A sublime tale of undying love that keeps popping back into your life over and over again. Framed atop a desolate backdrop of sterility, socialism and strain, the one thing which remains constant is the love of our two characters cutting through it.
Like music, love is one of those things that never dies. Once sparked, its energy vibrates through time and space forever and fills the background of the universe like a lovely symphony. Compared to true love, everything else becomes temporary, things that slide in and out of your life but always saying hello and goodbye to your true love on its way in and out. Those of you who have felt this love flow through you and felt the entire energy of the universe zap out of your fingers, know the feeling and know exactly what I’m failing to describe here. Something that’s beyond language to describe but just a heartbeat away to be felt.
For the longest time, my girlfriend has been eager to show me Cold War (2020) and tonight I finally got to watch it with her. The story I saw so beautiful unravel in front of my eyes tonight, in blissful hazy tones of black and white married with the tintinnabulations of pianos, is such a story of undying love. Starting the journey from post-WWII Poland, this film follows the trail of love charted by two – Wiktor, a pianist and Zula, a singer - all over Europe. Separating and reuniting over and over again, they age, they change yet what remains as unbreakable as diamond despite strain and time is their love. Out of all the films that I’ve watched about love, there’s but a few that I can pick out that depict this strange and heavenly feeling with such life, showing all the sweet and bitter, velvety and prickly facets of it. I am now inducting Cold War into this small group of films, the marvellous and caressing grace with which this story is told makes it worthy of its place.
The choice to shoot this film in black and white was a perfect one, such a stark duality of tones is what makes crystal clear that love isn’t something that’s exactly black and white. It’s a fucking kaleidoscope. It’s one of the prettiest looking black and white films I’ve seen in recent memory, the cinematography juxtaposes whites upon more snowy whites in such a masterful way. There’s a certain sense of regimentation in all the bureaucratic landscapes, everywhere the folk-art trope performs at the behest of the socialists are framed with strict symmetry and order. Outside of this boundary, where the love of our two humble characters skips unresisted, the camera is free and as fluid as a river after a damn exploded. Throughout the film are some shots which are full of charm and depth, deceptively complicated at first glance but then I realised how easy it would be to achieve such a shot, that’s when the “wow” moment settled in. Pay attention to the shot with the two teachers in the ballroom after their first performance to get what I’m babbling on about.
Musically this film is as rich as it is visually and narratively. Polish folk music keeps the soundscape alive and aurally piquant, beautiful voices carry us through the vibrations. Much like their love, the music evolves as the film plays on, one particular song acts as a refrain, sung over many different styles of music. The folk troupe Mazurek where our couple meet being based off a real-life folk troupe, Mazowsze, gives the music an authenticity that can’t be denied.
All the actors breathed such life into their characters that I was held by each performance, especially those of Wiktor and Zula where the actors didn’t just bring their characters to life but also their love.
For days I’ve been wanting to watch a film that won’t leave me alone, staying in my thoughts like a splendid aftertaste. Well, wish granted. It’s the sort of film which affirms your love, do it properly and yours will never die, it tells you.
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