Cold War (***)

The Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski has followed up Ida, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, with another black-and-white film set in the early communist period. It begins in 1949. Zula (Joanna Kulig, who played a singer in Ida) is a singer; Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) singles her out during an audition at the music school that employs him.

The brisk (1:29) film wastes little time in advancing the plot, and when it skips ahead two years, they are lovers, and she is a standout in the school’s choir. In an early scene, government officials lean on the heads of the school to add some patriotism to the folk-oriented repertoire. We next hear what might be the most beautiful Polish-language choral work about Stalin. So it seems like the rest of the movie might become a somewhat familiar story about artistic freedom, or secret resistance, or at least operating in the confines of a totalitarian ideology. But it is a love story.

It’s better not to give away the story, except to say that jazz, not choral music predominates in the second half of the movie, and that parts of it take place outside of Poland. Politics propels the plot and deeply affects the lives of the characters, but is only indirectly the subject of the film. Perhaps it is about how changing the political and cultural environment can change who we are. It seems to change the relationship of Zula and Wiktor in an unpredictable, uncertain way.

Despite skipping ahead nearly two decades, the story isn’t difficult to follow, but I didn’t feel I entirely understood the characters, or at least Zula. At one point, she becomes annoyed when she learns that Wiktor has embellished details of her past. I would have been no more or less surprised had she been amused by the same thing. While I like ambiguity, to me, Pawlikowski has allowed the viewer to fill in a little too much. Besides earning another Foreign Language Film nomination, this film has also been nominated for its direction and cinematography. Pawlikowski creates memorable images without seeming showy. I liked the music, too. However, while I can speculate about why Zula feels the way she does, or the explanation for the definitive ending, I think many viewers will have wanted just a little more information to work with.

IMDB link

viewed 1/26/19 5:10 pm at Ritz East; posted 1/27/19