Downbeat post-WW II tale of obsessed sad sack composer/musician, unable to let go of old flame

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2019)

Maybe there's a pattern here. This year's foreign language Oscar darlings, Roma and Cold War, appear to have so much in common. Helmed by noted directors (in the case of Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski), both films feature brilliant, haunting cinematography and memorable soundtracks (in Roma it's all ambient sound; in Cold War a mixture of great Polish folk music, orchestral pieces and jazz). But both directors have taken on the task of writing the screenplay themselves. Result: protagonists who simply don't engage.

In Roma, director Alfonso Cuarón puts Cleo, his maid heroine, up on a pedestal. Pawlikowski, in contrast, turns Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot), his hero music ethnographer turned music conservatory head in 1949 Poland, into a lovesick sad sack. When he meets Zula (Joanna Kulig), a much younger aspiring vocalist trying out for the conservatory and its touring company, sparks begin to fly between the two principals.

Pawlikowski then reveals what happens to the couple over time-years continue to pass indicated by convenient title cards with the lovebirds indubitably showing up together in different locations including Warsaw, East Berlin, Paris and somewhere in Yugoslavia.

Pawlikowski manages to keep our interest for a while with a shady antagonist: the duplicitous apparatchik Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), the administrator at the Conservatory. Under his watchful eyes (with his orders couched as mere suggestions), Wiktor is forced to include homages to Stalin in his musical program, which are presented at various cities in Europe and behind the Iron Curtain as his talented group shows off impressive musical and choreographed showpieces.

The break into the Second Act occurs when Wiktor, feeling artistically constricted by his Communist overseers, decides to defect to Paris. Similar to a scene in Casablanca, Zula fails to show up at the appointed hour as he expects her to leave Poland, and is completely crushed. Wiktor takes up playing jazz piano in Paris in smoky night clubs and later finds decent work scoring movie soundtracks.

But still the once passionate couple continue to meet over the years, making love and then leaving one another again and again. Despite his crush on Zula, there's also a wellspring of anger toward her, undoubtedly as a result of Zula's decision not to join him outside their native country.

The lovers eventually take up with other partners and in Zula's case, ends up having an affair with a friend of Wiktor in Paris. This appears to unhinge the former Conservatory head even more. At one point he's almost seen stalking his ex-lover by showing up in Yugoslavia where she's now a successful singer. The first time he's put on a train back to Paris by apparent Soviet agents but the next time he decides to go and see her, he's arrested in Poland and imprisoned. Zula, now married to Kaczmarek, uses her influence to get her old flame released.

Should we really care about Wiktor's creepy obsession? The answer is clearly no. His motives always seem to be of the one-note variety, expressing his "passion" and then undermining his desires reflexively. Sad sacks never make for good drama but Pawlikowski hits the final nail into the coffin by also turning Zula into the spitting image of her once exalted Wiktor, joining him in downbeat heaven. SUPER SPOILERS AHEAD. Should we be impressed by the joint suicide that takes place at film's end? Again the answer is a resounding "no."

There is no doubt Pawlikowski is a very talented director whose grasp of the visual medium is quite assured. In addition, he does well in presenting the oppressive atmosphere in post-war Poland. At best, Wiktor's obsession is a cautionary tale for the viewer. But Pawlikowski holds up all of this as some kind of epic tragedy. Since there is no complexity to his protagonist's motives, in the end, we film-goers (so impressed by the director's visual talents) ultimately feel let down as the air seeps out of the film's proverbial bag.