A Star is Torn

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2020)

Told across various European locations over the span of 15 years, Cold War, shot in wonderful black and white, is a short feature-length film that feels like a series of connected short films. Characters don't so much as age, but are leveled by time. What we get to see has nothing on the abyss of stories lost in those gaps.
Music ties it all together. Music is everywhere, floating, impenetrable. It can mean so many things and it can mean nothing, perhaps at once. Drunks in a passing trunk sing, the flippant metaphor of insular pop rings hollow, rollicking folk survives all violence and time, Bill Haley & His Comets descend from space, political posturing does what it can to tear out the heart and too often succeeds.
On a personal level, this failed to resonate fully with me for various reasons (I... "do not love Poland..."). But here now I am too smart and have been doing this too long to fault the film for that.