 as it's noon on a given Tuesday. And we have George Kasin to talk to us about the movie show. And in this case, the Cold War is the movie we wanna discuss and review. George, welcome to your show. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jay. So the Cold War, it's kind of a, it's not mainstream, it's clearly not mainstream. It's clearly an art film and it clearly deals with a period that the American viewer hasn't really seen very much. And you had certain connections with this movie. I mean, it connected you with things in your own life as movies often do. So can you talk about your reaction to this movie? And in the course of that discussion, can you describe this movie? So people will understand what it presents. Okay, this is a movie. The era was post World War II in Poland. And it gets into a lot of issues. They've had these two lovers, Zula and Victor, that are, he was a musical director, conductor and she was a songstress. And she comes to the school there on a biggest state, former pre-communist estate where they're teaching all these singers and dancers. And there's sort of an attraction there. When she comes, she's sort of a very feisty in some ways, woman, related to the other students. So that's where it starts. But it gets into a lot of the era of the post World War II Soviets came in. They pretty much fighting the Nazis and they took over Eastern Europe and their influence was very great. So in this movie, you see some of the Polish communist authorities coming and taking the basic art of music and singing and songs, the Polish cultural, natural, traditional cultural songs and skewing everything toward Soviet communist mentality approach. So that's overbearing in this whole thing, in this whole movie. Now, one of the things that I am sort of interested and concerned with is too much smoking. I mean, you can have smoking to show realism, right? But it's in almost every scene, both Victor and his co-director, Irena, they're smoking constantly, right? And then as the movie progresses, you have some other issues. You have a lot of alcohol, overly, too much booze, you know? And then a lot of multiple sexual partners. I mean, Zula is married to this Italian guy because she split off from Victor. That's another thing, you know, they had issues. And then she's with this other Cecil or whatever his name is. She's having sex with him five or six times in a night. While she's still in love with Victor, who's right in the next scene, he's right there in the same city. So those are my issues about- Well, let's talk about your issues. I think it's worth talking about your issues. You're not saying, George, that people in the late 40s didn't smoke. You're not saying they didn't have a lot of affairs. You're not saying that they didn't drink. Suppose I told you, and not that I have any personal experience about the period, but I knew a lot of people in that period who did smoke all the time, not necessarily in Poland, but everywhere. Appearance, yep. Appearance, right. I mean, there wasn't a moment in my house when either my mother or father wasn't smoking. Now, they didn't drink, but they sure smoked. And as for the drinking, I would say that coming down off a war in which everybody's life was threatened in Poland and then being stressed out by the communist efforts to rearrange the society for communism, that's pretty stressful. And then of course, you have drinking in Russia and Poland and vodka, what have you. Pretty common, and it was probably more than ordinary in that period of time. And finally, these are people who were in the arts. These are people who were talented. These are people who rubbed shoulders, rubbed elbows with many, many people around Europe. It's not a surprise that they were promiscuous or at least the woman. By the way, you haven't mentioned that the woman, black and white movie, black and white movie, the woman is absolutely beautiful. Yes, too. And she, just stunningly, stunningly, in a kind of old fashioned Polish way. But what I'm saying is, assume for this discussion that yes, people smoked. Yes, people were promiscuous. Yes, people drank in that period as if it was going out of style. And so are you saying that the filmmaker who was Polish is a Polish movie in Polish, black and white Polish, interesting set of specs to draw viewers. Are you saying that the filmmaker should not have done this because it would have been a magnet for young people to smoke, drink and be promiscuous? I think as I alluded to, you can have smoking. But I mean, it was like, as you said, maybe they were constantly smoking. Like when I went to visit in Greece, everybody was smoking. And then when I went to, what was right after Soviet Armenia, everybody was smoking. And in Paris, no. And in Jerusalem and Israel, no. So I mean, there's certain cultures that are really into that. But I mean, this was, I mean, the realism is one thing, but then I'm also always concerned about you project for the youth, for the present. And I mean, I've discussed before that I had formerly in a former life, I had been a social studies teacher, history teacher. So what are you projecting for the youth? So then, I mean, Zula could have had one or two drinks in that bar, but she was like, she must