Cold War

Every January, I get a little nervous. I have a tradition of writing up all the picture and acting nominees, so I always hope that the Academy won’t nominate something I haven’t been able to see. (My decision not to prioritize watching Rosamund Pike’s acclaimed performance in A Private War has been worrying me since the film left theaters and didn’t come to home video. I can’t see them all, and I can’t write a blog post about movies I haven’t watched!) I’m actually already working on my write up of Best Supporting Actress, but I won’t post anything until after the SAG awards on Sunday because what happens there is unusually significant this year, particularly in that category.

At any rate, I was very excited that the last film I needed to watch was one I was already dying to see.

The Good:
This year two black-and-white foreign films got nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Director, Mexico’s Roma and Poland’s Cold War.

Comparing them after the movie, my husband declared that while both films have noteworthy cinematography, he prefers Roma‘s. He also thinks that although this movie is faster paced and more eventful, Roma has more universal appeal.

I agree with him there. Roma is about how those who care for us teach us to love through small acts of kindness. Loving relationships save us from vast, meaningless desolation. That’s a universal message. Cling to those who care for you. Show them love in return. Create your best life together. Everybody can do this. The little things are life. Appreciate what matters.

Cold War is about what it means to be Polish. That’s a subject everyone can enjoy, but most of us are not Polish, so while we appreciate what the film is saying, we might not relate to it as intimately.

Remember all those movies actually made during the Cold War (or soon after the Berlin Wall came down) that show people behind the Iron Curtain facing ongoing conflict, hardship, and stress? Then in the end, they finally defect or escape or whatever you want to call it, and they end up in Western Europe where everything is good, and the audience yells, “Hooray!” and they live happily ever after, the end?

Cold War highlights the limitations of films like that. In this movie, we don’t have the bad side and the good side. We have one side and the other side. Neither side is particularly good, and, ultimately, in different ways, both sides are disappointing.

The problem is, Poland under Stalin is not the same as the Poland of the past. One solution is to run away to Paris. But even though that solves the problem of getting away from Stalin, you’re still not in the Poland of the past. You’re in Paris. And despite its many charms, Paris is not Poland and never will be.

Although Joanna Kulig’s Zula is definitely the face of the film, my husband noted that for long stretches, we remain with Tomasz Kot’s Wiktor, only checking in with Lula very briefly during their separations. He’s right. The film is more from Wiktor’s point of view. He and Lula may be star-crossed lovers, but Cold War is strictly boy meets girl, not boy and girl meet.

I think the movie is set up this way because Lula represents not only Wiktor’s love and Wiktor’s muse but also a piece of Wiktor’s soul. When Lula is not happy, that means that a piece of Wiktor is unhappy, too. She’s a sparkling, intense, fresh-faced, complicated girl who shows up from nowhere to sing traditional Polish folk songs in a beautiful, pure (if not perfectly trained) voice. I think Wiktor sees a piece of his identity represented in Lula. He needs her. She is a part of him.

I’ve thought a lot about the meaning of the film. My initial take is that it’s an extremely Polish story, but it could also be read as a symbolic fable, even a cautionary tale. It’s a beautiful love story, and I actually like it much better than the director’s earlier film Ida, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2015. (Pawlikowski also directed the early Emily Blunt movie My Summer of Love, another film about the difficulty of an intense relationship.)

What makes Cold War such a pleasure to watch is the vibrancy of its music. The whole thing is so musically driven, start to finish. The soundtrack must be magnificent. At one point, I thought to myself with a chuckle, “I guess Ryan Gosling really did save jazz because just listen to this movie!” At moments, Cold War did remind me a little of La La Land, and I kept thinking, “These two need to reach the mutually beneficial decision to leave each other alone!” It does seem a bit like a Damien Chazelle movie. We get such intensity, such musical variety, such passion. And not once does anybody take twenty minutes to plant an American flag on the moon! (That whole ridiculous, misinformed First Man “controversy” makes me so angry!)

Another thing I love about Cold War is the unpredictability of its plot. I have never seen a movie that begins with the rounding up of Polish folk singers from the remote reaches of the forgotten countryside. For the first ten minutes of this movie, I had no idea what the film was going to be about. It seemed like a genuinely new, fresh story unfolding on the screen. Even after Lula and Wiktor get together, I did not know for sure how their relationship would unfold. Did she love him? I came to realize the answer to that only gradually.

The lead performances are fantastic. I now understand why I kept hearing faint Best Actress buzz for Joanna Kulig. Several supporting performances are excellent, too, particularly Borys Szyc as the most nefarious guy who ever smiled and shook your hand, Kaczmarek. Agata Kulesza also has a very powerful moment early on.

Best Scene Visually:
Cold War is nominated for Best Cinematography, and it’s easy to see why. Every shot is rich, carefully composed, deliberate, revealing. We don’t get the feeling that the camera is simply there. In each scene, our gaze is carefully directed. We are being shown something, something else, something else.

One scene when Lula floats along in a pond (or possibly a lake or river) really caught my attention. Most of her body seems to disappear completely beneath the surface of water that appears milky white. But her head is above water, and when she starts to sing, we sometimes see a dark reflection of the lower half of her face, a second, dark mouth singing along with her in the water. I found that image compelling, artful, charged with symbolic meaning.

The marriage scene is also amazing. The way faces are lit and revealed is continuously impressive. One moment featuring train tracks heading off on an alternate path is cool. I liked the use of cows in one shot.

There’s also a night scene showing an iconic tourist’s view of Paris that made me wonder, “Why is this so eerily familiar to me? I’ve never been to Paris!” Maybe it reminds me of the movie Charade (and like a million other movies). I’ve been to Paris in the movies many times.

Best Action Sequence:
I got an absolutely awful feeling watching Lula run off stage after her final dance number. So many evolving reasons to feel awful become increasingly apparent in this short scene. To me, it was probably the most powerful (and distressing) moment of the movie.

Best Scene:
The most vibrant, entertaining, engrossing part of the movie is when Lula comes to Paris. I like this section of the movie because we definitely know at this stage what is going on. But the thing is, in the types of Cold War movies I’m used to, this would be the end. Yet clearly this is not the end. So what will happen now?

For me, the best scene of the film comes when Lula goes to the party. Her discussion of the translation with Juliette (Jeanne Balibar) is delightful.  Her behavior during this party reminds me in flashes of Jennifer Lawrence (in a good way).

Best Line (of dialogue not longitude):
I nominate the final lines of the film, and my husband puts forward Lula’s fantastic retort when asked to explain a crime. Both are highly memorable. So is, “The pendulum has murdered time,” because of Lula’s commentary.  When I heard the line come up in French when she sang the French version of the song, I almost laughed.

The Negatives: