An Epic In Miniature

David Lean would have used this material to make a three and a half hour technicolour epic in the style of Dr Zhivago. That would have been a legitimate artistic choice given the vaulting ambition of the subject matter juxtaposing the romantic relationship of Zula and Wiktor and the entire history of Europe in the mid 20th century. 

In contrast, Pawel Pawlikowski covers the ground in a brisk and economical 88 minutes of crisp black and white but by the time the iconic Glenn Gould interpretation of the main theme of Bach's Goldberg Variations starts playing at around 85 minutes the tears will rise unbidden.

This is a film which brilliantly engages with history and period and how we deal with the inheritance from the past. The point of departure is Polish folk song and dance as a way of showing national resilience and pride after the horrors of the Second World War but also as the expression of a newly minted state which has to develop its own way of recognising the importance of the national story alongside the communist international. 

That tradition is subtly and then not subtly negotiated to be more appealing to audiences which are less concerned with the specifics of Silesian peasant culture in the 19th century and more interested in showing off Poland to other nations in the Eastern Bloc. 

Interpretation rather than adherence to tradition is also the spark which lights the central romantic relationship. This is then pursued through a series of specific locations and periods in which the central characters negotiate with each other whether they can find a balance which suits their needs and allows them to live together in a world in which where you are from and how you adapt to where you are now is a constantly contested issue. 

As you watch these short sections in Warsaw, in Berlin, in Split, in Paris unfold you can also see that Pawlikowski is using some of the dominant film styles of the relevant period for each section. So we have film noir for the scenes in the early 1950s, we have early Truffaut for some of the later scenes in Paris, we have some Fellini, we have Bresson towards the end and throughout there are images that could have come straight from an album of Cartier-Bresson photographs. He is in fact interpreting the period as it could have been represented in a contemporary film. 

The sections in Paris are resonant with iconic imagery. The jazz clubs, the garret rooms, the streets, the arrogance of the supposedly bohemian among the artistic elite. Paris as the great metropolitan entrepot, the melting pot in which style and innovation are paramount and in which one can supposedly submerge one's identity in that of the world in one city. Cold War shows just how hard it can be to do so in practice. This is perfectly encapsulated when Wiktor almost without recognising he is doing it moves from jazz to Chopin as he plays. His fellow musicians look at him in incomprehension. 

Cold War may be set in the middle of the last century but it speaks directly to our times in which cultural identity and its appropriation for nationalistic purposes is such a central issue and free movement of people is once again contested in a way that we had mostly hoped would never again be seen in Western Europe.

The film brings these abstract issues home to the difficulty each individual faces of being comfortable in their own skin when they wish to move beyond the boundaries of their place of birth but cannot accept the adaptations required to live elsewhere. In such circumstances, tragedy is rarely far away.

Finally, back to the Glenn Gould. It's a perfect finishing point for a scenario in which the interpretation of musical and other inheritance in ways that are, and are not, acceptable to the listener or observer is so central. Gould was famously eccentric in his approach to playing the canon, particularly Bach, sitting on an awkward stool and humming along as he played. For some, including me, the results are utterly sublime. 

The critical point about Gould though is that he manages to combine a strange kind of affectlessness in his playing with supreme emotion. How he does it is similar to Pawlikowski. He just gives it to you. He's not trying to secure a particular response. You can take it. Or you can leave it. So in fact if you connect the response is all the greater because you are connecting with his own very personal experience of playing the thing, humming and all. 

That feels a perfect encapsulation of the film too. It's the personal experience and the personal connection that matters. That either feels right. Or it doesn't. 

Zula and Wiktor would, I am sure, have agreed.