N'attendez pas trop de la fin du monde

After deducting one star for over-the-top vulgarity, much of that from protagonist Angela's TikTok alter ego Bobita; and one more star for being way too long; this left eight stars to work with, and the film earned them all. My first impression of Angela was dim, but she was just a tough, bright cookie doing her own thing - mostly driving, apparently -- in rough circumstances. Terrific acting.

Can't say how well the "movie within a movie" device worked. I understand it was to provide both contrast and context, but after awhile it became intrusive and repetitive, like prolonged scenes of Angela's gum-chewing during relentless drives, and a wholly gratuitous sequence of highway fatality crosses. The scene at the end filming Ovidiu and his family is especially sharp, with quite a few lessons hidden in there.

Not exactly sure why, but the film overall reminded me of Fellini's Nights of Cabiria ... not for any obvious reasons, but a similar tone.

The ending was abrupt but appropriate and satisfying. Closing credits are wacky, not something I often see. Major credit too goes to whomever did the English subtitles: they were spot-on, very nuanced.

Not too sure about how it makes Bucharest look, though.

Wow. I just finished watching this film and could not get enough. It is a slow burn to start off but as I watched I found myself getting pulled in. This is the story of an overworked woman, who travels from place to place capturing videos of the survivors of nearby, workplace accidents. The most compelling story awards the family a cash prize and commercial spot about workplace safety. In the end, the participants and the rigors of the process are skewered answering questions about capitalism, voyuerism, status, and the results of hardwork. The main character is an endurance champion. The writer and director brought to my mind Proust, capturing the day to day human condition in such a realistic way. I did not want this movie to end. Hopefully there's a 5 hour directors cut out there.

...and learn to stop worrying and love the bomb? Probably not, director-writer Radu Jude doesn't imply the unavoidable condition of our fate with his newest foray into social satire. It is rather an appraisal of this odd stage in history, where we've stepped a toe into the future of work and self-expression, but our day to day has cynical commercialism flowing through its veins. Given these underpinnings, why should we expect much? Jude finds a good balance in his latest work, which is seemingly crass, yet full of class (ahah, sorry), in a narrative and visual layering that flows freely and conjures a kind of complexity that's often hard to catch on film.

You should intuit this movie is something else as soon as you see its poster. Funnily enough, it's one of those things that make next no sense out of context and as soon as you get the context, it seems the most obvious choice. Add to that the almost three hour runtime, the international cast, which includes Nina Hoss and Uwe Boll (really spanning the breadth of German cinema there), and you get a sense of how Jude's new film has a specific kind of guts to it.

So what's the story? Our protagonist Angela (Ilinca Manolache) is a production assistant at a Bucharest-based film company that's about to shoot a public relation's bit for an Austrian business operating in Romania. Angela's job is your too typical sixteen hour shifter, that involves everything from shooting audition material, to delivering technical gear, to doing airport pick-ups. When she is depleted, the best she gets from her employers is a "have another Red Bull" suggestion. It's a taxing, soul-sucking, "useless job" as Jude called it, the kind of job whose real usefulness in the grand scheme of things is marginal. As an escape from this hellish drudge, Angela has created a social media character named "Bobitza", as whom, while hidden behind a face filter, she waxes lyrically as a cuss-dripping, misogynist alpha male. And to halfway contrast, halfway enhance this image of present day Angela, Jude juxtaposes scenes from Angela Goes On (1981), a communist proletarian movie about an eponymous taxi driver and her search for a partner.

So there you go, layers. For those who have seen Babardeala cu bucluc (2021), we do not find ourselves on completely foreign territory here. The End of the World is also set in and around Bucharest and it captures the same aggressiveness that's emblematic to living and, especially, driving around the Romanian capital. My main issue with it was that it took satire to the point of caricature, in a demonstrative way that detached it from reality - even from its reality. The experience in Jude's latest is more consistent, finding harmony in dissonance, even if it doesn't always make for a perfect fit.

Aside from Angela's work-related travails, she has to deal with the impending exhumation of her grandparents, as the cemetery they were buried in had illegally annexed land to its property. Now, real-estate developers had reclaimed it and, naturally, luxury condos need some air to breathe. In what is perhaps the most straight-out comedic scene in the film, Angela meets with a representative of the developer who assures her that they are the good guys, covering not only relocation costs, but also theological approval. As she exits the building, we understand in part who Bobitza is - a representation of the number one capitalist model in Romania of the 90s, Bobby Ewing of Dallas.

This perverse, exploitative capitalism is at the core of the movie, as Angela's "auditions" feature people who have suffered work-related accidents at the Austrian company - and the company mind-bendingly want to put-together a clip with one of these people promoting use of helmets and compliance to health and safety procedures. All the while, ignoring their own culpability. As Jude succinctly put it when asked about the vulgarity of Angela's alter-ego, it's all just part of the contrast between explicit and implicit vulgarity, the latter being the use of discretionary power at will behind the fake veneer of corporate civility. Which act is more vulgar, he asks of us.

