Hug on the promenade of time

晓雪 2021-12-27 08:01:58

Text | Zou Diyang

When it comes to the current masters in the world of cinema who are good at using black and white images, Polish director Pavel Pavlikowski must be a name that cannot be avoided. Although he has only shot two black-and-white feature films so far, he has captured a large number of fans around the world for his outstanding technical expression and humanistic qualities and enjoys a high reputation. The "Cold War", which was shortlisted for the main competition in Cannes this year, won the Best Director Award, marking another milestone in Pavel's career. From this love letter dedicated to the fathers, we can not only read the continuation of his tone characteristics, but also see the further maturity and finalization of his author's style.

The background of the story is still set in Poland. After the smoke of the Second World War, Wiktor, a piano player, ran across the country to raise funds to form a folk song and dance troupe. He gradually fell in love with Zula, who has a clear singing voice and a mysterious life experience. Fifteen years of love long-distance race. The film uses this as a coordinate to link up the six periods of time and space, allowing the audience to witness how the lovers who lived in the Cold War era, under the iron curtain of lies rampant, while tossing and turning, while carefully maintaining the innocence and vitality of the relationship.

Comparing with the stunning "Sister Ada" in previous years, we can find the smooth relationship between the two narrative time and space. The former focuses on the belief crisis and emotional trauma faced by individuals after the war. The new work brings the perspective back to the middle of the last century, focusing on the gradual fermentation process of the Cold War pattern, and discovering the deep connection between the destiny of individuals and the transition of the times. Although emotion is the focus of the whole film, the turbulence revealed in the romantic rhyme repeatedly reminds the audience of the particularity of the historical environment. When politics strictly restricts the freedom of personal action and thought, will love become a victim in the quagmire, or will it regain its vitality in the ashes?

Similar to the previous work, the director did not directly start from the outside when presenting the tide of drastic changes in the times, and directly outlined the conflicts of reality. Instead, he used microscopic little characters as footnotes to provide some kind of roundabout examination and thinking. What closely fits with it is A complete set of classic European academic creation system. Regardless of the precise control of the film length, the retro picture or the sophisticated lighting composition, all are branded with an elegant and unique aesthetic mark. The first of these is undoubtedly the visual impact released by the black and white lens. The director of photography Lukasz Zal and Pavel collaborated in "Sister Ada" earlier. The cold war landscape in Eastern Europe constructed by the two of them is saturated with minimalist tones to almost overflow. Frames of nostalgic and simple pictures, like Polish folk songs with surging emotions, carry people's long-distance and love for their homeland, and also give the film a sense of loneliness and desolation. It is no wonder that after "Cold War" appeared at the Cannes and Shanghai Film Festivals, it was dubbed "The Most Beautiful PPT Movie of the Year" by many fans and the media.

Chen Ran, if the picture is shackled by the vivid ideographic space, it breaks away from the role of linking reality, and it is not enough to transform into a high-level movie-watching experience. Corresponding to its plump image texture is the consistent and deep humanistic theme of the work. From the care for existentialism in "Sister Ada" to the multiple barriers in "Cold War" (realistic dimension: national boundaries, class flow; abstract dimension: ideology, life philosophy, creative concept), rootlessness and flow are two Common features in time and space. The sprout of love injects meaning into the journey of nothingness. It makes the film's unique black and white scenes look decadent and solemn, with a little more agile tenderness. This makes people think of "The Artist" and other films. When life is trapped in a labyrinth of frustration, love is often the dark light of salvation.

Compared with the oil painting-like photography and religious composition in "Sister Ada", "Cold War" has a richer mirror image, which undoubtedly reflects the complexity of the era. At the beginning of the film, the scene of the male lead Wiktor and another female musician Irena going to the countryside to collect the scenery is presented as natural and vivid as a documentary. We may be able to correspond this to the director’s childhood when he moved abroad with his parents, and the haziness of the Polish countryside. Deep memory. This kind of regional/national consciousness rooted in the creator’s past experience is internalized as a source of inspiration for writing the scenery of his homeland, and flows out through the purely poetic content of the folk song lyrics.

After the emotional sway of this kind of innocent feelings, the film quickly jumped out of personal vision and turned to the projection of the outside world, so it overflowed with a strong metaphorical color. Especially in the portrayal of the song and dance troupe's tour, the lens scheduling is often fixed, which coincides with the depressed and confused and orderly social environment in Poland after the war. Moving long shots in Yugoslavia and other places accurately captured the state of displacement of artists and lovers in Europe and their pursuit of free will. Two sets of freely switching shooting systems correspond to their locked political climate and community cultural atmosphere. It can be said that it is these proficient techniques ambushing the power of form rendering that while bringing people the ultimate sensory enjoyment, they also make the power of the film's narrative more impactful and embed multiple interpretation spaces for it.

As a particularly eye-catching movie depicting song and dance troupes, music is naturally also the highlight of the film. Unlike another black-and-white film "Midsummer", which focuses on rock music, the original soundtrack is more like a background melody that echoes the political arena in addition to emphasizing emotion in the film. The birth and touring of the song and dance troupe, and the forcible elimination of the rustic and natural attributes of folk creations, are an excellent projection of this kind of propaganda path. Just like the huge portrait of Stalin on the stage, it can be seamlessly connected to the depiction of the cultural troupe scene in "Fang Hua", and "Cold War" has also been aptly described as "the Polish version of "Fang Hua" by many domestic media. The use of similar symbols not only fully restores the turmoil of that era, but also makes the tedious political discourse concise and clear through artistic expression, which can be received and perceived by people.

