Cold War (Zimna wojna)

Director Paweł Pawlikowski

Director Paweł Pawlikowski with actress Joanna Kulig

Pawlikowski with actor Tomasz Kot, actress Joanna Kulig (left), and actor Borys Szyc (right)

COLD WAR (Zimna wojna)              B+                  

Poland  France  Great Britain  (90 mi)  2018  d:  Pawel Pawlikowski

Through this world, you will enter a world of music, song, and dance.

―Irena (Agata Kulesza)

Paweł Pawlikowski pays tribute to his parent’s generation (actually dedicating this film to his parents) in this follow-up to the Oscar-winning 2014 Top Ten List #2 Ida, returning once again to Poland with a curiously updated Dr. Zhivago-style epic romance set against the grim backdrop of Europe after WWII, shot in crisp black and white by Łukasz Żal, returning to the 4:3 aspect ratio showing a self-contained world, spanning more than a decade from the late 40’s to the early 60’s, where it’s something of a romanticized love letter to surviving through bleak times, using an atypical style, as this is at heart an unconventional song and dance musical, moving from folk songs to free-form jazz.  Props must go out to musician Marcin Masecki for all the jazz and song arrangements, and dance choreographer Stefano Terrazzino, aided by Grzegorz Cherubiński, Anna Pas, and Piotr Zalipski for the singlemost show-stopping number of the film, but the story is loosely based on the Mazowsze Dance Group, a Polish Folk Song and Dance Ensemble (The History of Mazowsze - Our history - State Folk Group of Song and ...) that still exists today.  Winner of the Best Director award at Cannes this year, the story is set in the ruins of post-war Poland, following the exploits of a brooding pianist/composer named Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a sophisticated and educated man from the city, and a wild singer/dancer called Zula (Joanna Kulig), posing as a peasant girl from the countryside, with notably different backgrounds and temperaments, yet they are fatally attracted to one another despite character differences, regional borders and political boundaries, each caught in different countries in the 1950’s, traveling through Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia, and Paris, separated by time and the unfortunate twists of fate, yet somehow they maintain what amounts to a mismatched love affair, as passionate as it is destructive.  Described as “an impossible love story in impossible times,” the real Wiktor and Zula (the actual names of the director’s parents) died in 1989 just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, having spent the previous forty years together on and off, breaking up, and then chasing after each other on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  According to the director, “They were both strong, wonderful people, but as a couple a neverending disaster.” 

At the outset, Wiktor and Irena (Agata Kulesza from IDA) are musical collaborators scouring the countrysides and recording folk songs, eventually auditioning singers and dancers for a musical group called the Mazurek ensemble (inspired by the Mazowsze troupe) that showcase the authentic sounds of Poland, declaring “No more will the art of the people go to waste!”  There is something of a playful beginning, with the free-spirited Zula pretending to be a village girl, singing a harmonized duet with another girl she just met while standing in line, but she stands out (though Irena notes the other girl has perfect pitch), with Wiktor asking her to sing a solo, but instead of performing a Polish mountain tune she surprisingly sings a Russian song, claiming she learned it from a traveling Russian movie.  While Irena detects a con job, Wiktor sees “something else,” growing fascinated by her talent and vibrant energy, asking at one point whether the rumors are true that she was jailed for killing her father, and without missing a beat she blurts out, “He mistook me for my mother, so I used a knife to show him the difference.”  With that she becomes the star of the show, and the muse of Wiktor, who falls madly in love, though as extroverted as she is, he’s equally as introverted.  It’s a match made in heaven, as Zula couldn’t be more captivating, on stage and off, and both are enthralled with what the other can offer them.   The simplistic beauty of their music begins to sound distinctively Slavic, including one of their standard folk numbers, Mazowsze 'Dwa serduszka'The Little Hearts - YouTube (2:39), which quickly transitions into a tribute to Stalin, Zimna Wojna - Dwa serduszka (Two Hearts - Mazowsze ... - YouTube (3:00), where their troupe is little more than a propaganda tool, with party hack Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) ordering Zula to spy on Wiktor, who barely cares at all, where the winds of change costs Irena her job, as she refuses to capitulate, while Wiktor grows desperately moody and distraught, feeling like a caged animal needing to escape the tightening grip of Stalinism (which banned the playing of jazz music), where they dream of escaping to the creative freedom of the West.  For Zula, on the other hand, Communism is just fine, as she’s never had it so good, traveling to all the Eastern bloc countries as the star of the show, receiving tributes and plenty of adulation.  But when they have a performance in East Berlin in 1952, Wiktor spots an opening and grabs the chance, begging Zula to come with him, where curiously enough before the Wall, you could simply walk across the checkpoint, but it is not to be.

