"Impossible Love – How Zula and Wiktor Reflect a Divided Europe"

Visual Style and Cinematic Technique: Black & White and the Box of the Frame

Pawlikowski’s filmic choices turn style into symbolism. Cold War is shot in stark black-and-white, immediately invoking 1950s newsreels and photographs. This monochrome palette strips every scene to essential contrasts: faces, costumes, and lights stand out against shadows, so that nothing feels neutral. In this world, even a simple embrace or a glance carries moral weight, emphasizing that every element of their story is about absolutes (love vs. loss, freedom vs. captivity, black vs. white). High-contrast lighting choreographs each face: Zula’s intensity is shown in bright highlights on her features, Wiktor’s haunted determination in deep shadows under his brow. Nothing in these frames is accidental; the absence of color makes every object symbolic, from a blazing campfire to a lone streetlamp.

Equally significant is the aspect ratio: Pawlikowski chose the nearly-square Academy (4:3) frame for Cold War. Unlike a widescreen image, this boxy shape feels claustrophobic and intimate. It forces the viewer to focus on the characters and their immediate surroundings. In many shots the lovers seem “boxed in” by the frame’s edges. For example, in one sequence at a rehearsal hall the camera layers dancers and singers deeply into the scene, creating the sense they are on a cramped stage. In another, characters move toward the camera in a corridor as others bustle behind them, so the frame is filled and crowded. High-angle camera positions make concert halls and cafes look compact and surveilled. Often the backdrop itself becomes a kind of cage: doorways, mirrors, and windows are used so that Zula and Wiktor are literally framed or separated by architectural elements. The result is that the world around them feels just as enclosed and controlled as the political system does. In every composition, the environment is not neutral but part of the emotional tableau.

The editing and camera movements follow a kind of musical logic. The opening credits already set the tone: they roll slowly over a cross and flickering candles as a solemn folk vocal plays, evoking old Polish Catholic imagery. Thereafter, sequences often begin and end on a single note or chord. For instance, a scene will close on Zula singing a line of a folk tune, which then abruptly cuts to silence or a cold new setting. Many scenes are one continuous take (like Zula’s full 360° circle dance in a jazz club), giving a sense of unbroken reality for a moment. In contrast, transitions between episodes are syncopated and surprising: sound abruptly cuts, and the next scene jumps years or miles away. It is as if Pawlikowski scored the film like a jazz piece. The effect keeps us off balance (as the lovers themselves are) and highlights the unnaturalness of their situation. In short, Cold War’s look and rhythm underscore its themes: black-and-white imagery for its moral and emotional dichotomies, tight framing for confinement, and musical editing for hearts restless against a rigid world.

The Journey Across Europe;

Poland – Home and Cage. Their story both begins and ends in Poland, the land of their birth and their art. In Warsaw and the countryside, Zula and Wiktor first unite in a state-run folk ensemble, singing Slavic tunes in ornate costumes. Yet even here, their creativity is controlled by the Communist state. For example, an early sequence shows them celebrated at a concert with dazzling folk choreography — but shortly after, officials demand inserting a Stalinist verse into a love song. Poland thus embodies a paradox: it nurtures their music and love, but also imprisons them. Cinematically, Pawlikowski returns to Polish soil in the final moments as well: the film closes in the same serene farmland and village church where their romance was born. These warm rural landscapes are bittersweet, reminding us that this homeland is both the cradle of their bond and the regime that eventually drives them to despair.

East Berlin – The Way. Berlin in 1952 (before the Wall) is literally and figuratively their fault line. The city is depicted in stark winter night, its bridges and checkpoints glowing under floodlights. Here Zula and Wiktor plot their escape: the scene unfolds at a festival on the East Berlin side, but with Western lights visible across a river. In a masterful long take, we follow them as they slip backstage and head toward a border gate. The camera stays low and close as Wiktor finally walks confidently through the open gate into the West. Zula, on the other hand, freezes in indecision. Wiktor turns and looks back once — but Zula does not step forward. This moment is silent and electric: he passes through, leaving her on the East side. Berlin becomes the crucible of their destiny: one city, split by politics, cleaves them apart. By choice and chance, Wiktor has crossed to freedom while Zula remains “behind the curtain.” The scene’s realism and minimal dialogue heighten the pain, turning Berlin’s open street into a metaphor for the insurmountable divide between two people.

Yugoslavia – No Man’s Land. The story next moves to a Adriatic resort in neutral Yugoslavia, a country not beholden to either bloc. This setting feels like an in-between world – sunlit, exotic, yet oddly detached. In the film, Zula and the folk troupe perform there years later. The atmosphere is festive, but when Zula looks out into the crowd she spots Wiktor watching. The music freezes briefly on her cry of surprise. He sits in the audience, older, with glasses; she is on stage, startled. Cigarette smoke drifts as they lock eyes. This chance encounter is shot gently, with the warm sunlight creating halos around them, but emotionally it is devastating. Yugoslavia thus becomes a moment of reckoning: it is the only place where they almost truly see each other again, but it only underlines how far apart they really are. In this “middle ground” neither ideology holds sway, yet personal history cannot be escaped. The gulf between them at this seaside gala is one of disbelief and pain. In one lingering shot, Zula’s reflection shimmers in the pool water as she sing- cries to herself off-microphone — a lonely echo of her once-hopeful love. Yugoslavia offers a false reprieve, showing that even a neutral zone cannot heal their rift.

