Cold War

Cold War, directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski, has been the darling of the festival circuit and it's reviews have ranged from very good to glowing. But I'm afraid to say that it didn't quite do all that for me. It's clearly a masterful piece of work - nicely acted, beautiful to look at in its monochrome and 4:3 ratio and adeptly directed with a real restraint. It's loosely based on the lives of Pawlikowski's parents, who went through similar turbulence in cold war Europe. The film follows around 15 years in the lives of musicians, Witkor, played by Tomasz Kot, and Zula, played luminously by Joanna Kulig, who fall in love and spend the rest of their lives trying to be together.

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).

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