Paweł Pawlikowski on his artful romance Cold War

“It was always the mother of all love stories,” begins director Paweł Pawlikowski, who's animatedly discussing his latest work Cold War while sipping coffee in a swanky London hotel.

For nearly three decades, Pawlikowski has been producing a fascinating body of work, but it’s only recently that he’s earned his accolades. After a career as a documentary filmmaker throughout the 90s, he shifted to narrative fiction film in the new millenium. In 2004, he bowled over audiences with My Summer of Love, a radiant, Yorkshire-set romance featuring the talents of a young Emily Blunt. Then came The Woman in the Fifth, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas, a romantic thriller which, while failing to impress critics, was a solid addition to the director’s overall output.

In 2014, there was a change of pace. Pawlikowski made his first feature-length fiction film in Poland Ida. This black and white road movie charted the country’s tragic and turbulent history, seen through the life of a young nun who stumbles on a dark family secret via her aunt. Critically lauded, Ida went on to take home the gong for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Academy Awards – it was the start of an international shift in how audiences perceived the filmmaker.

Fast forward to May 2018, when Pawlikowski premiered his new film Cold War in competition at Cannes. By the end of the festival he had won the prize for best director, as well as garnering a slew of five-star reviews.

Like Ida before it, Cold War is a period piece. The tone is more melodramatic and accessible, but no less artful. It is a sweeping story of wounded love in exile, shot in sumptuous monochrome and set against the backdrop of post-war Europe. The story charts the tempestuous relationship between rising star Zula (Joanna Kulig) – a hot-headed singer – and her older lover Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), who's also Zula's composer. Their troubled romance takes them from Stalinist Poland to the smoky jazz clubs of Paris and Berlin.

The story is based on the relationship between Pawlikowski’s parents – he even named the lead characters after them. His mother Zula was 17 when she ran away from home to become a ballerina, showing the same independent spirit of her Cold War cypher. Pawlikowski’s father, upon whom Wiktor is loosely based, was also musical and bears some similar character traits.

“They got together when she was very young. She was 17, he was 27,” Pawlikowski explains. “They split up, got together, betrayed each other and then got together again; left the country separately and then got together again; then split up again and eventually ended up together.” It’s a story that has all the trademarks of Burton and Taylor and is no less grand a love story.

While Pawlikowski’s parents were the starting point for the story, co-written with Piotr Borkowski and the late Janusz Głowacki, the director’s style of filmmaking is a process of constant evolution.

“As you go through locations, scouting, casting, rehearsing and all that, the script changes and grows,” he says. “I like to create a situation with a beginning, middle and end, but these transitions are approximate – things to get you from A to B that I then hope to remove from the film. It’s like making a documentary where I create this world, and then I sculpt it.”

This openness of approach to filmmaking is a vital part of the director’s method. “It’s about the initial impulse and where it goes, and why you want to tell it,” he explains. “Then it becomes about the possibilities of where it will go. There have to be many possibilities for it to work – psychological, historical, metaphorical, visual and others.”

For Pawlikowski, sculpting the film happens at every stage of the process, not just in the edit suite. Like a jeweller cutting and polishing a diamond, Pawlikowski takes a “lapidary approach” in which he slowly and carefully hones the movie until he’s satisfied.

The classic look and feel of Cold War isn’t only down to the choice of shooting on black and white stock. Pawlikowski’s keen choice of camerawork, provided by Lukasz Zal to capture Kulig and Kot’s performances, informs every shot. “I always explain to my actors that it isn’t about what is going on inside, or feeling it, it’s about what the camera sees,” he says. “You have to think about what angle they look most iconic. Of course, that involves the actors, but it’s also how you bounce the light and cast shadows.”

A vital aspect of the film is the director’s choice of music, which is a signature note of the production. The story opens in the world of a travelling troupe of Polish folk singers, of which Zula is the star and Wiktor is the conductor, before shifting to the underground clubs of Paris and Berlin where jazz sings out into the early morning.

Pawlikowski spoke with Polish folk performers to select three songs that would act as leitmotifs throughout the story. “I needed songs that would work well as folk songs and as jazz motifs because the music is a vital part of the story as well as a character,” he says. “When I am writing the script, I always listen to songs to get me pumped up and it’s normally from my back-catalogue of music that I like. Because I have lived for a long time there is a lot of stuff to pick from.” These songs, which deal with the grand themes of love, provide some of the most iconic moments of the film.

As well as a glowing reception at Cannes, Cold War’s premiere in Poland also received near-universal praise. It was a pleasant relief for the director, given the frosty reception that Ida received in Poland.

So how does Pawlikowski feel about the cinematic release to the public? “I rely on a certain type of audience as to whether they get the emotion or not,” he explains. “I don’t think that people should have to get it, but the percentage of people that have responded to this film has been utterly overwhelming.” As a closing note he adds, “If you enter it with your own imagination, emotions and life experiences that is great. If you don’t, I don’t mind.”