Paris – Promise and Illusion. Finally, the lovers converge in West Paris, the supposed Land of Opportunity. Paris is filmed as glamorous and lively: smoky jazz clubs, bustling jazz festivals, riverside terraces at midnight. In 1957 and again 1962 we see them there. Wiktor is now a jazz pianist and film composer; Zula — thanks to Wiktor’s influence — has followed him across the Iron Curtain. For a moment, it seems they might be free: they sip cognac in elegant lounges, dance to Western pop songs, and make tentative movie deals. But Paris proves to be their toughest trial. The city highlights their alienation. Zula is an immigrant “Eastern exotic” singing jazz-infused folk songs in cabarets for polite applause; the camera often leaves her standing alone against a wall after her performance. Meanwhile, Wiktor struggles behind his piano, eyes haunted. The very openness of Paris becomes a source of insecurity. In a telling scene, Zula outright sings a jazz-standard line, “Time doesn’t matter when you’re in love,” only to find the audience politely indifferent — it underscores that Western indulgence cannot fill their emotional void. Ultimately, Paris is depicted as a gilded cage of its own: Wiktor can escape Soviet tyranny, but now they face loneliness, gossip, and the pressure of show business. Cinematically, Pawlikowski places them in the same frame but at opposite ends: one looks outward, the other broods inward. In the end, the City of Light’s beauty only serves to illuminate how divided they truly are. Their Paris chapters show that the West’s promised freedom still comes with walls of its own, intangible barriers that love alone cannot break.

Music and Cultural Identity: Folk vs. Jazz

Music in the Cold War is a running commentary on identity and control. In the East, Polish folk music is celebrated by the state as the authentic voice of the people — but the film reveals it to be a tool of the regime. The characters repeatedly perform stirring Slavic songs (including one melody that recurs throughout), yet always under the regime’s eye. Zula’s very first audition song (ironically from a Soviet movie) is immediately followed by an upbeat ensemble routine with flashy costumes. The contrast is telling: Zula injects raw, personal passion into the tune, while the troupe later turns it into a choreographed spectacle. This duality shows how state-sanctioned “folk” is often artifice, even as Zula seeks genuine expression in it. As the film progresses, these same folk melodies are reinterpreted abroad. In Paris we hear a Polish tune rendered in jazz styling at a nightclub; in Yugoslavia, a plaintive chorus becomes a solo lament. Each transformation of the music mirrors the characters’ cultural displacement. One critic notes that a single folk melody appears five times in different guises – a powerful motif that binds East and West.

Jazz and Western popular music serve as the other side of the coin. When Wiktor gets to Paris, jazz becomes his new lingua franca. The film starts with a classic Louis Jordan tune playing in the background, setting a Western jazz mood. In nightclubs, Wiktor and Zula dance to improvised piano and bass lines, eyes bright with hope. Jazz symbolizes freedom and spontaneity — the open-ended possibility the West represents. Yet Pawlikowski never allows it to be purely triumphant. The jazz scenes are often dimly lit and dreamlike, and the protagonists frequently appear overshadowed even in the festivities (for instance, Zula often sings under a single spotlight while the crowd is shown only peripherally). In one sequence, Zula improvises a jazz song in English to declare her love, but the subtitle reveals a more desperate sentiment (“Take me for a trip”). The music underscores that although in the West they can play what they want, their souls are still not at ease.

Silence and sound design also carry meaning. The transitions between countries use abrupt audio cuts. Often a song or musical number ends and we cut to black or ambient sound for several beats. These silent gaps feel like breaths of reflection. Dialogue is sparse, so the audience relies on the score and ambient noise to feel emotions. For example, a long pause follows Zula’s final chorus on stage in Paris, then the next shot quietly resumes with a protest outside the church. These deliberate silences act like punctuation: they mark the distance between the lovers, and remind us that sometimes what isn’t said (a held gaze, an empty room) is as loud as any song.

Fragmented Narrative and the Passage of Time

Rather than a conventional linear story, Cold War is told as a collage of moments spanning fifteen years. The film jumps suddenly from one year and place to another, without showing the details of what happened in between. One scene ends on a crescendo of music, and the next scene abruptly opens years later in a new city. This montage-like structure mirrors the lovers’ dislocated lives. We never see their entire day-to-day courtship or many of their conversations; instead, we see only the peaks of joy or despair. Every reunion or separation is presented without preamble – as if fate itself took a bold cut.