From the dance halls in Poland and Germany to the smoke-filled jazz clubs of Paris and the L’Eclipse nightclub, Wiktor leads a small jazz combo, living in a tiny loft apartment earning a living doing what he loves best, composing music for films, taking refuge in his art, matching the mindset and perspective of the film, which almost makes him forget the “woman of his life” that he left behind, where the chill of loneliness punctuates his every note.  While there are significant time jumps, years later when Zula suddenly arrives out of nowhere to Paris, free as a bird, it reignites a whirlwind relationship, putting Zula onstage as a sultry jazz singer, singing a range of songs that adds to her risqué persona as a femme fatale star wherever she goes, even recording a record together, though she quickly gets bored in Paris, drinking heavily, beautifully expressed in what is the scene of the film which explodes with energy and passion, dancing to Bill Haley & the Comets signature song Rock Around the Clock, Cold War di Pawel Pawlikowski | CLIP 1 - YouTube (1:49), spontaneous like Anna Karina in early Godard films, literally erupting with a volcanic force, allowing her fiery disposition a sensuous release, never more liberated anywhere else in the film.  Impulsive, jealous, and oftentimes malicious, Zula falls into that Western trap of leading a life of decadence and vulgarity, developing an acidic tongue, going toe to toe with anyone that stands in her way, one of whom happens to be Jeanne Balibar in a cameo appearance, a poet of some repute who writes the words to several songs and may be sleeping with her guy, putting her on notice, aggressively giving her a put-down that’s utterly priceless before walking away, preening like a peacock, openly flirting with other men in front of Wiktor, adding to her erotic allure.  French film director Cédric Kahn also has a cameo appearance, playing a film director named Michel, with Wiktor filling him in on Zula’s rise to fame, exaggerating profusely, making her seem more exotic, like a Polish Josephine Baker, which only makes her hate him more, growing annoyed with him.  With Paris losing its luster, it makes it easier spitting him out of her life as she returns to Poland, more than a little homesick.  Of course, Wiktor aches with regret, lost in the misery of a tortured psyche, becoming a shadow of himself, but willing to follow her to the ends of the earth, which means returning to Poland, no matter the consequences, where he pays heavily for his defection, jailed and having to denounce himself for committing a crime.  Despite the overt expressiveness of the many song and dance routines, this is very much an interior film, one that probes the mind of the artist/creator, who becomes a tragic, wounded soul in pursuit of love, closing the film exactly where it began, in a small, dilapidated church on the side of the road, the place where dreams were born. 

Barbara

BARBARA                              B                     

Germany  (105 mi)  2012  d:  Christian Petzold             Official site [Germany]

No other movie about East Germany in the past 20 years (including the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”) has touched me, a former East German, as much as this one. It vividly brought back memories and emotions I had long forgotten. Everything is just so in this film, nothing exaggerated or glorified. In a convincing unhurried way, Mr Petzold has caught the spirit and atmosphere of the time. Each gesture, each tableau, from the hospital equipment and apartment furnishings to the smallest accessory, such as a folkloristic Bulgarian ashtray (something no East German household could be without) is rendered just right. Spiritually, too, the film airs the values that many East Germans feel have got lost in the more opulent, materialist world of a unified Germany. It is a fine homage to ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

