Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
This year has voyeuristically regaled audiences with two remarkable films by auteurs who culled from their memories, splayed on the screen, with respectful redolence, their lineage: “Roma” (reviewed 12/9), directed by Alfonso Cuaron (b.1961) and “Cold War”, a masterpiece directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (b.1957); reverence resonates throughout both movies; filmed in black and white, uncompromised by color, seize and steadfastly cement the viewer’s imagination, empathy to a world studied, but never experienced; contemporary geniuses, from disparate backgrounds, paint astounding portraits of their roots and those who nurtured them.
“Cold War” is an exquisite, poetic homage to Pawlikowski’s parents, commencing in 1949, in the muddy, detritus-infused, drained aftermath of Poland’s countryside; “Zula” (mesmerizing Joanna Kulig) a rarity among the myriad, in a state-sponsored folk music ensemble; “Wiktor” (dynamic, mythically handsome, Tomasz Kot) a pianist, recognizes, in a nanosecond, a future scripted solely by enthralling Zula; their passionate commitment transcends boundaries, ideologies, fractured loyalties, mercurial sentiments; a vast, elegant, profound devotion to Poland’s cultural landscape weaves its magic throughout; levitating folk dances, entrancing songs, blissfully satisfy audiences as the troupe transverses communist Poland, Germany and France. Avoiding musical chauvinism, there are flavorful injections of jazz (Billie Holliday, Sidney Bechet), and ravishing Zula, with uproarious, inebriated abandonment, gloriously seductive, reminiscent of Pina Bausch, gyrates to Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”; symbolizing unrestricted, unshackled, uninhibited freedom.
“Cold War” is a rhapsody of the times; pulverizing politics, entrapment, individuals defined by their government; at its epicenter is the reality of a decades long love; Pawlikowski, the only progeny of this tumultuous union, grasps the penultimate truth, Zula and Wiktor, more than each other, required, with all its defects, Poland and its embracement of those indigenous peoples, sculpted by its parameters.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
Peneflix
