Cold War

seen on 5 December 2018

Paweł Pawlikowski directs Joanna Kulig as Zula, Tomasz Kot as Wiktor, Agata Kulesza as Irena and Borys Szyc as Kaczmarek, with Cédric Kahn as Michel and Jeanne Balibar as Juliette, in a film about two young Poles whose personal lives are complicated both by the innate tensions between them and by the pressures of the Cold War.

As in his previous masterpiece Ida (2013) Pawlikowski has composed his film in austere but luminous black and white; the early scenes in the wintry rural Poland of 1949 recall some of the atmosphere of the earlier film, with some quite breathtaking compositions of stark trees against the snow and an eerie vision of the white sky through a ruined church dome. But here, Wiktor and Irena are travelling through impoverished districts in a dilapidated bus under the supervision of Kaczmarek, a Party functionary; they are diligently recording folk songs.

Meanwhile a folkloric academy is being prepared in an old country house, and youngsters hopeful that their singing and dancing talents will find favour are billeted there and put through their paces. Wiktor is soon attracted to the vivacious Zula, who is not the country lass she seems, and any warmth that there might have been between him and Irena is soon overwhelmed by his new passion. He and Zula start an affair, but it is not an easy relationship.

The film is episodic; the passage of years and movement of location are signalled by brief titles, but all the while subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in the performing styles of the youngsters show how the almost ethnographic impulse to record vanishing folk traditions is subverted by the strictures of Party orthodoxy. The rough peasant vocalising and homely instruments are 'refined' for the brighter more full-throated voices of attractive young girls; the simple fiddle or harmonium is replaced by a lush orchestra; peasant dances become intricate, flashy and increasingly soulless folkloric spectaculars. It's brilliantly observed, and quite disheartening; the audiences look increasingly grim but the performers are doing their patriotic duty. Irena quietly leaves one of the first of these travesty concerts, unwilling to collude in the betrayal of what she thought she was doing; it's the last we see of her.

Wiktor sees a chance to defect in East Berlin, and persuades Zula to accompany him, but in the event he has to go alone and it is some years before they meet again in Paris. Here artistic compromise is still on the cards, merely dressed in a different and perhaps more seductive guise. One of the songs we have heard already transform itself several times is deemed ripe for the French chanson treatment and Zula's voice is ideal - but she certainly bridles at the French translation she is saddled with; it's of course just as much a symbol of her uneasiness in the bohemian world of 1950s Paris as a plain narrative fact. It is hardly surprising to realise that Wiktor and Zula, though obsessed with one another, inflict damage on one another whether they are together or apart. Even as they are drawn back to their own country, the prospects are bleak.

The fifteen or so years of the time frame are expertly handled; in relatively short scenes - the whole film is barely 90 minutes long - it seems as if great swathes of lived life have passed, while the central drama of the passion between Wiktor and Zula binds the whole film together. The compromises they have made to keep going are often only hinted at, but one realises that the hints are just right, indicating months of endurance and unhappiness without becoming distractions. 

It's another masterpiece by this impressive director.