Cold War

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. (07/03/2018)

I spent my entire youth in communist ugliness, but today I look at it like an exotic animal in a zoo somewhere. Foldyna and Kateřina Konečná probably shed a nostalgic tear at the sight of the Soviets honouring Stalin, but fortunately for the rest of us, our memories have been irretrievably swept away by time. The film thankfully doesn't get too caught up in politics and is aesthetically beautiful, I haven't seen such stunning black and white cinematography in a long time, it's a treasure these days. The love story is simple but touching, the protagonist reminded me of Léa Seydoux, charismatic and beautiful. And she sang beautifully, whether Polish folk songs, which also have something to them, or chanson. The ending is all the more crushing in its austerity, without any cheap tear-jerking. (07/15/2022)

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. (03/02/2019)

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. (02/07/2019)