Cold War (2018)

  Imagine if Fellini directed Trace of Stones with Roger Deakins behind the camera.  That's pretty close to what Cold War is like.

Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is working on a commission in 1949 to put together a troupe of pretty young villagers to sing and dance traditional folk music (because communism) when he meets Zula (Joanna Kulig), an ambitious young woman with a difficult past.  Over the next fifteen years, their paths merge and diverge a handful of times because, as much as they are besotted with one another, they cannot successfully cohabitate.

Yeesh.  There's a lot to unpack in this movie.  Joanna Kulig is magnetic, channeling the star power of a Brigitte Bardo or Marilyn Monroe, which is great because her character is kind of a blank slate.  The film doesn't follow Zula at all; it's more occupied with showing Wiktor's obsession with her than giving her any kind of agency.  She never escapes the fantasies of the men in her life and is irrevocably shaped by them.  Her career is dictated to her, first as a means of fulfilling her probation, then as a way to make various men happy.  To his credit, Wiktor seems like he's genuinely interested in her success but he comes very close to outright pimping her to a movie producer for a boost she's plainly apathetic towards.  Their relationship doesn't seem romantic (healthy isn't even on the table) so much as it does gross and manipulative.  AND HE'S STILL THE NICEST DUDE IN THE FILM.  The toadying propaganda stooge Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) is a grease stain made flesh.

The cinematography is gorgeous but didn't draw me in like Roma did.  It felt like I was looking at a particularly good painting, not a living landscape.

I have a pretty high tolerance for films like this but even still, I was glad it only had an hour and a half runtime.  Amazon paid a lot of money for it so if you have Prime, give it about fifteen minutes to absorb the atmosphere and then switch to something more fun.