Cold War (2018)
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Cold War Movie Review
Cold War is a 2018 Polish historical romance film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. It’s a solid movie that is better than his last effort, but I still found it boring and slight.
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“He mistook me for my mother
and a knife showed him the difference“
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This movie has a very weak plot. Again, the director chose to focus more on audio-visuals than on actually telling a strong story. I certainly liked the lesser focus on politics and more on romance, but the romance itself should have been better done having in mind it’s personal for him as it’s about his parents. Yes, there are some wonderful moments to be had here, but for the most part their entire relationship was rushed and not all that well done.
The movie has a major problem of being a main showcase for the music of the period and thus it becomes more like a documentary of the historical scene in Poland during the 50s and in particular its folk music scene. I liked the music and more on that later, but it took way too much screen time from the actual story and core relationship and thus I was not only unenthused, but also bored quite a lot.
Joanna Kulig is very strong in the main role and Zula is surely a memorable woman. Wiktor is much less interesting himself. Whenever the movie focused on her inner turmoil and her coming to Paris and those very well done alienation scenes, it shined. But whenever it focused on politics, excessive music etc, it failed to generate much interest from me.
Yes, the music in Cold War is so good. I mentioned that it seemed like a documentary because it genuinely did owing to its very realistic, transporting take on 1950s Poland. Being from Serbia, I recognized some songs and all were very well showcased and so well sung. Also, the diversity of different genres from folk to jazz even really was terrific. But then again, it relied so much on music, especially in the first half, that it became a boring, very slight flick.
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The cinematography is striking in its stark black-and-white photography, there is no denying that. There are a lot of shots here that are worthy of a wallpaper as they are so artistic and perfectly capturing its settings and people. But Pawlikowski continues to be a problem and his direction is not my cup of tea. This is an improvement upon his previous effort for sure, but he still needs to work more on his scripts.
Cold War is another Pawlikowski film that focuses more on audio-visuals than on actually telling a strong story. Its stark black-and-white photography is gorgeous with many shots being worthy of a wallpaper, the music is excellent and very diverse plus the film captures its setting and time period in such a remarkably detailed manner, but the romance should have been better and it relies so much on great shots and music that the story ended up being very slight.