—excerpt from The Economist, May 10, 2012,  New film: "Barbara": Ordinary people at extraordinary times 

Winner of the Silver Bear award for Best Director at Berlin 2012, Petzold has created perhaps his most conventional film, though initially resorting to the most uncompromising means, turning vaguely compromising only at the end, which feels somewhat disappointing.  Within this über repressive East German society on the edge of the Baltic Sea in 1980, the film stays completely under the surface for nearly the entire film, where feelings are a liability that can only get you into trouble, where everyone is under suspicion, often visited and scrutinized by the Stasi secret police, which means apartments searched and citizens subject to a thoroughly humiliating body cavity inspection, so the entire society exists as a kind of ghost world.  As seen through the eyes of a single character who is in nearly every frame of the film, Nina Hoss as the title character plays a disgraced citizen recently released from interrogation, where her crime was apparently requesting an exit visa, exiled to a small rural village where a somewhat dilapidated apartment has been assigned to her, also a job working as a physician at a local hospital, where everyone has been prepped by the Stasi for her arrival, particularly her boss André (Ronald Zehrfeld), the lead physician.  Barbara plays her role with such a subdued nature, her eyes downturned, never showing any sign of interest, completely guarded as if every living soul is spying on her.  Every neighbor and coworker has ulterior motives, as is every car parked outside, or every ring of the doorbell becomes a continuing sign of oppression, as it’s never a welcome visitor.  In terms of a character study, it’s reminiscent of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena (2011), the subjugation of an older woman living in Moscow that feels equally suffocating, though in that film it’s all about the capitalist power of economics.  Still existing in the socialist era, neighbors spy on neighbors, where even your own lover could fall under suspicion, but there is no wealth whatsoever on display, instead children are sent to forced labor camps.

This is another minimalist film told with a certain rhythm and precision, with little information obtained through dialogue, as all normal channels of communication are blocked, buried beneath the surface, so instead it’s a film about body language, brief glances, furtive looks, inquisitive eyes, or stares, where Barbara is continually viewed as someone that has something to hide.  By following her routines even as no one is watching her, she does seem to have a secret life, riding her bike much of the time, often veering into the deep of the woods, obviously trying to avoid detection.  Often she is punished by the police simply for avoiding their watchful eyes when they cannot account for her actions.  While it feels like she is literally being run into the ground by incessant hounding, she never seems to have a moment of peace.  But in this society, that’s ordinary and what’s to be expected.  What’s unusual is for someone to care as much as Barbara does about the idea of freedom, where she’s already tasted it, lived it apparently, as she’s cultured and refined, one of the few doctors that actually listens to her patients, and away from the microscopic lens of the Stasi, she actually exhibits kindness to her patients, reading regularly to one of her young female adolescents, a story about riding down the Mississippi River on a raft from Huckleberry Finn, enjoying the air of being free, out from under the reach of an abusive father that cages and beats his own son.  The symbolism for freedom is not lost on the audience.  While the picture of life behind the Iron Curtain is one of mental captivity, where the State is always trying to capture and possess what’s in your mind, citizens find ways to elude the police, to tell them little or nothing, which is another way of not telling them anything at all.  While Barbara doesn’t exactly fit in, where all around her, everyone views her as a political subversive, André is continually supportive and helpful, attempting to make her life a little less miserable, which only makes her more suspicious of his motives.  