have four or five, right? One in succession and she was gulping her hard liquor and then she was getting a martini. So I mean, and yes, my parents both smoked and my dad at 42 had his first coronary and died at 62 after 10 heart attacks. And the reason he started smoking, he had a very stressful job with the top secret going up to Canada with that defense early warning system. He was a microwave engineer and the doctor, his doctor told him, get a pack of Chester Fields, it'll relax you. So then he came down with smoking and then my mother, when she died of leukemia and she had it for 10 years, her doctor said, she was a smoker. So they were both smokers. So when I was a kid, yet they were smoking all the time and I don't smoke at all. And then there was alcohol in our house too in the fifties, I mean, I was born in 47. So growing up in the fifties, there was alcohol in hard liquor. So I mean, bottom line is, and you know, the whole thing- We're not in the same place in this, George. I'll tell you why. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you why, because this was, in my view, an attempt to portray real phenomena that were taking place in that period. It was an attempt as all good movies, to transport you and bring you there and make you understand what life was like. And it opens in 1949 and 1949 in Poland. I mean, we haven't been there. So this is very helpful for us to understand the environment. At the same time, flick the channel and you will see violence, you will see vengeance, you will see hate, you will see racism, you will see all the worst indicators of the human spirit all over the dial. And my favorite part, of course, is that in connection with the violence, the movies will frequently portray the victim of the violent crime or violent activity as surviving, which we know is not really true. You get a gunshot wound, one of the time you die. But in the movies, they're bouncing around after two hours in the hospital. It's amazing how that works. And they're sending messages about violence to our young people at an enormous rate. An enormous rate. And if you look at the number of movies that do that in our cable experience today or all of our movie and network and cable experience, you will find it messaging violence to everyone all the time. And violence with impunity, violence that's somehow justified. And I object to that. So do I. I mean, as we discussed last week, that's one of my pet peeves about all the violence and then all these people, as I mentioned, that have issues, mental issues, they get anesthetized to the violence. And you've got so much violence right now in real life. I mean, kids going into schools, shooting and killing people. And just even this week, you've got so many, this is proliferating. So I really think, I totally agree with you that the violence is, and this movie did not have that much violence. I mean, you didn't see too many, there wasn't. I don't think there was any. So you never saw overt violence in this movie? No, no. What I thought was interesting is that you weren't sure with all the moves these players made, whether there was real love there. You didn't know. Might have been sex. It might have been an attraction because of their talent. He was a very talented director. He had to be 20 years older than she was. She was a kid and she was a very talented singer, dancer and beautiful. But you weren't sure that this was really love until you watched it roll out on a sort of this epical basis. And I think it was way into the 50s or the 60s where they sort of closed the movie with this self-pronounced wedding in an old broken down church, a result of the war that you realized that this was really long-term. You realized that she was really committed to him and he was really committed to her. It was understated. That's the thing. It was love understated and you didn't know, but then you found out. But then there was the whole influence of when he left Poland for France because he wanted to leave because that's when the authority started to try to input ideology into the art. And I don't think he was comfortable with that. His co-partner, business partner, Irena wasn't comfortable. She walked out of one of these things and then the Kazmarek, the guy who was arranging the whole school, he was very much sort of working with the authorities and so Victor, he got up and left and Zula was supposed to go with him and she stayed in Poland and she didn't come. She just didn't show up for whatever reason. So she's supposed to be, she's in love with him, right? But she didn't want to leave her country, right? And then eventually Victor goes to Paris, you go to Slavia, Berlin, he's a very talented musical director, arranger. And eventually he goes back to Poland and they put him in jail. So she was in love with him but then she married this Italian guy first and left Poland and went to Italy, to South Sicily. And then she ended up marrying Kazmarek and having a little boy with him and they showed the little kid Piotr. So I mean, but when I put it into my own life, these are the things when I was dating Karen Thompson in LA, right? And she once asked me, do you really love me or you only have lust for me? This is what she's asking for me. And