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. 

A Moon of Nickel and Ice

A MOON OF NICKEL AND ICE                           B        

Canada (110) 2017  d:  François Jacob          

Winters are long and cold in Norilsk, Russia, with an average temperature of minus 31 degrees Celsius (minus 23 degrees F) in January. Days are characterized by frost, coupled with strong and violent winds. The cold period extends for about 280 days per year, with more than 130 days of snowstorms.

—The Weather Channel

From Québécois filmmaker François Jacob, totally familiar with living in the frozen north of Canada, he takes us on a journey to an unfathomable region of the earth, so far away from civilization that it’s only approachable by airplane, located 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where you’ll find Norilsk, Siberia, the northernmost city on earth with a population of more than 100,000 residents, with an average annual temperature of 14 degrees, and the distance to Krasnoyarsk, the capital of the region, is 1,500 km (932 miles), while the distance to the North Pole – 2,400 km (1491 miles).  What makes this area notable?  It holds the world’s largest deposits of nickel and palladium, with 17% and 41% of the world production respectively, while factory and mining operations continue non-stop 24 hrs/day, with a schedule of 3 work days followed by a day off.  But the underlying story is the city history, as it was built by Gulag prison camps dating back to 1935 that lasted until Stalin’s death in 1953, though the prisons were also filled with regular criminals as well, which didn’t shut down until several years later.  All the more remarkable is that Gulag prisoners were also the architects that built the town, constructed in 1940, using cement block buildings in the style of Stalin architecture.  Without modern machinery and equipment, the brutal work was done by hand, brick by brick.  A second construction phase began in 1960 as part of the widespread USSR system of constructing buildings with pre-built panels, though they ran out of money and were never completed, but remain standing, a forgotten ghost town still part of the frozen landscape, relics from another era.  Currently, two oligarchs own the Norilsk Nickel Company, which is highly profitable, bringing in 2% of the Russian GDP, but the town is also listed among the top ten most polluted cities in the world today, annually spewing more than two million tons of pollutant gas (mainly sulphur dioxide, but also nitrogen oxides, carbon and phenols) into the atmosphere, where life expectancy is ten years less than the rest of Russia, which is already among the lowest anywhere in the world.  The risk of cancer is twice as high, including blood and skin disorders, while lung diseases are widespread, where the air quality is responsible for 37% of child deaths and 21% of adult deaths.  One could safely argue that Norilsk is the ugliest and the most inhospitable city anywhere on earth, yet ironically, on top of one of the tallest buildings is an electronic display on automatic repeat that reads “Norilsk Nickel:  A World of Opportunities!”

Resembling a science fiction landscape, the city, even today, remains a closed city (since 2001), as you need permits just to visit, with the filmmakers spending 5 years of grant writing, research, even learning the language while attempting to navigate the Russian bureaucracy, as all outsiders are brought in exclusively to work for the company.  While the place is covered in ice and snow for 8 or 9 months of the year, without a single living tree within 30 miles, so most of the time is spent indoors, including all children activities, where huge buildings allow them to enjoy typical outdoor activities like cycling and running in an indoor environment.  From December to January, there are six weeks when they are plunged into total darkness, with no sun whatsoever, causing any number of ailments, most stemming from depression, but also including insomnia, described as “the polar night syndrome.”  During the coldest periods, a convoy of 15 to 20 buses transport workers around three times a day, so if one bus breaks down, the passengers can be evacuated to another bus.  Too much time, however, spent living in confined spaces leads to claustrophobia, where the Russian antidote appears to be drinking heavily among friends, the favorite past time of most adult men.  Citizens here brag about their neighborly hospitality, claiming no child goes hungry, that they all look after one another and help in times of need, with drinking buddies claiming these are the best friends in the world, seen taking a midnight dip in the icy waters, with steam coming off their bodies as they exit.  Even in the bleakest environment, human friendship and companionship becomes paramount, as difficulties seem to unite people, showing how humans adapt and survive.  But it’s hard to escape the history of this town.  During the Stalin purges, some of the brightest minds were sent here as political prisoners, as many as 650,000, forced to work in the freezing cold under the most inhumane conditions imaginable, actually constructing the mines, factories, and buildings that still exist today, where 250,000 died prematurely from starvation and untreated sickness associated with slave labor.  Nickel ore is smelted on site at Norilsk, one of the most toxic pollutants, causing acid rain and smog, where a dark cloud constantly hovers over this city which is constantly spewing gaseous soot into the air, where even today the city is denounced by environmentalists as a major environmental disaster.  While in the West, we are free to mention the dark history and the toxic consequences of working there, but in Russia this information remains suppressed, as the Nickel company continues to recruit potential workers from former Soviet countries like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, so the advertising accentuates the financial rewards, including early retirement by age 45, but omits the hazards, though inhabitants living in Norilsk certainly understand the risks, that the company literally works you to death. 

There is some controversy among the residents of Norilsk about how to view their own history, whether to honor those that built this town and consider them heroes, or whether to remain silent about the uglier side of the Stalinist Gulags, preferring a sanitized account of history, which seems to be the government’s position, thinking it’s enough to mention what happened, but don’t dwell upon it.  Be done with it and move on.  There is a contingency that are sons and daughters of the Gulag prisoners that want to honor their ancestors, as they were committed Bolsheviks when communism was still considered a revolutionary worker’s party, where a giant statue of Lenin remains affixed to the town square.  Some are in disbelief that Russia lost so many lives in WWII to rid the world of fascism, yet it seems to be on the rise again, even in their own country, while the workers we see continue to vote a straight party line ticket, as communism represents their social values.  One of the leading advocates is highly outspoken, “Norilsk Nickel has erased its brutal history from the collective memory:  the exploitation of free labor.  They replaced the troubling slave history with myths of the Communist Youth and stories about eager newcomers.”  While once condemning Stalin, more recently Putin has embraced the former leader, including his dictatorial style, where a recent Russian poll by the Levada Center, an independent, non-governmental research organization, found Stalin to be more popular with Russians today than Putin, as after all, Stalin won the war, Stalin More Popular Than Putin, Russians Say - Newsweek.  With that strongman ideology comes a crackdown on free speech.  When a group attempted to raise a flag in honor of the town’s founders, commemorating a famous 1953 Gulag uprising, they were promptly arrested.  There is a thriving theater company that puts on dramatic performances, even in the dead of winter, claiming residents fully support them and come out, even during the worst blizzards.  What we never see are hockey players or figure skaters on ice rinks, where you’d think in this city they might thrive, but the cost of maintaining an “artificial” ice surface may seem superfluous in this ice city, where the outdoor conditions are simply too brutal.  As the film moves to questioning the ambitions of the city’s youth, almost unanimously these kids want out, as no one wants to stay here, believing it is a death trap.  Most envision careers in St. Petersburg, including a young girl who wrote her first novel at age 14, causing considerable alarm to local residents due to the adult content, believing she was too young to understand these matters. “Here it feels like living on the moon,” she says, describing life in Norilsk as living in an “endless tunnel.”  Nonetheless, she is bright and ambitious, where a film crew actually follows her as she travels to St. Petersburg and begins a new life, relieved to finally find herself in a cosmopolitan city teeming with life, with Norilsk, already a distant memory, viewed in stark contrast.