Cold War (15.)
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski.
Starring Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar. In Black and white. Polish and French with subtitles. 88 mins
Pawlikowski, Oscar winner for his previous film Ida, is a filmmaker who wants to give you as much as he can with as little as possible. The screen is small, the old 4:3 ratio, it's black and white and the film doesn't take up much of your time even as it tries to give you the Cold War: not all of it, but a full decade and a half beginning in Poland in 1949. This tale of love behind and across the barricade starts with formation of their post-war equivalent of the Fame Academy. The best folk singers are gathered together in a mansion to perform and rehearse until they become a performing troupe that will be a "living calling card for the fatherland."
Ah, you think, but being a "living calling card for the fatherland" costs and here's where they start paying. Pawlikowski's viewpoint though is not so collectivist and we concentrate on a secret romance between the musical director Wiktor (Kot,) and the slightly sullen young singer Zula (Kulig.) As the authorities get the group to move away from folk music to some new uptempo numbers about Stalin their love is threatened by his desire to go west.
As a study in estrangement and exile, the film probably succeeds a little too well here. The first half hour in Poland is gently enthralling but when the film rolls up in Paris and the Jazz scene, it gets a little lost. Like its characters, the film only really works in the fatherland. Home is best, even when home is a world of communist paranoia.
In the movies, love is always the answer but I think it's the problem here. This grand flawed romance that can't bring happiness but can't be ignored is, for me, too obvious and empty a dramatic conceit to convince. The relationship is based on that of Pawlikowski's parents so these things do happen but it's all a dollhouse Dr Zhivago, snippets from an epic. The two main actors, let it be said, are tremendous. Kot looks just like the famous Sinatra impersonator who looks nothing like Sinatra; Kulag has a way of embodying every pouty blonde sexpot of the last century.
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski.
Starring Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar. In Black and white. Polish and French with subtitles. 88 mins
Pawlikowski, Oscar winner for his previous film Ida, is a filmmaker who wants to give you as much as he can with as little as possible. The screen is small, the old 4:3 ratio, it's black and white and the film doesn't take up much of your time even as it tries to give you the Cold War: not all of it, but a full decade and a half beginning in Poland in 1949. This tale of love behind and across the barricade starts with formation of their post-war equivalent of the Fame Academy. The best folk singers are gathered together in a mansion to perform and rehearse until they become a performing troupe that will be a "living calling card for the fatherland."
Ah, you think, but being a "living calling card for the fatherland" costs and here's where they start paying. Pawlikowski's viewpoint though is not so collectivist and we concentrate on a secret romance between the musical director Wiktor (Kot,) and the slightly sullen young singer Zula (Kulig.) As the authorities get the group to move away from folk music to some new uptempo numbers about Stalin their love is threatened by his desire to go west.
As a study in estrangement and exile, the film probably succeeds a little too well here. The first half hour in Poland is gently enthralling but when the film rolls up in Paris and the Jazz scene, it gets a little lost. Like its characters, the film only really works in the fatherland. Home is best, even when home is a world of communist paranoia.
In the movies, love is always the answer but I think it's the problem here. This grand flawed romance that can't bring happiness but can't be ignored is, for me, too obvious and empty a dramatic conceit to convince. The relationship is based on that of Pawlikowski's parents so these things do happen but it's all a dollhouse Dr Zhivago, snippets from an epic. The two main actors, let it be said, are tremendous. Kot looks just like the famous Sinatra impersonator who looks nothing like Sinatra; Kulag has a way of embodying every pouty blonde sexpot of the last century.