I mean, I had feelings for her and then she left me and she married Alan Isaacman who was a very famous attorney for movie stars, right? And now she's making $300,000, she's a public defender chief in LA. So I mean, every time, I've had drama in my own relationships. So I mean, it did sort of hit home with that too. And then my ex with her issues. This is all experiences that we've all had in one way or another. And I think the filmmaker was trying to show us it's not a straight line. He's trying to show us that they didn't really know how they felt about each other until later. So they had to go through all of these remarkable twists and turns in order to confirm what they should have known at the outset. But there were steps that kept them apart. For example, her talent, and it was different than his talent. He was a straight line guy, kind of boring. And she was a wild and beautiful, a Carmen, a Carmen, you know, as in the opera. And I think that kept them apart. Also, you mentioned the fact that the communist system was infiltrating, permeating what was left of Poland after the war and changing the way the polls thought about their own folk art and folk music and folk dance. And I think that there was probably tension between the man and the woman over that. Footnote on that. And I really like your comment on it is a, I told you about Anne Appelbaum and she wrote about the way the communists corrupted government in Poland and elsewhere after the war. And they took perfectly reasonable, sensible, rational people and made them into communist stooges by various mechanisms. And we see some of that happen to the Trump administration. We see some of that happening in the right wing, the move to authoritarian governments in Europe and elsewhere right now. And I think what the filmmaker was trying to show, this movie went a couple years old, three years old, maybe. I think the filmmaker was trying to show us that there's a real bad intersection between governments that wanna change art and culture and people who would like to preserve art and culture. And there was this underlying tension in the movie, but it was also a lesson. It was a lesson about how we shouldn't let that happen here or anywhere. And I think it was very interesting to find, to see it through their eyes and live in their time. And I didn't understand exactly how the communist system was permeating their lives. I've always wondered what happens when an authoritarian government takes over. I always feel, and it's gotta be correct, that the authoritarian government will change your life. That there is no normal, it's something else. As Trump, had he taken office a second term, would have changed our lives. He would have had an effect on all of us. But what was that? You can ask, what was that? How would he change our lives? Well, the answer in part is in the movie because here's an authoritarian government changing the way they dealt with each other, changing their art. And that's one of a thousand changes that you would see when an authoritarian government moves into the room. And it's happening in Poland, Hungary and Turkey as we speak. So Russia really continues with that. But I mean, I've been reading about Poland lately, the law and justice party, all the things they're doing, they're trying to rescind the Holocaust reparations and then Orban and Hungary, he's a right winger, he's, authoritarians like to deal with authoritarians. Trump was very close with all the authoritarians in Europe. So I couldn't agree with you more that this movie was very much current events because it was showing what it was like in an authoritarian government. So then, and I read in Applebaum's articles that you suggested and she was right on target. So, I mean, these are the things that, I mean, my parents, mostly my dad dealt with, they were in Turkey and there was a change of government and his father is great, his grandfather 70% of the family were massacred and they were very wealthy and then they had to go to Europe and live in poverty. And my grandmother and my aunt and my father who luckily were away from their city and didn't get killed like everybody else. So then that was a shock, and my mother, that was a shock for them to change. So yes, and Soviet Union under the Stalinism, I mean, people were disappearing off the streets and being fed to dogs. So yes, it makes a difference when you're dealing with that kind of utilitarian government and they were dealing with that and they had to watch their peasing cues because at that table and they had the government official sitting with Irena and Victor, you know, the music director had his business partner and then one other person and they were pretty much telling them, you know, you gotta take your art and you gotta go along with our propaganda, you know? So I mean, I couldn't agree with more on that that this was realistic. I guess I put a lot of my personal issues in there because I have issues with alcoholism, you know, my ex-wife eventually wanted to come back with me but I didn't wanna go back. Well, you know, I think, you know, it's also a statement of interdependence, dependence, if you remember when he had violated some border issue in attempting to return to Poland from Paris to