Set in the 1950s, a music director and a singer fall madly in love with each other.
Blaine: “Cold War” represents things Pawel Pawlikowski loves, music, photography and romance. The inspiration for “Cold War” came from Pawel’s parents because they were very much in love with each other and some times they would split up, but then come back together again. In “Cold War”, you see the characters, Zula and Wiktor, go their separate ways but then they find their way back into each others lives in a different year. These two love birds can’t stay away from each other. They’ll have a few arguments, but then they’ll make up for it and hold each other tightly. They are soul mates. And they kiss forcefully with passion.
Pawel loves creating a piece of cinema art and he will ask himself what he wants to see in a film to make it look unique. Music was a big thing for “Cold War”. “Ida” had some music and Pawel wanted there to be more music for “Cold War” because it involves two musicians and music is what brings them together. Pawel loves the music in Poland because it’s powerful to him and beautiful to listen to. When Pawel was a kid, the folk music would play everywhere.
“Cold War” is only an hour and twenty four minutes and yet so much goes on as you are watching the film. For one, through the 50s to the early 60s, you see the two main characters being in different music businesses, like being apart of a folk music choir, a jazz club and a music studio. The music in “Cold War” is soothing to listen to.
Pawel Pawlikowski had worked with Joanna Kulig before on a film called “The Woman in the Fifth”, then she had a cameo in “Ida” as a singer and when it came to “Cold War”, Pawel had Joanna in mind for one of the leads, Zula. Pawel loved hearing Joanna sing and how she had a lot of energy as she was singing and so Zula was written for Joanna. Joanna was very excited and felt honored that Pawel would write this part for her. Joanna had never played the lead before in a film, so this was huge for her. Not to mention it required acting, singing and dancing at the same time.
Lastly, the story for “Cold War” had a strong relationship. “Cold War” had so much in it and Joanna was very excited to be apart of it. Pawel showed Joanna some photos of his mother because Zula is based on her.
Joanna has sung a lot of pop songs, but for “Cold War” she had to sing differently because her character sings folk songs. Joanna spent some time with an choir to learn how they sing and use their vocals. It wasn’t difficult for Joanna to sing folk because she comes from a place that you could say represents folk. After that, Joanna would experiment with her voice some more with a Jazz vocalist so she could have a husky smokey voice for the scenes where her character is in Paris. Joanna never danced before in her life until she got involved with “Cold War”. She would spent two days a week learning how to dance from folk singers.
Pawel wanted to show Zula somewhere between late 20s to the age of 40 as the movie goes on. Joanna was in her mid 30s and Pawel needed to make her look young. He was concerned with it at first, but he knew they would figure something out. One of the tricks the makeup department did to age Joanna was the hair. Her hair would be shinny at a young age and as she gets older her hair gets darker. Of course her hair I think shines a lot in the movie.
Pawel was thinking about hiring a real musician to play Wiktor, but then he realized that wouldn’t work because a musician is good at playing music still he needed them to act. When Pawel met Tomasz Kot, he took a really good look at Tomasz and looking at him was like looking at a model because Pawel would thinking about how he would shoot this guy with the lighting and all that. Tomasz was perfect if. Tomasz felt like a better actor because of “Cold War”.
Zula and Wiktor are madly in love with each other and music is the one thing they have in common, but they are also completely different from each other. Wiktor is calm and Zula is energetic. The first time they meet, Zula is auditioning to be in a Folk choir and Wiktor is one of the two judges to see if she is worthy and he is very fond of her while hearing her sing. Zula shows a lot during her audition and she is very positive about herself. Zula shows she has what it takes. Then later you see the both of them fall in love. Zula and Wiktor can’t be together even though they want to so very much. My dad says they are star crossed lovers, which is phrase taken from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. Such pairings are often said to be doomed from the start. Like Lara and Zhivago in “Dr. Zhivago”, they are meant to be together, but they keep getting pulled apart. Partly it is their personalities, but also partly the places they live (Poland, Paris) and the events of the time (living behind the Iron Curtain in Poland) that are working against them.
When Powal wrote the script for “Cold War”, he was trying to write down how the scenes would look visually, but he and his cinematographer, Lakasz Zal, were trying to figure out how each shot was going to look until they started shooting the film. Like “Ida”, “Cold War” was shot in a square frame and in black and white, of course Pawel wanted to try something different at first and not repeat “Ida”. Pawel asked himself if “Cold War” should be in color, but then he felt that didn’t work. Finally, Pawel felt there was no other choice but black and white because it just felt right. And Poland was grayish back in the 50s so it just went with it. Pawel did want to add more to the cinematography compared to “Ida”, even though “Ida” has a ton of wonderful shots. Pawel wanted the cinematography shots to have more of a dramatic look, have more layers and to move the camera more. A lot of work went into each shot. Sometimes they would try to improve a shot compared to how it was shot the first time. They would also play with the light a lot. My dad loves the shots where the light is strong and lights up the face. There are a few shots that show a highlight on the eye pupils. There’s also one shot that starts off with two trumpet players, then goes over to Joanna Kulig as she is singing a song and the camera just circles around her, then it shows her back side and the audience watching her.
At the end of “Cold War”, Zula and Wiktor do a “Romeo and Juliet” thing. They kill themselves by taking all these pills, so they can be together forever. You don’t see them go out, you just see them looking at a view and then they walk somewhere else together and that’s it.
