'Cold War' A Review

Cold War is a drama shot in black and white set in post-war Poland about the love affair between two musicians Wiktor(Tomasz Kot) and Zula(Joanna Kulig) whose relationship starts off as student and teacher but then grows into a bizarre and contentious years-spanning love affair. The film begins in 1949 as Wiktor and partner Irena(Agata Kulesza) roam the country side recording folk music in preparation for starting an elite music school celebrating and preserving Polish culture, of which Zula is a student. The communist party co-ops the school for propaganda purposes and the two separate beginning a decade of emotional infatuation, neglect, and destruction.

Kot and Kulig have incredible chemistry and effortless play out this complicated, compelling, and frankly lunatic relationship believably over the course of almost twenty years. Kot is the more understated, quiet, seething, alternatively miserable and elated. Kulig has the showery role, the more difficult, and she throws herself into the extremes and irrationalities with abandon and a courageous allure. The supporting cast are all pitch perfect and unilaterally lean in to individual peculiarities making the story which may seem pedestrian on paper come to life in delicious and exceedingly strange ways.

Writer/director Paweł Pawlikowski follows 2013's incredible Ida with this equally astonishing film. The luscious and stark black and white cinematography create a livid and memorizing back drop for this decades spanning romantic struggle. The brief running time and sharp, immaculate editing waste no time in propelling us forward in time and through the story dropping us into scenes and trusting the audience to infer the necessary information which, oddly, draws you even more fully into the already engaging film.

A lively, mystifying, and utterly engrossing "love" story. Reminiscent of Unbearable Lightness of Being but like actually good.

Don't Miss It.