Black and white? Academy aspect ratio? Europe in the post-war years? Bleak as all hell? Why didn't I like this more? It's a puzzler. I think part of the reason lies in the protagonists. I couldn't warm to them, as good as the performances were. I guess it's a time and place consideration but I thought they could have handled things a little less....melodramatically.
Oddly, this could have been longer than its 89 minutes. It's a bit of a small epic, with all the grandeur but none of the bombast. Most sequences played as highlights before events moved on, especially in the second and third acts, and I felt we could have seen more of the peripheral stuff, like the politics, for example, of which there are fleeting touches.
Pawlikowski follows a through line of great Polish directors - Kieslowski, Holland, Wadja, etc, and I'd say Cold War is a quality film. It's just that it wasn't really for me.
See also:
Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love (2004) and the best cold war film ever made, Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949).
SPOILERS IN POD!!
Listen to "Cold War" on Spreaker.
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