Poland. And that's why they arrested him and put him in jail. It was really silly, but he was determined to get back. It wasn't clear why he was going back, probably. If you look at the detail of the movie, he was going back for her. And so he crosses the border and he gets arrested. He gets an inordinately long prison sentence for that and they just throw him in the slammer for a while and she comes and they're not really together at this point, right? They've both been taking separate baths. She comes, she sees him in jail and they both realize that their thing together, their love, which is a strange combination of circumstances is really, it prevails on top of all of this. And she apparently has a twist at this point in her life to get him released. She gets him released. So it's a study in dependency, interdependent relationships where he needs her help, she provides her help. And in that transaction, if you will, then they kind of get together. And the other thing is the church scene. I was fascinated. It was so touching to me. As you get into the 60s and they came together, it was on again, off again, but they came together and they went into this bond out church and marriage. Can you talk about that? What was the symbolism there? What was the effect of it? What was the power of it? I think as you said, they realized that this was their true love, you know? And the church obviously probably during World War II had been destroyed and they're going back and having a religious ceremony to get married, you know, even though she's still married to Kazmarik, right? And then they realize, you know, that they have to commit suicide. I mean, you never saw the suicide except the pills. But it's sort of the conclusion is that, you know, this was the true love. And she realized, you know, I mean, she was the one that was pretty much drifting from that relationship. That's why he met that other woman, the poetess. But I mean, bottom line is she realized that as she's growing up, because when you're in your 20s, your late teens and 20s, you don't really know. Now I married a woman much younger than me and then dated women much younger than me. And you're in a different stage of life. So once she got to a certain age, she realized, as you said, that this was the man that she should be with. But then the circumstances weren't realistic. So they decided they're just gonna be forever together and they're gonna commit suicide. And it was a lot of, it was very powerful ending. And that you don't have to really see them dying, you know, to realize that. So yeah, you're right on target, Jay. That's pretty much what it was. Oh, the power to me now is there in this bombed-out church, they did a two-party wedding ceremony. Something like, will you take me as your wedded husband? And yes, I will. And will you take me as my wedded wife? Yes, I will. It was no priest there. And you said to yourself, gee, wow, you know what? People can do that, they can do that. It's a statement of loyalty and dependence. It's a statement of the most profound love. After a lifetime of not recognizing it, they did. And then, you know, following that, this is so interesting, this part of the movie. You know, I didn't realize, George, I didn't realize, I thought that those pills that they put on the altar were kind of a Catholic offering, you know, the body of Christ. And they were doing this kind of, you know, personal mass or something. But you made it clear to me that those pills were suicide pills, they were cyanide or something. And that was the end. It was a kind of Polish Romeo and Juliet. It was Shakespearean in the tragedy of it. They went through their whole lives, never really having the opportunity to express their affection for, you know, their lifelong affection for each other. And ultimately, it was Romeo and Juliet in the church. All these symbols playing out all at the same time, putting a cap on a tumultuous time and a tumultuous experience for both of them. And it made you be there. And religion wasn't, you know, the Soviets didn't have religion, they were against religion, you know. So here they are, they go back to the church to get married, you know, which was a choice, you know, sort of rejecting the non-religious aspect of Soviet and Polish under the Soviet, you know, influenced life. So there was a lot of, there's a lot of, as you said, a lot of subtle things going on that you have to really look through, you know, to understand this. And yeah, as you said, this is a very, this is realistic for the time. I shouldn't have inputted my own life, you know, in there and then the smoking and the too much drinking alcoholism, we'll get into that personally. One of the lesson that, one other lesson that struck me was that they were hopelessly loyal to Poland. They found, you know, it goes to the music, the art, the dance, the culture, the folk art that they brought them together in Poland. That Poland was so important for them. And it was a purity about the Polish culture and the Polish spirit, more than you would expect. And you realize that over time, that was what drew them together again, being Poles. And she was, you know, sort of the perfect Polish woman right down on the folk art, the dancing and the whole