Petzold exudes formal restraint, exercising a Kieslowski Eastern European style cinema of moral anxiety, never allowing emotions to rise to the surface, showing a bleak world where life isn’t lived so much as barely tolerated, where nobody likes living under a police state, but most get used to the inevitability that people close to them are informers, as the Stasi claimed nearly a quarter of a million informers, most all of them ordinary citizens.  When Barbara ventures outdoors on her bike, it’s a sunless world draped in layers of grey, where the wind is always howling and it feels like storms are continually approaching.  Nature itself feels untamed and hostile as humans attempt to navigate their way through the dark.  Few clues are offered here, as it’s a barebones story with little to go on, where much of it is following the doctors as they make their rounds through the hospital, yet throughout, one feels like Barbara is resisting this everpresent weight on her back simply by not joining in, by adamantly refusing to go along with this repressive regime.  In a moment when she lets her guard down, she admits, “It's impossible to be happy here.”  Unlike THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006), winner of the Best Foreign Language Film that told a similar story from the point of view of a conflicted Stasi officer, this reveals the everyday rhythms of the same subjugated society through the life of an ordinary citizen.  While the film gets many of the details right and dramatically reflects a downbeat and subservient society, it doesn’t expose the behind-the-scenes operations of the Stasi that THE LIVES OF OTHERS reveals or the profoundly effective interrogation techniques used to browbeat information out of people.  Instead BARBARA creates an atmospheric recreation of a toxic cloud hanging over East Germany, a time when people were choking on the fumes of a failed political regime that resorted to terrorizing their own citizens.  The more restricted people are from obtaining freedom, the more significant it ultimately becomes in their lives.  While Barbara seems frenetically driven to escape rather than remain a rat in a cage, some may find her end game baffling, as her outlook changes from dire, life and death circumstances where she’s literally gasping on her last breath from each insufferable moment to something else altogether, something unique in the human spirit. 

One, Two, Three

ONE, TWO, THREE               B+                  

USA  (115 mi)  1961  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with—REAL SHIFTY!     — C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney)

Working relentlessly at breakneck speed, Wilder delivers a comic romp not seen since the Marx Brothers, a free for all of unparalleled mayhem, something reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ madcap screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY (1938) or the Coen Brother’s irreverent antics in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000), where the film reels off one-liners as if the screenwriters were getting paid by the joke.  The frantic pace is hilarious, as is the use of James Cagney as the corporate emblem of America, synonymous with the product Coca Cola.  What’s weaker here is the overall level of acting, much of it downright pathetic, which may actually add some level of sick cultish appeal to the film.  While many of Wilder’s films have a timeless feel about them and feel as fresh today as when they were written, this is not one of them.  Filmed almost entirely in Berlin, the city Wilder left three decades ago with the anti-Semitic rise of Nazism, this movie relentlessly exploits the politics of the Cold War, making it unfashionably out of date, more of a period piece that may suffer from a time warp.  For those who can set aside today for a glimpse into yesteryear, the experience is not much different than Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), which is the penultimate Cold War exposé.  While Wilder’s breakneck pace is more frantic and his jokes neverending, like a cheap burlesque routine, Kubrick’s vision is more icily chilling, smart and superbly rendered, well acted and brilliantly conceived, with an unforgettable finale, an ending to end all endings.  This film is simply not in that league, pitting capitalism against communism, targeting American imperialism as capitalist pigs with “Yankee Go Home” slogans referenced throughout, made at the height of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall was actually constructed during the middle of the shooting, sealing off the East Germans from the West, requiring extensive on-the-spot screenplay and set adjustments, rebuilding the Brandenburg Gate in Munich.    

