Cold War * * * * 1/2
The thing about Cold War is that, despite it's flaws, you won't easily forget it, if only for the imagery.
It is set in Poland, Germany Yugoslavia and France through the late forties, the fifties and sixties and the recreation of the era is perfect. You'd swear it was being shot at that time and in that place. The black and white photography is extraordinary beautiful. Sharp and lustrous. The streets at night are both inviting and forbidding. It is as though the work of the great photographer Brassai has come to life.
The story is inspired by the parents of director Pawel Pawlikowski
We commence in the late forties in Poland. A young couple, Wiktor and Irena are travelling through rural areas recording the folk songs of the peasants and rustics. The best of the singers are then to be polished (sanitised) and taken to the city to be presented in concerts. Among the discovered talent is a young girl, Zula that Wiktor can not help but fall in love with. Yet his relationship with Irena remains.
The troupe are taken to East Germany and to Russia and all the Eastern Bloc countries. Wiktor wants to escape with Zula but he ends up in Paris alone where he becomes a jazz musician and later a composer of film scores, but circumstances keep bringing them back together. It is as though their relationship is prescribed to be a disaster but also inevitable.
Cold War does make some strange compromises that will leave you asking questions about the conflicting and destructive choices some characters make, and at times the "look" of some characters is questionable, especially Wiktor with his modern male-model look. You might be able to get away with it today, but I really don't think an open collar and unshaven face was acceptable at formal occasions in the fifties.
Ultimately I thought the melancholic story was secondary to the exquisite telling of it. I mean, some of that imagery! Watch out for the three women in the window, the mirror shot in the social gathering, the Paris and Berlin streets at night, the roof of the bombed out church, the grass in the wind. Oh, just go find some of these gorgeous images for yourself, there's plenty to choose from.
The cinematography is by Lukaz Zal who is most deserving of a mention.
It is set in Poland, Germany Yugoslavia and France through the late forties, the fifties and sixties and the recreation of the era is perfect. You'd swear it was being shot at that time and in that place. The black and white photography is extraordinary beautiful. Sharp and lustrous. The streets at night are both inviting and forbidding. It is as though the work of the great photographer Brassai has come to life.
The story is inspired by the parents of director Pawel Pawlikowski
We commence in the late forties in Poland. A young couple, Wiktor and Irena are travelling through rural areas recording the folk songs of the peasants and rustics. The best of the singers are then to be polished (sanitised) and taken to the city to be presented in concerts. Among the discovered talent is a young girl, Zula that Wiktor can not help but fall in love with. Yet his relationship with Irena remains.
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| And if you think I look good, just wait.. |
Cold War does make some strange compromises that will leave you asking questions about the conflicting and destructive choices some characters make, and at times the "look" of some characters is questionable, especially Wiktor with his modern male-model look. You might be able to get away with it today, but I really don't think an open collar and unshaven face was acceptable at formal occasions in the fifties.
Ultimately I thought the melancholic story was secondary to the exquisite telling of it. I mean, some of that imagery! Watch out for the three women in the window, the mirror shot in the social gathering, the Paris and Berlin streets at night, the roof of the bombed out church, the grass in the wind. Oh, just go find some of these gorgeous images for yourself, there's plenty to choose from.
The cinematography is by Lukaz Zal who is most deserving of a mention.
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