The editing style emphasizes this jumpiness. Pawlikowski arranges cuts like jazz measures: one moment we listen to Zula’s last sung note, and the next beat we are somewhere else entirely. Such syncopation keeps the viewer on edge, never allowing the story to settle. At the same time, he frequently uses very long takes during key scenes, lending those moments a theatrical intensity. For example, Zula’s triumph in the Paris club is captured in a full 360° swirl around her with no cuts — making her the singular focus even as the world rotates. Rehearsals and concerts are also often one-take sequences. These continuous shots create a sense of realism and immediacy at crucial points. But then each such scene is followed by an abrupt cut to another place or year, reinforcing that even the longest bliss is suddenly severed.

Time plays a crucial role as a thematic metaphor. The film begins in 1949 and ends in 1964, and during the narrative it only hints at the years passing. Zula even sings a line about a “pendulum kill[ing] time,” which a character half-jokingly corrects — time is not something to conquer. Indeed, in their relationship time is an antagonist. The audience literally watches the characters age and change in quick flashes: Wiktor’s hair grays, Zula’s costumes go from national to modern, and each period jump makes us realize how many opportunities for comfort they have missed. By structuring the story this way, the film dramatizes that, just like the era’s politics, the lovers’ lives had no natural continuity. They must constantly start over, and every beloved moment is inevitably a prelude to separation.

Longing, Displacement, and Resignation

Underlying the Cold War is a steady current of yearning. Zula and Wiktor are haunted by a sense of exile even when they are physically in their home country or together. Each location in the film emphasizes how much they belong nowhere. In Poland, they are public figures under government scrutiny. In Paris, they become outsiders among strangers. Scenes of travel and waiting punctuate the narrative: Zula on a train platform at dawn, Wiktor gazing out of a café window, both caught between places. Cinematically, the lovers are often shot through fences, car windows, or doorways – metaphors for their trapped perspective.

Water imagery frequently mirrors their emotions. Key scenes place Zula in or near water: she leaps into a Polish river at night, stands knee-deep in a Yugoslav fountain singing, later floats serenely in a lake at dawn as if cradled by nature. Water is shown as both cleansing and enveloping. In the Berlin river scene, her face floats in darkness with stars reflected above — she looks almost at peace, lost in love’s embrace, as Wiktor watches her song. By contrast, in Yugoslavia she wades carefully through a lit pool in a gown, singing softly to herself amid opulent but empty surroundings. These moments suggest baptismal rebirth or escape, but also an aloneness (the camera isolates her from any company). In the final scene, she and Wiktor walk into a muddy pond together — finally finding unity only by disappearing into the water.

Mirrors and reflections underscore the theme of incomplete identity. Zula is seen in mirrors far more than Wiktor is: in the hotel lobby in Paris, her reflection faces another dancer, symbolizing dual lives; in a phone mirror she touches her face as if checking who she has become. Each reflection suggests another version of herself — the village girl, the stage star, the anxious refugee. Her often-repeated question (about joining Wiktor or wondering “who will I be there?”) is reflected literally in these glassy surfaces. We get the sense that Zula is always looking for herself.

By the end, both characters bear the scars of displacement. Zula has turned inward and mournful (we find her drinking to forget), and Wiktor is physically maimed (his right hand is mangled from prison work). They carry loneliness like heavy coats. Their final meeting happens with neither grand speeches nor relief – just exhaustion and tacit surrender. In a snowy dawn they hold hands and take pills together. The unspoken communication in that quiet church altar — a vow in hushed tears — completes the arc: the lovers who could not belong in life are choosing to belong in death. It is at once tragic and eerily serene.

Tragedy and Communion: The Final Metaphor

The film’s last moments bring its metaphors into full circle. After fifteen years of near-misses and painful separations, Zula and Wiktor choose one last escape together — but it is from life itself. In the empty village church, with snow falling gently, Wiktor quietly asks if they are ready. They each sip a white pill and hold hands, a silent bond through the final barrier. The cinematography wisely avoids close-ups on their faces; instead we watch their hands entwine and the camera pulls back to the bleak, beautiful horizon.

This ending carries two layers of meaning. First is resignation: Europe’s dividing walls have literally ruined their chance at love. Neither the thaw in 1960 nor a career breakthrough nor another country could reunite them. Only by “going to the other side” are they finally together. The phrase “from the other side” (which they utter) becomes literal and metaphorical. In death, they walk hand-in-hand into the fog, escaping borders and politics entirely. On another level, their final act also reads as a heartbreaking union – they find in death the equality that life denied them. In a sense, the lovers achieve what Europe failed to allow: a private peace in a world without lines.

Ultimately, the Cold War uses Zula and Wiktor’s story to make its clearest statement: Europe’s iron curtain cleaved off countless personal hopes, and even the purest love could not fully cross it. Every country in the film reflected a different prison. Communist Poland prized their talent but forbade their freedom; Western Paris invited them outward but left them stranded between identities. The only “side” they truly belong to is the one beyond history. Their impossible love, constantly deferred and finally consummated only “on the other side,” becomes the film’s emblem. It underscores how deeply ideological division can sunder even the strongest bonds, and serves as a poignant testament to an era when personal lives were the silent casualties of politics.

Written by Mateuky