While there isn't so much going on in terms of story, almost every scene is rich in context and implications. A main cause for that is that Angela defies categorization, she is a person trying to make it, cultured, yet crude, moralistic, yet immoral, she's imperfect - played perfectly by Ilinca Manolache. It really is the kind of movie you can take apart for a while, making ever changing conjectures and discovering commentary on things from historical disconnects to critical posturing. Wouldn't we all like to go for a round of boxing with our enemies, Uwe Boll style?

But what makes Jude's latest especially stand out is its defiance for traditional structure and style. The juxtaposition of two age-divergent movies, the grainy black and white present-day and the beautifully restored and coloured communist propaganda piece, the mixing of narratives between the two, the fixed, engrossing shots contrasted with the vibrant distortion of the social media clips, a fluent rhythm broken up with a multi-minute composition of memorial crosses from the side of the road, and a final forty minute shot with as much off-camera action as on-camera. It's something else, really, an originality of vision that's simply an experience to watch, regardless of how much you like it.

At the heart of the movie is also that tension between what's proper and what isn't. Or, rather, between the appearance of both. What is the difference between classical music and "manele" (a type of Romanian popular music)? Between the grand vision of life and society that is written of in mission statements and the grindy, noisy, repetitive reality of their manifestation? In a perfect world, Do Not Expect Too Much of The End of the World should do to the final movement of Beethoven's 9th what Aftersun (2022) did to Under Pressure. It should forever break it, cursing the viewer with the plight of irreversible trauma.

Like any good movie, this one will not leave you indifferent. It finds excitement in unlikely places and delivers with a kind of spastic energy that's best incapsulated by its meta-world. There is a truth to it that cannot be denied, even in its moments that feel more like performance art than "factual" observation. Sure, it's not for everyone, not only because it can be uncomfortable in terms of content, but because it embraces a kind of otherness that requires some adjustment. That's one of the things we ask of movies, isn't it?

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (2024). Radu Jude's caustic ramble about the state of mind of the Romanian public. Jude's film is intentionally messy and, seemingly, disorganized, but the filmmaker has a lot on his mind.

The main protagonist is Angela Raducani (Ilinca Manolache; quite remarkable) a production assistant on a safety video being produced locally for an Austrian client. She's required to drive around all over the area, seemingly the only P. A. on the production. She interviews accident victims who are 'auditioning' to be the spokesperson for the industrial short. Jude intersperses extended clips from a 1981 Romanian film (ANGELA MOVES ON) about a taxi driver also named Angela. Jude sets up the contrast by saying his film is in 'conversation' with the earlier one. The two Angelas meet when the P. A is doing her vetting interviews. The older Angela is played by the same actress from the earlier film (Dorina Lazar).

Jude uses various film and digital techniques (including aspect ratio) throughout. Slow motion, freeze frames and other tricks of the trade. Angela blows off steam by adopting a male alter ego - Bobita that she posts on social media, complete with cellphone camera filters. "Bobita" is an extreme misogynist in the Andrew Tate mold spouting the most vile rants imaginable. The movie is leisurely paced, but never dull. One fun side story involves Director Uwe Boll (playing himself) who is in town shooting a low budget sci-fi flick; Boll is introduced thusly: "He beats people up!"

Jude's themes coalesce, more or less, in the final hour. The great German actress Nina Hoss (TAR, PHOENIX) arrives in Bucharest playing the Austrian producer, Doris Goethe. Angela picks her up and drives her to a hotel. The next day is the shoot which Jude films as a remarkable 40 minute single take. The victim's family (including the now elderly taxi driver Angela) is placed at the scene of his unfortunate accident on a dreary, rainy afternoon. Of course, the company responsible doesn't really want to hear from the man (Ovidiu Pirsan) as much as spread their propaganda using the 'victims' as human props. As the family sit in a dank alley in a light rain, they are told what to say and do over the phone by Doris as she sits comfortably in her well apportioned hotel.

Jude is fully committed to his vision of Romania as a sad sack society. There's a mention of road so dangerous that citizens have put up crosses for those that have perished because of the government's indifference (it's a long montage). The nation is now 'free' from the Iron Curtain, but, it's leaders, including the much reviled Nicolae Ceausescu, have left deep wounds in the Romanian psyche. Being an EU member has only magnified the country's status on the lowest rung of that ladder. The two Angelas may represent two different generations, but, are their circumstance that much different? They each believe the "End of the World" is happening - and don't expect it to be a happy one.

DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD is currently streaming on Mubi and is available for rental.

I live in Romania and this is the most acurate and realistic movie I've seen in my life and I watched over 2000 movies. I truly hope that life outside of Romania has another perspectives and values but I suspect that this toxic recipe is applied in all the "modern" countries of the world.

The movie captures in a perfect way the hoax of a "modern" life, lived in a big city. Deppresion, anxiety, regrets, fake smiles, competition, survival, degeneration and destruction. The parralel drawn between the modern days presented in black and white and the communist times presented in colour mark a huge contrast between an organic way of life and this jungle we dare to call civilisation today.

A huge masterpiece and an extremely harsh and realistic account of today's "society." Anyone who is more bothered by swearing than by corruption, ignorance and obedience is by definition a modern slave. This is the true message of the movie. It's time to stop exchanging fake smiles for money and status and start being human again.