He is romantic, elegant, always cautious, tough and full of worries; she is sexy, complicated, hot-headed, and a difficult woman.
Shortlisted for the main competition unit of this year's Cannes Film Festival , [Cold War] has become one of the most popular films recently;
There are nine out of ten nominations for the best foreign language film for the Oscars next year , and they are pretty stable.
After opening the scoring, the situation is even better:
Although it is still impossible to make a conclusion, it is obviously popular enough.
Director Paviu Pavlikowski is undoubtedly one of the filmmakers who can make black and white images in the world today .
The tones in his mirror and the perspective of the story he chose in the film always fit together——
The specific age and environment , expressed in black, white and gray, are more powerful than any other strong colors.
The same is true for [Cold War] ; the brightest white and the darkest black will interweave in this film to form a full picture.
You can know directly from the title, [Cold War] was naturally set during the "Cold War" in the 1950s ;
The shadows of World War II have not yet dissipated, the structure of the world has not yet formed, and the political and cultural conflicts between the East and the West are quietly intensifying.
There is no gunpowder, but the flames of war are obviously still burning underground and in the air, in an invisible place;
This wave of times is like a story between the hero and heroine: invisible threats, crumbling sovereignty, each guarding their own territory, and can't help but visit each other's restricted area.
Each of us will sing love, not to mention the love that took root, sprouted and grew up in the heyday of the revolution ;
At this moment, they are the most vulnerable and strongest ; it seems that the whole world is fighting against each other, and it seems that everything is falling to their side.
The love of two people has crossed classes, regions, political beliefs, and life pursuits-
How is this process visualized in the film ? What is the ending of all this ?
01
Love is everything in the world, I exist for you
In the cold winter of 1949, on the snow-capped Central European Plain, the coldest thing was not the weather;
The Soviet Union’s socialist camp has initially formed and is trying to reach its peak. The air is full of strictness.
The male protagonist Victor , a small prestigious musician, led the team to collect folk customs in Poland;
The unsophisticated country music is staged one after another, the violin in front of the farmhouse, the dance in the underground club, and the loud and beautiful singing of the little girl.
What is crying day and night / the black eyes you shed tears for / I can't see you anymore.
From the singing to the lyrics, they are very simple . People sing their hearts, life and loss .
The young heroine Zula is no different from the local people. She sang a song that she heard in a Russian film——
This song is about "love" .
Unlike a group of farmers who sing and dance as they please, talking and laughing around the bonfire, the song and dance troupe needs to be more formal and more regular ;
The content of the arrangement is also larger and more complex, and the form of performance is also richer.
At this time, the relationship between him and her is also like the evolution of music——
From the moment of first encounter, it was a little jerky, to more intimate and ambiguous , and gradually moved towards a formal stage.
The spread of folk songs has been maximized, and their love has also reached its peak——
Then there was a turning point like a big drink , and the downhill gradually appeared in front of my eyes.
The song and dance troupe was asked to change its repertoire, instead praising reform, peace and leadership ;
Political opportunities have squeezed the mouthpieces of the people in the countryside, and the simple form has been severely damaged.
The nature of the performance has changed, just like the relationship between the two has also undergone a qualitative change .
Oaths, revolutionary songs, reports, when the artistic life is occupied by these, the emotional world is also occupied.
Zura jumped into the river and floated, singing the songs when they met ;
This was the last song before they separated , beautiful and poignant; she was lying on the running water, like a painting.
"My life can't do without you."
Regarding the metaphors of music, more metaphors about personal pursuits and political yearnings have also been added .
One chooses to leave, one chooses to stay, one chooses to stray, and one chooses to be stable.
He played the piano at the jazz club in Paris, France, and she danced with other men to the east of the wall to the music of Katyusha.
The world is still the same, Berlin is still divided into two sides, and for their love across two completely different societies , the painful struggle has just begun.
Long-distance love is bitter.
