The opening scene of “Cold War”
will test your resolve to watch it. You are immediately struck by
two things: 1) The movie is in Black & White and 2) The guys on
the screen are making some truly dreadful, Polish folk music.
Fortunately, it's all uphill from there. The B&W cinematography
ends up being really beautiful, and the music gets a lot better as
well.
Tomasz Kot plays Wiktor, a Polish
musician and conductor. With his lover, Irena, he is traveling the
country, recording Polish folk tunes sung by rural musicians, a la
“Songcatcher.” Once they have completed that project, Wiktor and
Irena recruit a bunch of young singers and dancers to create a
troupe. One of these singers, Zula (Joanna Kulig), catches Wiktor's
eye, and the two fall in love. Wiktor hatches a plan for them to
escape to the west during a performance in Berlin.
Unfortunately, freedom never quite
works out for them. Wiktor makes a good career for himself in Paris,
playing jazz clubs and making film scores, but Zula cannot be happy
outside of Poland, where life is becoming more and more controlled by
the Communist Party. And so it goes for Wiktor and Zula over the
years, always drawn together and torn apart, bouncing back and forth
between East and West.
We've seen a version of this before,
of course, in "Doctor Zhivago." Being in English and less of an
Art-film, “Doctor Zhivago” was easier for someone like me to
watch, and arguably probably a better movie. “Cold War” stands
up reasonably well to the comparison, however. Unless you speak
Polish, you have to be up for reading subtitles, but the
cinematography is beautiful and the 2 leads are talented and easy to
look at. The story is compelling and heartbreaking. It makes you
wonder why people would, in the name of an ideology, turn a world
where two people could have been happy together into one where they
can only be miserable together.
4 stars out of 5
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