Pawlikowski's Cold War - a short review

Talented musician falls for aspiring artiste - the relationship is stormy, on-off over the years; she makes it big, he makes it big, they split up, get back together, will it last this time?

Is this La La Land? Are we in New York New York?

Director Paweł Pawlikowski retells an old story Polish-style, black and white, set in the darkest days of communism. The screenplay that Pawlikowski co-wrote with Janusz Głowacki (refer here and here) draws deeply on the experiences of exile of both men, of leaving communist Poland for the artistic world of the free West. Best known for his Oscar-winning film Ida (2013), the bulk of Pawlikowski's work was created in the UK. (I was surprised to learn that From Moscow to Pietushki with Benny Yerofeyev, made in 1990 shortly before Yerofeyev died, had been directed by Pawlikowski - Paul Pawlikowski as was).

For me, the prism of the fictional state song and dance ensemble Mazurek portrayed in the film, based on the real-life Mazowsze, has a strong family connection. Below: not a still from Cold War, but a photo taken by my father...

My father's brother, Zdzisław Dembiński, was a member of Mazowsze in those post-war years, the first violinist in the orchestra. The early scenes in Cold War, showing how the ensemble was recruited (and why) and how they were trained, and their overseas trips, were based on fact. As such, my uncle toured the world with the ensemble - as the film showed, at first only to fraternal states in the 'camp of peace' (ie the Soviet bloc), later, after the thaw that followed Stalin's death, to other countries around the world, extending People's Poland's soft power through folk music and dance across the capitalist West.

It was in 1958, when Mazowsze played at the Brussels Expo, that my father met his brother Zdzich for the first time since the Warsaw Uprising. My father (left) with Zdzich (holding violin case), the tour bus behind them.

Zdzich was arrested by the Gestapo shortly before the Uprising began, and sent to Auschwitz. The Germans noted that he was a violin player - his lucky break - and as such he was transferred to a less-notorious camp that had a prisoners' orchestra. And so he survived the war.

Later, in the 1960s, Mazowsze played London, at the Royal Festival Hall - which we went to see when I was a boy. We had all the Mazowsze records (The Polish Song and Dance Ensemble Vols. 1-4, Wujek Zdzich is seen on the cover of Vol. 2); my parents would play the records a lot, so I ended up knowing all the songs, several of which are used in the film's soundtrack. The familiarity helps.

This 1951 documentary about Mazowsze is worth watching on a number of levels; not least to see how communist propaganda made its way into every aspect of life and art. The Polish countryside, collectivised, its past idealised, its folklore harnessed to the purposes of the Socialist Fatherland.



Cold War is about the madness of love - how it drives people to commit irrational and desperate acts. It also shows the brutally callous nature of the communist system, how it exploited people's weaknesses and subsumed the individual to ideological imperatives.

Cold War won Pawlikowski a Best Director award at this year's Cannes film festival. Will it win an Oscar, as Ida did? Personally, I doubt it - the film is indeed very good, but for me I was not haunted by it as a whole although the premise is strong and a great many shots will stay with me. In particular the scene where rock'n'roll explodes into the global consciousness. Above all the atmosphere, the klimat of time and place, were brilliantly portrayed (somehow easier to achieve in black-and-white than in colour).

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