But if you can't let go, you still have to do it.
That wall scared her, but she felt that it was not as good as his sense of gap , and if he lost his fear , it would scare her even more.
Like the turbulent situation , their date is also fundamentally unstable, and the meeting place spans almost half of Europe ;
They understand each other and secretly betray the world for each other;
Like the sparks and torn faces of the East and West societies , they exposed the most beautiful and the ugliest to each other without reservation .
She began to put on a fashionable hairstyle, put on an elegant black dress, and performed familiar songs with the popular singing voice .
In those upper-class occasions, the "black eyes that shed tears" are no longer the peasants' songs flowing from the land, but have become the petty bourgeoisie 's plaything.
She began to tolerate the new content of Victor's life -but the gap was far from dissolving.
As time progressed, the Cold War entered a more cruel phase, and the ideology began to blur and chaos;
And Zula is no longer the little Polish rural girl who sings harmony to others. Victor's life also accommodates too many new things.
The environment is getting more and more deadly, and communism and assets yell out their opinions silently, stubbornly stubborn;
The two quarreled more and more. After countless compromises , they finally had a chance to live together, but they had to face the reality that what they wanted was completely different .
"Michelle fucked me six times a night!" Easily elected as the most candid line of the film. Make love, not war.
Love and hate, after all, I still sleep too little.
02
Where is heaven, give me freedom or die
A long-lost love is very easy to rejuvenate.
When to see, the two exhausted -
There is no continuous confrontation, there is no barrier, a ill-fated and a false all day long.
Just like the cold war after the white-hot period, it was so dilapidated , everyone just wanted to find a tender home .
They are finally tired of running away and parting year after year.
While there was still a trace of residual heat, Zula took off the dark wig flashing with fluorescence, his makeup was also soaked in sweat, and the sequined skirt was pulled aside;
She said, take me away.
We don't need to look back.
The ending is embarrassing, and there is no great sadness or joy. After being pushed back and forth by the political wave and drifting with the current in an unknown direction, I don't know how many years later, they finally chose eternal freedom together .
If there is something that is absolutely lasting , it is death .
Their love spans time, countless gullies, and, after all, life and death .
"Go to the other side. The scenery there is better."
Director Pavlikowski will use this film to pay tribute to the great love of his parents in that gloomy period : his father was a military doctor, his mother left home to become a ballerina, a completely different background, displacement and politics The turmoil failed to separate them.
His own childhood experience is also unusual: he was born in Warsaw and lived a happy life at the beginning. When he was a teenager, he learned that his grandmother was a Jew and died in Auschwitz ;
At the age of fourteen, he and his mother left communist Poland for London. His mother did not tell him that this was a complete departure-thought it was just an "exotic holiday", but turned out to be a permanent exile .
A year later, he moved to Germany and finally settled in the UK in 1977, where he studied literature and philosophy at Oxford University. Later, he gave up his PhD and joined film production and came to the BBC (for him it was the film school) , Ushered in the happiest time in his life .
The long-term exile has made the director understand the meaning of maintaining feelings . In his recent works, he has returned to his roots- the barren land of Poland .
The hero and heroine in the film are not exactly like his parents, but the relationship between the characters and the outline of the story are roughly similar:
They all fought to the last moment of their lives , and they reunited again after constant separation.
When Pavlikowski talked about memories of his parents, his smile was sweet.
He was as quiet as a sad tune, and she was as hot as a beacon;
He is romantic, elegant, always cautious, tough and full of worries; she is sexy, complicated, hot-headed, and a difficult woman.
From simple Poland, to gloomy Berlin, to smoky Paris, in their love stories, those private wars were fought hotter than the Cold War, and more sentimental than folk songs.
[Cold War] is undoubtedly a gorgeous and simple work. When we traced the romanticism of this revolutionary era , we easily went back to the past.
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Text: Yorkshire Viking
The article comes from WeChat public account: movie detoxification
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