With Ida, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski didn’t only win the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2014, he also won the status of a standard-bearing director for a very special and unmistakable type of aesthetic, one which depicts, with both sheer force and sensibility, the image of a world that has been tainted by the traumas of war and dictatorship, yet still a world in which love and interhuman relationships are simmering with life and intensity, transcending the context of their specific era. A universe that is simultaneously realistic and charged with poetry.

If Ida can be seen as a Bildungsroman of sorts centered on the figure of young Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), whose inner evolution is derailed by meeting her eccentric aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), Cold War (which brought Pawlikowski the award for Best Directing both at Cannes and the European Film Awards) proposes a new story in his trademark black-and-white aesthetic: this time, a tragic story that unfolds between two musicians from communist-era Poland, Zula and Wiktor. The inspiration for this film lies in the relationship between Pawlikowski’s own parents (which he described as “the mother of all love stories”), encompassing decades of break-ups and reconciliations across various countries, always finding a way to return to each other.

Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig give life to Wiktor and Zula’s story, whose bond surpasses all borders, starting from Poland, all the way to Germany and France, resuming with the same force in various periods, across entire decades. The remarkable performances of the two actors are equally intense, yet extremely different in terms of how they manifest: the deep calm and mysterious allure of Wiktor stands in contrast to the fiery, tempestuous and chaotic spirit of Zula. “The pendulum has killed time”, goes one of the lyrics that Zula sings in a bourgeois salon in Paris, many years after her first encounter with Wiktor. “Time doesn’t matter when you’re in love”, she is told by the song’s composer, Wiktor’s partner at the time, using a hint of irony in her tone while answering Zula’s question regarding the song’s metaphor. It’s true that neither time nor space matters for the two, even if capital-h History doesn’t pass by without leaving its marks on them. Even if their obsessive link cannot be broken by any political regime, the relations between Wiktor and Zula change massively under the influence of the places in which they rediscover each other. Surprisingly enough, the only place where they can find their inner peace is in communist-torn Poland. They run away from oppression, from restrictions, but when they finally meet again in freedom, in Paris, they must fight a completely different type of constraints, that are tied in with the prejudice and superficiality of the artistic circles in which they’re trying to make a name for themselves. In Poland, Wiktor was an established composer, and Zula was adored for her interpretation of popular folk music. In France, Wiktor is singing in a bar, and Zula must perform fashionable tunes to meet the local audience’s expectations. Poland is, paradoxically, the only place that is capable of containing both the beginning and the end of this story that Pawlikowski wanted to frame as a “beautiful disaster”, as he described it shortly after the film’s Cannes premiere.

It’s interesting to notice how the West is portrayed: Paris is rather seen as a superfluous space, a false beacon of progressiveness. What is most relevant is that Zula, in her attempt to craft a name for herself in the world of music, needs much more than her impeccable voice, the same which propelled her to fame in Poland, in order to make it. The era’s “PR” was doting on communist anecdotes, which could market her as an “exotic” artist, palatable to an audience that desired all that stood for the foreign and mysterious East. Wiktor seems to accept the conventions of the world he inhabits to a higher degree, even though possibly with a note of resignation, which leads to anew conflict with Zula, who is appalled by the fact that he’s using her past, with events such as the fact that she had to kill her own abusive father or that she once performed a dance for Stalin, in order to have a better shot at fame. If Wiktor manages to take upon himself the rhythm and oftentimes superficial norms of the artistic milieu, Zula is left feeling increasingly alienated by the Parisian decadence. Her vital, telluric force was blossoming almost exclusively in her own country, where her free spirit could manifest itself in spite of political constraints.

If for Wiktor exile seems to have quenched his instinct of insubordination, Zula bears her rebel spirit as a seal, one that doesn’t take borders or political regimes into account, nor does it account for the people that she meets, even going as far as annihilating her own survival instincts. She understands the fight for freedom at an absolute level, whether it’s the fight against a dictatorship, or if it’s a defense mechanism that counters the prejudice of a world that is opting for more subtle forms of dominance. However, no single compromise they could make in order to be together is too big enough for either of them in the end, be it in Parisian bars or in communist labor camps.

In Cold War, music plays an essential role, both in order to facilitate an understanding of the era’s historical context, from Polish folk music to the jazz music in the Parisian salons of the ‘50s and ‘60s, but also as a key to understanding how the relationship between the two protagonists is developing – Wiktor and Zula meet at an audition that is held in the founding stage of a folkloric ensemble, which, in spite of its initial mission to highlight on Polish traditional music, ends up increasingly becoming a political instrument across the years. Zula’s unconventional style should have been a barrier to being selected, but Wiktor sees something inexplicable in her and insists upon choosing her. In just a few years, Zula was primed to become a star in the fields of music and dance in 1950s Poland. In one of their international tours, the two plan on escaping to the West, but Zula doesn’t show up for the moment of their planned escape. Uncertainty, fear, untrustworthiness – the reasons remain obscure to Wiktor. Life brings them back together in Paris, both of them involved with different partners, and then back to Poland. They ceaselessly search for one another, an irrational bond that always brings them back together.

Although it was shot digitally, Cold War manages to convey the subtleness, the nuance and grainy feel of film stock, and that is the merit of Lukasz Żal, the DoP with whom Pawlikowski collaborated on Ida as well, who claims to have been inspired by the works of photographers Ralph Gibson and Helmut Newton. The most logical explanation of the film’s monochrome aesthetic is that it resonates with the bleak world of communist Poland, but another explanation given by the director is that the love story between Wiktor and Zula could only have been told by using contrasts, which explains the powerful tones of black and white. It’s true that a story such as this couldn’t have a middle-way or space for faded nuances. The usage of monochrome is in fact a potent means of amplifying the vibrant and strong experiences of the two characters. Not a single thing about them is boring, their personalities spill out in intense colors which cannot be assimilated into the washed-out décor, be it the one in Poland or the one in the West.

Seemingly a story about love in the time of dictatorship, Cold War has, in fact, the entire depth of a grande histoire, because in spite of the political and social events that intervene within the natural flow of the characters’ lives, they still manage to transform their small history into a grand one, which is fundamentally incompatible with any kind of political regime, constraint or preconception. 

Silvia Dumitrache

Theatre critic for "Observator cultural" magazine since 2008, artistic consultant for Nottara Theatre in Bucharest. She enjoys to get to know theatre from many perspective, so, alongside criticism, she also did PR for Undercloud Festival and helped direct two shows by Chris Simion. she is passionated by photography and enjoys Spanish.