Opening with the Saber Dance Sabre Dance - Aram Khachaturian - YouTube (2:25), conducted to full effect by musical director André Previn, a kickass, frenetic theme that plays throughout the movie, few films ever made match this kind of delirious non-stop energy, and most, including this one, have momentary let downs where the pace simply can’t keep up.  Cagney, C.R. MacNamara, affectionately known as Mein Führer by his wife, Arlene Francis, is the tyrannical head of Coca Cola in Berlin who dreams of being the first entrepreneur to break into the untapped markets behind the Iron Curtain.  His every move is satirized, as is the German staff efficiency, where Schlemmer (Hans Lothar), his right hand man, clicks his heels with each new command, while Fräulein Ingeborg (Liselotte Pulver), the curvaceous blond secretary sets the tone for a sex farce, exactly as Lee Meredith did as Ulla with Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS (1968).  Hilariously, Cagney’s office features a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” cuckoo clock where Uncle Sam pops out.  The entire premise of the film is Cagney barking out orders at a furious pace where underlings jump into action trying to obey his every command.  It plays like a three ring circus, as people are literally stepping over one another in choreographed pandemonium, where the dialogue driven film is a nonstop torrent of one-liners, zingers that leave one breathless after awhile.  Wilder devises an exaggerated soap opera for the theme, as the Atlanta executive in charge of Coca Cola (Howard St. John) phones MacNamara to inform him of the arrival of his 17-year old daughter in Berlin, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, asking him to look after her for a few days.  Without anyone’s knowledge, she stays for months, secretly meeting a communist boyfriend across the border, Horst Buchholz as Otto Piffl, lured by his outlandish views, calling her a “typical bourgeois parasite, and the rotten fruit of a corrupt civilization.  So naturally, I fell in love with him.”  At one point, down in the dumps, thinking his career is over, Cagney quips “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” an Edward G. Robinson line from LITTLE CAESAR (1931).  Later in the film Red Buttons has a cameo where he does a Cagney “You dirty rat” imitation in front of Cagney, as someone similarly did a George Raft imitation in front of Raft in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).   

What follows is Cagney trying to put the lid on this budding international scandal, at first getting Otto out of the way, setting up the poor guy’s arrest by the East German police, where he is tortured by being forced to listen endlessly to the bubble gum sounds of Brian Hyland - Itsy bitsy teenie weenie Yellow polka dot bikini ... YouTube (2:27).  But when Cagney quickly learns that Scarlett’s pregnant and married, he has to embark on a secret mission into the bowels of communist East Berlin to get him back, making excellent use of real locations, especially the burnt out ruins on the East German side of the Potsdamer Platz, all set to the music of Wagner’s Die Walküre shown here (under noiseinthemirror) one, two, three | Tumblr on YouTube (6:43), embellished even further when they meet Russian trade ambassadors at the Grand Hotel Potemkin, where in the smoky ruin of a burned out café, a weary dance band plays a German version of “Yes, We have No Bananas” with a few deadbeats dancing in slow motion while aged comrades sit completely undisturbed playing chess.  Smuggling Otto out of an East Berlin jail is just the beginning, as the pace slackens a bit in a battle of wits with the infuriorated Otto, who defiantly proclaims “Capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight, it shines, but it stinks.”  In a furious attempt to take the Bolshevik out of the boy and make him more presentable to his family, as his future in-laws are arriving the next day, Cagney has his work cut out for him.  Engaging the full force of the Western front to accomplish the task, Cagney sneers “That’s just what the world needs, another bouncing, baby Bolshevik.”  This is a completely cynical piece on East-West relations, so when Cagney puts his stamp of family approval and places Otto in charge of a Coca Cola plant, who then immediately vows to lead the workers in revolt, yet stands there ridiculously bare-legged, Cagney snaps at him “Put your pants on, Spartacus.” While the film is zany and clever throughout, it never rises to more than a theatrical set piece, as most of the action takes place with people standing around in a room, or running breathlessly in or out, creating an exaggerated sense of melodramatic hysteria, but interesting in the way Wilder takes a real international crisis and works it into his movie, spouting silly philosophic gems like “Look at it this way, any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and striped toothpaste can’t be all bad.”

Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator

LOVE AFFAIR, OR THE CASE OF THE MISSING SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR A-                   

Yugoslavia  (79 mi)  1967   US version (70 mi)  d:  Dušan Makavejev

Makavejev performs a dizzyingly irreverent dissection on a rapidly changing Yugoslavian society entering the modern world as seen through the love affair of an attractive young Hungarian switchboard operator Izabela (Eva Ras) and a Turkish Marxist rat exterminator Ahmed (Slobodan Aligrudic) that comprise a diverse new society.  This is a remarkably unique film, blurring the line between fact and fiction, filled with bold imagery and some unusual editing to say the least, featuring abrupt cuts of the daily routines of the budding romance, cinema vérité shots of the street life of the city, a view of the floor of the switchboard operators working in mass, constantly pestered by a persistent young telegraph operator who tries to get into every girl’s pants, newsreel footage of demonstrations and mass protests, and also clinical scientific lectures on the nature of sex mixed in with the latest techniques on criminality.  Often set to the rousing enthusiasm of fervent nationalistic music, we see Izabela walking down the streets to the sounds of the Yugoslavian national anthem, occasionally sneaking a quick peek at the camera.  Early on, though, we also see her corpse being pulled out of a deep well, where we even watch the performance of her autopsy, narrated with utter scientific methodology, complete with the latest surgical methods, each surgical tool carefully laid out on the abdomen and legs of her cold and naked body.  Ahmed uses the always alluring come-on line:  “When it comes to chasing rats, I’m your man.”  

For sexual foreplay with this young couple Izabela prefaces it with “There’s something good to watch” as they view Russian marches and military parades on Yugoslavian State-run television followed by the fall of the Romanovs and what looks like the beginning of the Vertov film ENTHUSIASM (1931), featuring the marching Soviet Army and the Soviet national anthem playing to documentary newsreel shots of masses of people plundering the churches, tearing down the crosses and removing the icons, any symbol of Christianity left in the now proudly atheistic nation, replacing them with Russian flags, also images of Mao and Lenin.  Intercut with these images are scenes of the happy couple being playful, sipping apricot brandy, having fun, watching TV, eventually getting naked and making love.  Eva Ras is especially appealing as Izabela, the picture of a happy and adoring young girlfriend, doting on him whenever she can, rarely even bothering to put her clothes back on.  He acknowledges this is his first relationship with a “modern woman.”  Sexual images are continually mixed with rousing patriotic music, including German military marches, a similar technique used later to stunning effect by Béla Tarr in WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000). 

We might hear a professor describe a history of ancient phallic cults while claiming all the great artists dealt with the subject of sex, even Rembrandt depicted sexual acts, claiming there’s nothing prudish about a painting depicting parents engaged in sex with young children playing around them and a meal cooking off to the side, which is not pornographic, but a portrait of harmonious marital bliss.  Izabela can be seen making Ahmed cherry crepes from scratch, or they’re seen eating granola and honey with their fingers, or she serenades him admiringly with a song.  To the tinkling sounds of a music box, we see old scratchy video images of a naked Adam and Eve, continually changing positions to represent mythical literary characters, presented like a ballet.  When Ahmed leaves for a protracted business assignment, things aren’t the same when he returns.  At one point, Izabela is seen staring directly into the camera yelling defiantly “I didn’t sign on to be your slave.” 

All in all, this is a remarkably different, sarcastically funny film comparing various warring styles and ideologies with sex and politics, throwing in little tidbits like “The hardest part of being a murderer is finding a way to remove the victim’s body,” where it’s hard to conceal the traces of blood, footprints, and other incriminating evidence, where in the old days it was enough to hop on a bus or train to avoid capture, but nowadays the advancement of scientific techniques allows authorities to relentlessly pursue indefinitely.  Often there is a cut to the Yugoslavian Army marching, banners waving, nationalistic songs proudly proclaiming a sunny future on the horizon, which might be followed by a lecture on the history of rats in Europe since the Medieval days.  It’s hard not to smile at the brash, audacious ambition of this film, always poking fun at the Soviets, bringing in the full measure of the promised Communist propaganda and the unfailingly sunny forecast, which of course is never fulfilled, where there’s even a rat poem printed onscreen, for those apparently who need to take a good look in the mirror.  This is radical guerrilla art from behind the Iron Curtain.