By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, March 02, 2019
The best narrative art eschews didacticism in favor of
subtlety and nuance and moral reflection. The Polish film Cold War, released last year and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is
no exception. It tells the story, inspired by Pawlikowski’s parents, of Wiktor
Warski (Tomasz Kot) and Zula Lichón (Joanna Kulig), whose amour fou burns against the backdrop of postwar Europe.
Wiktor’s passion for Zula consumes him. It haunts him for
years after he flees Poland, and drives him to return despite the certainty of
imprisonment. Zula herself is a beautiful, broken creature, the victim of
abuse, talented but insecure, flirtatious, charming, impetuous, melancholy, who
dulls her anxieties with alcohol. This passionate and doomed romance also has a
political dimension. Which is why Cold
War is not just melodrama. It’s a masterpiece.
The film is a subtle but devastating critique of the
socialist phenomenon. Wiktor and Zula meet shortly after the end of World War
II, when Wiktor is tasked with assembling a musical troupe that will perform
folk music for the nomenklatura of
the Soviet client government. With his partner, choreographer Irena Bielecka
(Agata Kulesza), Wiktor tours the countryside, recording ancient melodies. They
occupy what looks to be an old estate — a ruin of the ancien régime — where they hold auditions. Among the aspiring
dancers and singers is Zula, to whom Wiktor is immediately drawn. Irena doesn’t
share Wiktor’s enthusiasm, especially after Zula performs a song from a Soviet
movie. But she relents. Zula joins the group.
Its fate is intertwined with the conformism, corruption,
and coercion of socialism. Near the expropriated property where Wiktor, Irena,
and Zula reside is a devastated church. The art on its walls has been blotted
out. Of one painting only Jesus’s eyes remain. They gaze silently and sadly on
the human folly before them. During a tryst in the field beyond the church,
Zula confesses to Wiktor that she has been informing on him to Lech Kaczmarek
(Borys Szyc), a sort of commissar assigned to Wiktor and Irena. Kaczmarek wants
to know if Wiktor is politically correct, if he believes in God. “Do you? I
do,” Zula says. It’s a belief that can be admitted only in confidence. Wiktor,
who doesn’t answer, is furious Zula has been spying on him. But he can’t remain
angry for long. Not at her.
Kaczmarek is ambitious. After the group makes its debut,
he accompanies Wiktor and Irena to a meeting with a party official. The peasant
songs and dances are wonderful, this apparatchik says, but perhaps you could
add a few numbers on the glories of land reform and revolution. Irena blanches
at the idea. Kaczmarek interjects and says they would be happy to make the
change. Wiktor, while noticeably uncomfortable, is silent. He seems ambivalent
about the world around him, focusing instead on his artistic and emotional
life. He conducts the chorus, whose eclectic and intricate folk costumes have
been replaced by drab uniforms, in a tribute to the leader of the global
proletariat as Stalin’s glowering portrait is raised in the background. Irena
looks on in disgust from the audience before leaving her seat and exiting the
frame. She’s never seen again.
Some critics dislike the episodic mode of storytelling in
Cold War, which jumps from year to year. What they miss is that these glimpses
into an increasingly remote past illustrate the creeping, insidious nature of
socialist authoritarianism. Wiktor makes his escape to the West during a visit
to East Berlin in the early 1950s. He waits for Zula to join him — she never
arrives — before crossing alone into the French Sector. I admit I was somewhat
surprised at the ease with which Wiktor defects. Then I remembered the Berlin
Wall wasn’t built until 1961. Communist subjects lucky enough to wind up in
East Berlin before that time had a decent chance of reaching freedom. Before
the Soviets locked them in.
Wiktor ends up in Paris, where he plays piano at a jazz
club and scores films. It is here that the contrast between socialism and
democracy is most explicit. The music in Poland alternates between ethnography
and propaganda, while France is alive with the improvisations of jazz and the
boisterousness of rock ‘n’ roll. The audiences in Warsaw Pact nations are drab,
monotone, devoid of eccentricity or novelty in favor of an ethnicized socialist
ideal. In Paris, the music venues are filled with bohemians and servicemen,
with men and women of European, American, African, and Japanese descent.
However, the uncertainty and turbulence of life in democratic, capitalist
nations can be both invigorating and unsettling.
When Zula joins Wiktor — she leaves Poland legally by
marrying an Italian whom she summarily abandons — she is ill at ease. Zula is
the type of person who, prone to extremes of temperament and comportment, would
not fit fully in any community. But she is especially unhappy amid the whirl of
Paris. Pawlikowski perfectly captures the clash of Zula’s psychology with
Western freedoms in a sequence where she drunkenly dances to “Rock Around the
Clock,” swinging from partner to partner until, having climbed up on the bar to
dance alone, she falls into Wiktor’s arms. Not long afterward, she leaves him
once again.
When Wiktor learns that Zula has returned to Poland, he
visits his homeland’s embassy and expresses a desire to follow her. The
consular officer can’t believe his ears. “Why would you want to go back?” he
asks. Why, indeed. Wiktor can’t help it. He isn’t thinking straight. He is
fixated on Zula. The paradox of Cold War
is this: The imperatives of private life lead Wiktor to sneak back into a land
whose politics make private life impossible. Wiktor does not learn this lesson
until too late. But it is not too late for us.
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