attitude. But what I thought interesting was the comparison between life in the, let's call it the artistic circles of Poland and life in Paris in the early fifties after the war, which was kind of rambunctious. A lot of that, you know, 1890s nightclub and life in Pigalle. And I thought that the movie, the movie really didn't, the filmmaker didn't like Paris. And he didn't like, and his characters didn't like Paris. And they both effectively rejected Paris. It was just too rich for them. It wasn't faithful to their Polish connection. Yeah, see, I went to school, so born in 68, you know, for the summer. So I know Paris well, I have relatives that live in Paris. And they've embraced Paris. I mean, they've had immigrants as well and they embraced, but I think that, you know, Poland had been first invaded by the Germans, the Nazis, and then by the Soviets. So they wanted to really maintain some semblance of their, you know, heritage, you know, in Poland. So that was another thing that you alluded to that was true, that they were trying to maintain their Polish identity. And obviously Victor goes back from Paris, where he was fairly successful. And but I think, you know, main reason he was Zula left, he wanted to be back with her, he was in love with her. But so that's another point, Jay, that you're making, that yes, their Polish nationality after being invaded, you know, from both sides, from German on one side, Nazis, and then the Soviets. So yeah, that's it. Yeah, they had a test, they had a test Paris. They had a, they had experience Paris. Paris was the mecca, you know, for music and dance and culture and art and all that. They had a van who enveloped themselves there for a while. But I think they both found it really wasn't for them, including her, you know, her sexual exploits, it really wasn't for her. So this is a question of testing various things in life and finding a lot of them not really, not really faithful and ultimately coming back to the basics, coming back to what they found, you know, decades before and realizing that was what they should have stuck with at the beginning. It's very tragic. And so the question I put to you is, who should go and watch this movie? What kind of person would, you know, enjoy is maybe the wrong word, because it's tragic. What kind of person should go and watch this movie? I think it would be good for a lot of the young people first, because they really, up until recently with the Trump deals, they haven't really seen what it is to live in an autocratic regime. I mean, you can hear about it, but to actually see it is another thing, that's the thing. For me, it touched to a lot of sensitive points in my life. So to me, it brought up a lot of things that sometimes I like to forget. So, you know, but it sort of brings you back to your own decisions, your own life. And I think for me, it brought me back to a lot of things, as my ex and I, the end. What about your favorite scene? What was the scene that you think about here days and weeks after having seen the movie? I liked when they met in Paris and they're walking on a street. I think it was in Paris, she was in a black dress and they sort of talk and then she, I think that was the scene when she pulls away from him and then she rushes back to him and hugs him again. It's every time, and even when she was singing and she's with her husband and the little kid and then she comes off the stage with her black wig and that was the second scene. And she goes and hugs Victor, that doesn't hug her husband and the kid, she hugs Victor. So I think that was the key point. And she, you know, when she comes off that stage and she said she wasn't feeling good and then they're in the restroom together, you know, in the bathroom and they're hugging. So I mean, that was her true love. And yet she goes and marries this Italian dude from Sicily and then she marries Casparic and has a kid. So I mean, what bottom line is, you know, those are the things that showed that she truly loved Ricker, but she didn't realize it until the end. You know, it was too late. In some ways it was too late. Yeah. Isn't that all the time? My favorite scene, now that you mentioned that, I have a lot of favorite scenes that stick in my mind over that movie, but my favorite scene is when he first interviews her. Remember, she's applying to be part of the dance troupe or the singing troupe there. He first interviews her and the woman who is his co-judge doesn't understand why she is so appealing to him. And yet he realizes at first glance, at first meeting that this woman is special and she is spreading her feistiness on him. And so you see the audience watching the movie sees this connection and you say to yourself, where is this going to go? Because it's obvious that something magical has happened between these unlikely partners. Very much my life with my ex, how I met her through a dentist and she was very much- We have to make a movie about your life, George. It was my movie about- It's coming soon. Anyway, George, thank you very much for this discussion. It is a very interesting movie and I really appreciate your view of it and your interpretation of it. Thank you, same to you. I like what your interpretations were as well. Aloha. Aloha.