A cliché story, but it is extremely sublimated in emotion and art. The black and white films of 2018 are not only "Rome", but also "Cold War".
To make a black-and-white film nowadays, for a director over 60 years old, the color is dilute, but the emotion is restrained but strong. They often use this more primitive medium to pin their feelings for the past and nostalgia for the past.
"Cold War" is about the life-and-death relationship between a Polish musician and a rural female singer during the Cold War, under ideological opposition. There is no intersection between the two people's classes, concepts, and cultures, but a rare flame of love broke out between them. In fact, they are totally unsuitable for living together. The moving of this kind of love lies more in the sublimation of the tragedy caused by the oppression of the times, so this implies an attack on history. Visually impeccable, excellent folk songs run through and become the emotional clues of the story. The timeline spans a long time, but the narrative is very concise, using linear fragments to express the intersection of the lives of the two protagonists, and supporting roles. Characters and stories outside the main line are hardly willing to talk more, revealing a sense of boredom, which in itself is a kind of resistance to the big narrative. Although there is a lot of blank space in the fragmented narration, because the logic is simple and clear, the stories that are not express are traceable, and they are clear at a glance, reflecting a very clever narrative skill.
In the end, they crossed the ideological separation wall, and after torn apart each other for many rounds, in a strong spirit of self-sacrifice and pure love, they still came together, unable to stand together, but died together.
The film still showed the charm of white space until the last subtitle "For My Parents" appeared. In fact, that child is their child.
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