, Zula, astonishing in an incandescence that illuminates the screen like a Kleig lamp. Her tempestuousness is beautifully contrasted by Tomasz Kot’s calm, stable and urbane Wiktor.
Achingly romantic but devoid of sentimentality, COLD WAR is an epic love story told with evocative economy and an exactness that cuts to the marrow of an emotional experience that is intense, volatile and explosive.
Like that bona fide black and white classic, Casablanca, COLD WAR concerns itself with things that never go out of date: Hearts full of passion, Jealousy and hate. A case of do or die, the world will always welcome lovers as time goes by.
Deliriously, deliciously lyrical, impossibly romantic and visually stunning, COLD WAR is a must see, and more than once.