Cold War (2018)

Director Pawel Pawlikowski gets a great deal of praise for his minimalist approach. His Cold War is very much in this vein. A brisk 85 minutes, Cold War is a series of interludes between two people as we follow them through time, meeting again and again, and connecting through their love until the very end. But in all his stark restraint I found myself wondering if he left the most important part out.

Cold War is beautiful to watch. Pawlikowski finds a true gorgeousness in his bleak, black and white cinematography. He doesn't put much for us to look at in front of his camera, but he manages to find something beautiful in each shot. There are sublime moments just looking at his leads, Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig. I could have watched the images in the film for a lot longer than 85 minutes.

Instead of telling us a narrative strung together more traditionally, he finds these little moments when the two characters cross paths. We don't see their relationship develop through constant contact but through connection and distance. I appreciated this approach in principal. There is the potential there for the absence to make the reunions explosively powerful. But again in his restraint the moments are often just quiet, perhaps more honest that way.

But for me the big missing piece was that emotion. I am not sure I ever felt the connection between Zula and Wiktor.  I'm not sure if it was the briefness of their story, or the attempt to create tension in pulling them apart constantly. There needed to be an energy, an urgency to the moments they were together and I never felt it. In fact, there were times I felt their relationship was downright disfunctional. it almost felt like they could have gone either way, towards a lasting trueness or a fleeting attraction leading to little at all.

So when the conclusion arrives, I felt very little. It is one of those pieces of art which I can appreciate as being very beautiful aesthetically but that offers me little to be passionate about.

Cold War
Starring: Tomasz Kot, Joanna Kulig
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Writers: Ewa Puszczynska, Pawel Pawlikowski