1
If you like both movies and photography, you should see a Terrence Malick movie.
His movie is this style:
Many of his films can't remember what they are about, only remember that the picture is really beautiful --- Backlight, Backlight, Backlight, it's just a cinematic textbook for Hour Photography.
But when you look at Polish director Paviu Pawlikowski's " Sister Ida" , you will find that Terrence Malick's image can only be regarded as a mid-level dazzle.
The gray in "Nun Ida" may be a hundred times more expressive than the backlit photography of Malick's twilight.
Lamentation, calm, and most importantly: to the point.
2
But when you look at Paviu Pawlikowski's 2018 novel "Cold War ," you feel a new kind of shock.
At the beginning of the movie, the camera slowly pans up, and a face like this appears in the black and white tone:
Then there is this big mom:
The folk artists in the frontal symmetrical composition are in perfect contrast to the palace performances with the same frontal symmetrical composition.
The camera movement is laggy, there is a lot of fixed shots, and it feels cold - because this is Poland enslaved by the Soviet Union in the context of the Cold War.
But under the cold political iron curtain, men and women still secretly and firmly breed feelings. We see a lot of close-ups that reveal the inner turmoil, which is in contrast to the stagnation of the environment:
Black and white tones or gentle gray:
It can also be a confused gray:
But most of the time it's bright and dazzling "hard":
The sophistication of the composition is unparalleled:
The use of metaphors and symbols about politics and religion abounds:
Every shot is so perfect, so refined, that every time you want to stop and take a screenshot to analyze your photography.
This is "Cold War", the most powerful black and white photography in the world, no one.
3
But in fact, this film review is not about the photography of "Cold War", because photography does not need much words, just go and see.
In fact, the photography of "Cold War" feels a little too far--too perfect and too delicate, and it actually creates an aesthetic pressure on the audience. You need to shower and change, get your energy up, open your eyes, and watch with bated breath.
What I'm talking about is beyond the image, about the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, and the fate of men and women.
"Cold War" started as a troupe story (but please don't compare it to "Youth"). Zula, a female art troupe from a rural area, secretly fell in love with Viktor, the artistic director of the troupe. Under the shackles of GC totalitarianism, they could only escape to the West on the other side of the Iron Curtain to get the freedom of love.
That night, they finally decided to escape in secret after performing in East Berlin. Viktor crossed the Soviet checkpoint, but Zula didn't make it - she didn't believe they would make it.
From here, the movie deviates from the audience's wishful expectations - lovers do not end up getting married, and what awaits the two is the terrifying isolation on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Because at the time, the world was in a cold war.
Afterwards, the audience would follow them to and fro on both sides of the Iron Curtain, to no end. Zula and Viktor's status also began to reverse - she became a popular actor in socialist Poland, and he became a jazz pianist in a French bar.
The two who can't forget their love finally meet in the free world, but things are not, people are not. Zula, who escaped the Iron Curtain, became an exotic landscape, even a plaything, for the Western bourgeois intellectual class.
That's why Zula yells at the depressed Viktor: " I got fucked by him six times in one night! "
The "he" she referred to, Michel, was a popular figure in the French literary circle.
The roar strongly reflected Viktor's weakness. He is still so abjectly laughing in the French art circle. In exile, he lost his cultural roots and even lost his dignity as a man.
Culturally, he has been "castrated".
This is the real sadness: although they are free, they cannot find a harbor for their hearts. Even in the drift of cultural alienation, the love of two people can no longer fulfill their relationship.
Politics has deeply alienated their minds.
At this time, the Cold War is no longer a Cold War between the Eastern and Western camps, but a Cold War between these two lovers .
Here, is the real subtlety of "Cold War".
In China in the 1980s, as well as in Eastern Europe in recent years, "scar literature" has emerged, depicting the destruction of human nature by politics. "Cold War" belongs to this kind of theme, but it chooses a smaller and more subtle pattern - the alienation and "incompetence of love" in people's hearts under the shackles of politics, which has more power to persuade people's hearts.
For example, the film does not directly address the political persecution of Zula and Viktor, we just see their hearts become cold day by day.
The chronic erosion of the mind by politics is the most terrifying persecution.
4
The story of Cold War is based on the real life of director Pawlikowski. His parents (names are Viktor and Zula) are a pair of grudges who have been entangled on both sides of the Iron Curtain. I believe the director himself will understand the contradiction of "being able to love each other but not getting along" best.
The director fled to the free world with his parents when he was a teenager, and started his film career in London. He believed that the hypocrisy of the Western intellectual and artistic circles, as well as the cultural alienation of Eastern Europeans in Western society, would be the deepest he understood.
In fact, the director from Poland has made some movies with Western values before, all of which are silent, until he returned to his own cultural "mother" Poland and made "Sister Ida", and then he really found the creative power. break out.
So "Cold War" is no longer limited to the indictment of the suffering caused by politics,
It should have touched on the larger issue of "cultural alienation".
At the end of the film, Zula and Viktor, reunited again, have eyes full of vicissitudes, and they married themselves in a dilapidated church. This undoubtedly symbolizes their desire for a new faith
Maybe what the director really wants to say is that the entire Polish nation needs to find new beliefs and identities?
Finally, when they sat on the bench, Zula got up and said:
"Let's go over there, the scenery is better over there."
Meaningful and almost perfect ending!
Can they rebuild the emotional world and go to the other side of the soul? Is this a hint of optimism or pessimism?
have no idea.
The final outcome is what you think it should be.
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