Cold War

Absolute perfection. I'm not sure if there's anything else worth saying. I could find a lot of superlatives. From the very beginning, I enjoyed the visual aspects of the shots immensely, which is why I am grateful for the black-and-white treatment of the subject because in color all the impact would have been lost. In terms of music, I would be hard-pressed to search across world cinema for something so beautiful and coherent. The story of the fateful love of two people longing not only for each other, but also for freedom, in a time that did not exactly favor freedom and dreams, set in such tastefully elaborated realities, could not have turned out badly. Pawel Pawlikowski simply couldn't mess it up when he had such wonderful sets in reserve. The performances were also good, and the couple in love was perfectly suited to the 1950s and 1960s. And the ending? It couldn't have been wrapped up and filmed any better. I thus have no choice but to compliment the Poles on this cinematic treat. (100%) (04/08/2020)

With Ida, Pawlikowski tested my patience with his intimate approach a while ago, but my first encounter with his work was definitely not unpleasant. Cold War is a film of a different caliber in that it is easy to watch without any issues, and it is accessible and pleasant in its own way. The question is whether this characteristic would please Pawlikowski. After all, he clearly wanted to make a drama that would make a more significant statement about his time period and the systems that dictated the direction in Europe back then. The title itself testifies to that. He wanted to show the malice of the great events that dictate the fate of the loving couple, exposing the unfortunate individuals. Unfortunately, he failed to do that, and if you want films that significantly reveal the mechanisms of social movements, you have to look elsewhere, primarily because Pawlikowski chose the wrong protagonists. In order for them to miss each other, they don't need the adversity of political systems because they are perfectly capable of creating obstacles themselves. They are the kinds of people who can keep an entire army of relationship coaches occupied and driven to despair, and at the end of their journey, they have a series of love acrobatics and probably several failed marriages behind them. They confuse love with infatuation and fail in a number of basic skills necessary to maintain a long-term partnership. Cold War is worth seeing because of its cinematography and especially for its musical dimension. Pawlikowski knows the craft of filmmaking, and he also chose solid performers for the main roles. It's just that it lacks the depth he wanted to work with. Overall impression: 75%. (11/05/2020)

Visually, Pawlikowski excels even more than in the Oscar-winning Ida, which he copied through his black-and-white image and aspect ratio, and at least in the first half hour his film is able to enchant through its ferocious and dynamic direction and the story of a folk singing and dancing choir that must submit to the wishes of the regime. The subsequent main plot, a melodrama about two unsympathetic protagonists who would really like to be together, but do everything they can so that they can't be together, gets tiring faster than the omnipotent song ojojoj. (03/07/2018)

This is a visually attractive melodrama about two people fated to love each other, set during the times of Stalinism in Poland. It is beautifully shot, but the screenplay does not shed enough light on the motivations of the two main characters - especially why they both keep saying how much they love each other, and yet every time they briefly live together they can hardly stand each other, constantly on and off, which means they, therefore, can not stay together. The "adversity of fate" seems like quite a convenient excuse there. It reminded me of the old Finnish drama Something in People, where there is a peculiar romance going on over a period of several years between the two main protagonists, who were also attracted to each other in a tragic way. (02/03/2019)

I just don’t understand how a movie, which is the least comprehensible in terms of filmmaking I have seen in years, can get into the Oscar nominations for foreign language film category. Despite the fact that the Poles are now making so many much nicer movies. Of course, this film has also some qualities, that’s without saying. The idea of telling a story in the form of fragmentary scenes that are constantly torn to reconnect under the onslaught of Polish bagpipers is a virtuous and original idea. But I still had a hard time to not switch the TV off wanting to never see this film again after yet another scene with the bagpipers or the singing girl. In the end I finished the movie, I admit it’s original but… I don’t want to ever watch it again! If Cold War wins the Oscar for foreign language film, it will not win because of the movie itself, but because the Polish cinematography is currently the best one in Europe. (07/02/2019)