NYFF: Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 3:21PM Jason Adams reporting from the New York Film Festival
Like Phantom Thread last year Pawel Pawlikowski's magnificently romantic and visually bewitching new film Cold War deals in the secret languages and strange understandings between true lovers - that no matter how hard it is on your soul and constitution that person sitting across the table is the one made for you and vice versa, and you might be the end of each other but you'll be each other's beginnings too...
Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) meets Zula (Joanna Kulig, total supernova) thanks to lies - she's pretended to be something she's not (a small-town gal who, uh, didn't murder her father) in order to get something she wants (a singing and dancing gig in his show about Polish folk music). She says she can probably figure out how to dance and then for her Polish folk-art audition sings a song from a Russian movie - it's plenty; Wiktor's smitten from second one. And she knows it. And he knows she's lying and doesn't care. Man, she's got charm for miles. Eventually her lies become part of his mythos for her, well past her appreciating it - she'll be the maintainer of her own mythos, thank you very much, even if it's made of pieces that will never fit.
It's that constant battle of the wills with these two, stretched across a dozen years and half as many countries - back and forth across the mainland, sneaking from Parisian Jazz Clubs to Prison Sentence, each daring the other to admit defeat first and be a steadfast man, a known quantity of woman. Alas, it's always something. As it is, and as it goes - Movie Love rings truest the more impossible the odds, and these two make some impossibly fine music together. This is the musical romance of the season.
Cold War has finished screening for the NYFF but opens in theaters on December 21st.
Reader Comments (10)
I'm so eager to see this again. I was a little cold on it (no pun intended) despite its ravishing beauty and a few absolutely stellar scenes but It pops into my mind all the time so i need a second go.
This was my absolute favorite at TIFF. I walked in so tired, expecting to fall asleep at any minute, and then was just entranced by gutteral Eastern European music, forlorn nightclub lights, and some of the most gorgeous shots since... Ida?
I hope this one crosses over as much as Ida did, but I worry about it’s chances in a very stacked Foreign Language category, and have basically written off its chances in more mainstream categories.
I was cold on this movie as well. My big question is why is Zula so tempestuous? The film never tells us. We never get to understand her as the film follows the guy. Even if she is supposed to be a metaphor for something deeper, the character doesn't work except as pure male fantasy. Felt nothing for the love story. Beautifully made though.
I was with it until that ending.
That being said, I expected more from it - it left me thoroughly unruffled and I couldn’t help thinking it should have been more.
The cinematography is STUNNING. It needs to be nominated.
I was so disappointed in it. I thought the first half was breathtaking and then it faded ...
This was my favorite of the films I saw at TIFF. It's also my choice for best Foreign Film submission of the 13 I've seen so far.
Murtada - I read Zula's feistiness as a consequence of her childhood, particularly her relationship with her father.
Not everything needs to be exactly explained... why this, why that... This movie has charmed me, acted on all my senses and left speechless at the end. For me - a total cinematographic masterpiece.
I would like to raise a rather serious topic, namely, about a long-standing thorn in Polish-German relations, the topic of war reparations will not disappear in the near future. If you want to learn more about this, then go to the site https://kafkadesk.org/2019/04/09/poland-could-ask-germany-for-over-900-billion-in-world-war-ii-reparations/ and read the excellent article on world war 2, I know for sure that you will find many interesting facts for yourself. On both sides of the border, German and Polish legal experts have crossed swords on this issue for decades.