![]() ![]() ![]() I was constantly drawn to comparing it to La La Land, yet it is so NOT La La Land. What Pawel Pawlikowski achieves is a mood piece of exemplary, peerless really, detail. ![]() It's a love story, set against the challenges that Cold War Poland put in front of people of artistic belief where communist doctrine made creativity very difficult. She's not one to show her enjoyment in life. In particular, Joanna Kulig has a stand out performance. Lucas Zal has a great time dwelling on three particular things. Brooding, beautiful (although unconventionally so) and real. The two leads ( Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot) are magnificent. It's fairly sordid in a way (his mother was abused by her father as a child) but without anything shocking to see. More episodic than story driven but it does tell a tale about director Pawel Pawlikowski's parents' love affair set against the Cold War backdrop in his native Poland. It is, but it isn't really, narrative driven. In truth that's probably its biggest strength. It's one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in many years. But it also lends itself to incredible framing, such as when our female protagonist floats down a river gradually disappearing out of shot, and later in the movie when the chief protagonists leave a bus and walk out of frame in a composition that Henri Cartier Breson would be proud of. It suggests a time before cinemascope (16:9 etc) and only really works in period cinema of a time. ![]() It's an engaging format that draws you in. We don't see 4:3 very often these days but Wes Anderson used it to immense effect in Grand Budapest Hotel and so did Lazslo Melis in Son of Saul. Not the square format of Instagram, but close. The quality of the cinematography is quite extraordinary thanks to Lucas Zal. So stunningly so that at times you feel you are in a photographic gallery rather than a cinema. The first thing to state about this beautiful movie is that it's monochrome. ![]()
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