2018 a great year for films about totalitarianism

Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig in a scene from Cold War. Photo / AP

2018 has been a great year for films on a very specific topic: the ways in which totalitarianism corrupts the spirit. From The Death of Stalin to The Captain to Cold War, arthouses have been filled with flicks about the evils of oppression.

The Death of Stalin took an absurdist angle with Soviet purges in the age of Stalin, highlighting how humorous (and horrifying) it is to be forced to live with the whims of one man in mind at all times. Director/co-writer Armando Iannucci, the mind behind Veep and The Thick of It, has long had fun with the burdens of bureaucracy, but never with stakes as high as mass murder. Finding the comedy in the macabre isn't easy, but there's something inherently farcical about forcing people to reshape their reality to align with the way a single lunatic sees the world.

The Captain took a more granular approach to oppression. Robert Schwentke's tale of a Nazi deserter who pretended to be a captain in order to escape the front line - and whose lies kept escalating until he ordered a mass murder in a prison camp - is a striking insight into the untruths we'll accept, and the evils we'll commit, to save ourselves.

Cold War, which follows a couple who hail from Soviet-occupied Poland over a decade and a half as fate and governments conspire to keep them apart, may be the most personal of these films. Pawel Pawlikowski's film is about the manifest ways in which totalitarianism deforms and degrades.

Cold War opens in 1949, where Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Irena (Agata Kulesza) are travelling the Polish countryside with Lech Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), a government apparatchik. The trio are searching for villagers and their songs, eager to form a troupe of singers and dancers who can export the culture of the Polish fatherland to the rest of the Soviet bloc.

Zula (Joanna Kulig) is one of the artists chosen by Wiktor to perform the traditional music they are presenting to the world.

The troupe's initial performance goes well. The apparatchik is pleased. But another bureaucrat wonders if there isn't something more that Wiktor and Irena can do for the cause.

"I think it's time to add something new to your repertoire," the functionary tells them. "About land reform, world peace and the threats to it. A strong number about the leader of the world proletariat. And we, in turn, will do everything in our power to show our gratitude."

Irena balks at the decree, saying "the rural population does not sing about land reform, peace and leaders".

Lech assures the government man they will comply. When Irena looks to Wiktor for help, he casts his eyes down.

Pawlikowski then cuts to the ensemble's next performance, which culminates in a paean to Stalin: A portrait of the man of steel rises behind the singers as they praise his name. The crowd gives the song a standing ovation. Irena, aware her dream of delivering the songs of the village to the world has been perverted walks out of the hall - and the film.

It is the first of many corruptions communist repression will unveil. Another comes shortly thereafter, as Wiktor and Zula lay in the grass together as lovers. But Zula has something to tell Wiktor: She betrays his confidences regularly to Lech. She's an informer.

This enforced devotion to the regime and betrayal of their relationship manifests itself again moments later, when she fails to defect to West Berlin with him during a trip to Germany. The state again inserts itself between them a few scenes later, when Wiktor travels to Yugoslavia to see the troupe perform: he is rousted from his theatre seat, hauled to the train station and sent back to Paris, where he has settled.

Their love endures, but the world has broken them both, driven each a bit mad. After reconnecting in Paris, Zula again flees, back to Poland. Lost without her, Wiktor gives himself up to the authorities and is imprisoned in a work camp.

When Zula visits him, she sees the final triumph of tyranny: over the body. His once-slender fingers are mangled, deformed. The digits that had nimbly danced over piano keys now stand askew from one another. The state has taken everything from him: his freedom, his talent, his love. Eventually it will take his will to live.

Cold War is almost cruelly efficient, transporting us through 15 years of love and heartbreak in less than an hour and a half.

It packs an emotional punch and is one of the best pictures of 2018, in no small part because it is such a stark reminder of the horrors of totalitarianism.