If, in terms of the balance between personal complex and collective memories, "Fang Hua" inevitably has the suspicion of avoiding the most important things and beautifying the trauma of history, then "Cold War" has handled it more intricately. In the film, there is a plot in which Zula informs the government of Wiktor's whereabouts. The pressure of the high-handed rule on the close relationship is self-evident at this moment, and the air is filled with an unusually solemn sense of crisis. But when the former breaks the concealment and causes the lover to leave in anger, the following scene melts the decisiveness of reason in an unexpected, extremely beautiful and dreamy interpretation, and reinjects temperature into the cold image. Obviously the director has no intention to avoid the conflict between romance and reality, so that the beautiful halo is stretched and enlarged under the lens, but the emotions of the two are hidden everywhere in the picture, leaving it like a green vine crawling out of the bricks. Grow up and down. It can be seen that Pavel's free control of the atmosphere is indeed a master level.

When the film premiered in Cannes, many media speculated on the origin of the protagonist in the film. It wasn't until the end that we typed a line "For My Parents" that we were able to understand the opportunity of the director's creation. In fact, it is through the private and lyrical way of "paying homage to the fathers" that the medium of looking back at history can operate, inviting viewers to enter the period of totalitarian manipulation of the fragmented sensibility, and witnessing how individual emotions are born and tested in the cold zone, and move towards Unforeseen future.

This leads to another somewhat curious proposition: Is it only under severe pressure and environment that emotions can inspire vigorous vitality? Even if we have no way of inferring the distance between the story and the prototype, we can still foresee the volatile situation of this love stumbling forward in the mist. Regarding the poignant and moving ending of the two, we might as well make this hypothesis: If history is fast-forwarded for decades, with the Polish Revolution, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, after all visible isolation, barriers, and noise disappear, can they choose to be brave?

The creator has no intention to explore too much about this level of suspicion that extends from the surface of the play. He allows the pair of miserable mandarin ducks to make instinctive choices along with the evolution of time and space under the catalysis of a series of accidental and inevitable entanglement. In Paris, the conflicting passages between the two due to differences in their lifestyles and social concepts are quite interesting. At this time, the "Cold War" has penetrated from reality into the emotions, indicating a more crushing burden than political laws. Under the vast and faint sea level, all firm oaths have become weak bubbles. Since Wiktor was arrested across the border in order to return to China to find his lover, the film has fallen back to the original stable track, bringing the audience a dream-like sentimental and glorious ending. Pavel gave up on dealing with more emotionally detailed and deep frictions, but allowed it to stay parallel to the indifferent and distant world. For example, the poland ballad which was adapted into a jazz version of Nagata, paused in the chanting and passionate thoughts of classical romance. .

This may be the reason why "Cold War" is not perfect. It is exquisite, restrained, but slightly flat, and cannot withstand excessive scrutiny. Contacting Pavel's speech at the press conference, we can speculate that it was the great energy devoted to the production of pictures and sound effects in order to blend all the elements into one, making the text that should be equally mellow "thin", making the protagonist two The ups and downs of the epic of love, through the series of several scenes and fragments, finally become a condensed popular drama, but it is shallow in the inner connection between emotion and the characteristics of the times. The placement of individual fate seems to be traceable, but in fact it lacks more profound retrospection and questioning. Even if the last mirror is so shocking and infectious, it can't fill the delicate vacuum on the edge of this storm.

How to reconcile artistry and ideology in proportion must be a lifelong test that all directors must face. It is not only Pavel, Bi Gan, Refn, and countless industry wizards who strive for aesthetic breakthroughs, or disappear from time to time in Fengwo's visual information, but they have never stopped exploring the experiment of light and shadow. For modern audiences with diverse aesthetics, the judgment criteria are not all the same. At least, for movie fans who are obsessed with black and white movies, "Cold War" is destined to be a feast worthy of heart and soul. Even if the integration of image saturation and narrative needs to be perfected, we can still capture countless fascinating scenery from it, just like all the slices finally merged into a small screen, reflecting the golden afterglow of the field, and the hero and heroine support each other and jump into it. Realistic cold river.

At that moment, you understood that all the enthusiasm and emotions, after all, have existed for real, and they are definitely not rumbling hallucinations.

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Extended Reading
  • Reymundo 2022-03-27 09:01:13

    There is a feeling of the Phantom Craftsman during the Iron Curtain period. If you are in the era of peace, you can't guarantee not to complain that the two of you are really good for heaven. Why can't you love me a little more because of your situation? At first, the 88-minute film felt unfinished. I thought it could be extended to about 100 minutes, with more long rhythms. When I met, I looked back on the Polish movies I loved, which one was not neat? Thinking about those lively, refreshing and unpretentious Polonaises and folk dances, it seems that the word "resolute" is one of the dominant hereditary characteristics of Polish personality. The craftsmanship of Ada’s period is exquisite, and the style is already mature and natural at this time. The melancholy gray tone is an intuitive reflection of the character’s mood.

  • Janie 2022-03-29 09:01:06

    At first glance, it is difficult to judge whether this film regards "artists" as noble, vassal, or vulgar? Finally, think about it, maybe it's all. Until modern times, art and technology have not yet been separated; if the heroine has never put her singing voice in the image of art, then her various indignations may be explained more mellowly than love— ─The premise is that the relationship is really love. Remember what the hero said to her in Paris? "Don't worry about others, just be yourself... Ah, don't put on so much makeup!"

Cold War quotes

  • Zula: Let's go to the other side.

    [pause]

    Zula: The view will be better there.

  • Wiktor: Edith Piaf worked in a brothel and the people love her even more for it.