The Last Chord of "Cold War"

The couple sits on a bench at a crossroads. No buildings in sight, only trees and wide-open fields. They’ve just married each other in a ceremony of their own creation in an abandoned church, kneeling on the rubble-strewn ground, a line of pills on the makeshift altar in front of them. Now they sit holding hands, facing the sun, waiting for the pills to kick in. “Let’s go to the other side,” she says. “The view will be better there.” And they walk out of frame. We see only the empty bench as the wind blows through the grass.

I can’t think of a more powerful ending to a film that I’ve seen in recent years. Cold War (2018), by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, follows the tumultuous relationship of Wiktor and Zula from 1949 through 1964. He is a taciturn musician traveling across the countryside collecting old folk songs. She is a cool-eyed opportunist auditioning for a state-sponsored folk ensemble. From the moment they lay eyes on each other, their connection is unmistakable. There are very few smiles.

Pawlikowski based the relationship on that of his parents, also named Wiktor and Zula, who married, divorced, took other lovers, got together, broke off again. They eventually took their own lives. How bewildering this must have been for their son. What does an artist do with an experience like this? He couldn’t really explain something he didn’t understand. So he spent years trying to find a way into the story. Eventually, he reduced it to an essence—their connection—and found a way to tell their story through something that mattered passionately to him: music, particularly jazz.

In interviews, Pawlikowski has said he couldn’t stand the folk music he heard as a child. It was everywhere. It felt like the soundtrack to the oppressive communist atmosphere of his youth. But as an adult, he hears it differently. And that difference is what he helps us hear.

Cold War (2018), directed by Paweł Pawlikowski. Screen image photographed by Michael Quinn.

Without understanding a word of Polish, you feel the heartache behind the song Dwa serduszka ("Two Hearts") Zula sings, passed down from generation to generation like a kind of inheritance. We first hear it in the countryside, sung by a dark-eyed girl in a torn sweater as Wiktor listens wide-eyed. At the folk-ensemble audition, another dark-eyed girl has prepared it, and Zula, sensing an opening, offers to sing harmony. In Paris it becomes Zula's signature song, sung in French in smoky jazz clubs. “Look, our first child,” Wiktor says, holding up the record they’ve just made. “A bastard,” Zula says, flinging it into a fountain.

There’s no happy ending for a couple like this. This movie, like a fine piece of music, resolves. When the last chord sounds, you feel its finality. It couldn’t have ended any other way.