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Poland's Postwar Trauma and Identity in Pawel Pawlikowski's Films: Reflections on Ida and Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2020

Audrey Kichelewski
Audrey Kichelewski*
Affiliation:
Université de Strasbourg
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Extract

Does homecoming epitomize Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski's last two films, Ida (2013) and Cold War (Zimna wojna, 2018)? Considering the box office, the awards won, and the film critics’ response, it seems that the transition from documentaries to feature films meant a turn to Polish history and identity for the director. (Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw but has spent most of his life abroad after his parents left Poland in the wake of the anti-Zionist campaign of March 1968, while he was still a teenager.) As Jerry White put it, analyzing Cold War in the light of Pawlikowski's earlier career as a British filmmaker interested in non-Polish themes, his last two films have put “Polish cinema back into global spotlight.” The question arises whether Pawlikowski's recent films gained worldwide success—in fact, they were more successful abroad than in Poland itself—because of the vision of Poland they convey, rather than a “Polish vision” of postwar European history and identity. This article examines several the major themes of Pawlikowski's films and compares them with the work of other acclaimed Polish directors, especially one of Krzysztof Kieslowski's later films, The Double Life of Véronique (La double vie de Véronique, 1991).

Type
Review Essay: Screening History
Information
Central European History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 652 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association, 2020

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References

1 White, Jerry, “Cold War Contexts: Pawlikowski in Film, Television, and European History,” Film Quarterly 72, no. 3 (Spring 2019): 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 According to a movie industry data website The Numbers, Poland's share for box office incomes amounted respectively for 2 and 25 percent of total income (https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Zimna-wojna-(Poland)-(2018)#tab=international; accessed February 27, 2020).

3 For a more systematic analysis of Kieslowski's later films in relation to European history or in comparison to Pawlikowski's films, see Graham Roberts, “Double Lives: Europe and Identity in the Later Films of Krzysztof Kieslowski,” in Why Europe? Problems of Culture and Identity, vol. 2, ed. Joe Andrew, Malcolm Crook, Diana Holmes, and Eva Kolinsky (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 37–50; and Agnieszka Morstin, “Kieślowski versus Pawlikowski. „Podwójne życie Weroniki” i „Zimna wojna” jako opowieści o świecie dwudzielnym” [Kieślowski v. Pawlikowski: The Double Life of Veronique and Cold War as Tales of a Bipartite World], Kwartalnik Filmowy 103 (2018): 79-90.

4 Frédéric Strauss, “Pawel Pawlikowski, cinéaste polonais, enfin,” Télérama, February 15, 2014 (https://www.telerama.fr/cinema/pawel-pawlikowski-cineaste-polonais-enfin,108650.php).

5 “Le cinéma n'est pas un bon endroit pour expliquer l'Histoire.” Yannick Vely, “Pawel Pawlikowski nous raconte ‘Cold War,’” Paris Match, October 24, 2018 (https://www.parismatch.com/Culture/Cinema/Pawel-Pawlikowski-nous-raconte-Cold-War-1583186).

6 Andrew Pulver, “Polish TV Broadcaster Criticised for Its Treatment of Ida Screening,” The Guardian, March 4, 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/04/tvp-polish-broadcaster-protest-ida-screening-european-film-academy-pawel-pawlikowski).

7 As analyzed in seminal books such as Gross, Jan T. and Grudzińska-Gross, Irena, Golden Harvest (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar or Grabowski, Jan, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2013)Google Scholar.

8 As stated by journalist Anna Zawadzka on her blog (http://lewica.pl/blog/zawadzka/28791; accessed March 5, 2020).

9 On this issue, see for instance Erica Lehrer, “Curating Polish Folk,” Krytyka Polityczna, November 18, 2016 (http://politicalcritique.org/long-read/2016/curating-polish-folk).

10 Interview given in Polish to the weekly supplement to the newspaper Rzeczpospolita in September 2018 (https://www.rp.pl/Oscary/306079871-Pawel-Pawlikowski-Jesli-Zimna-wojna-spodobala-sie-Nuriemu-rzeczywiscie-musi-byc-spoko.html).

11 Morstin, “Kieślowski versus Pawlikowski.”

12 Stok, Danuta, ed., Kieślowski on Kieślowski (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), 152Google Scholar.

13 Mathieu Lericq, “Le cinéma de Krzysztof Kieslowski (1966-1988): une expérience politique de l'intime,” in La double vie de Krzysztof Kieslowski, ed. Tadeusz Lubelski and Ania Szczepanska, proceedings of the conference held on April 1–2, 2016 at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne (https://hicsa.univ-paris1.fr/documents/pdf/Actes%20colloque%20Ania_2017/12_%20Lericq.pdf).

14 Beata Szyldo, then Polish prime minister (2015–2017) and vice president of Law and Justice, the ruling party in Poland since 2015, publicly claimed that the Oscar awarded to Ida was not a source of pride for the country because the film conveyed a negative image of Poland.