O-bi, o-ba. Koniec cywilizacji

I saw this movie in Hungary a long time ago, and it immediately became one of my all-time favorites, sharing this distinguished title with Tarantino's & Spielberg's films. (I haven't been successful in locating a dubbed or captioned English version so far. English language support would greatly increase the chances of this masterpiece for being recognized across the world.)

The movie is totally grotesque, and often shocking, spiced up with the perfect amount of cynicism & delicate humor. It is the ultimate depressing negative utopia; much superior in every sense to most flicks spewed up by Hollywood in the same genre.

Stellar cinematography gives way to average narrative devoid of the visual "shock" similar films like Threads & The Day After possess. But because it lacks shock, it is a thoroughly more enjoyable experience.

Moreover, it differentiates itself by providing insight into a less discussed aspect of the post-nuclear world:

the obnoxious nature of the human condition.

O-bi O-ba, through the dystopian Illustrating of a micro-society set in an underground dungeon after a nuclear holocaust, is surprisingly perfect. The story follows a wandering hero through different landscapes that dominate each of the levels of the refuge.

It was released in 1985, the same year as another, quite similar film: Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Perhaps something was in the air over all of Europe at the time, something moving freely and without heed of the iron curtain, something grotesque enough to bend men's minds to craft images like this one:

With a budget that we can easily guess very limited, produced in a country of the communist bloc only a few years before the collapse of the USSR, the Polish director Piotr Szulkin has succeeded beyond all these constraints to create a minimalist yet coherent and very immersive science-fiction universe. The film offers a dark and hopeless atmosphere, in an oppressive environment, here people cling on a belief, of a prophecy - the Ark. Its a metaphorical bomb all around with many possible interpretations.

Alongside Soft, the protagonist, we are gradually discovering the different layers constituting the lie, this mirage which maintains order in this society. Under these conditions, a handful of men is enough to keep the control mechanisms operational, and work to ensure that they remain so once the Dome is shattered, one step ahead of its inhabitants, obsessed with their survival and their salvation. The Dome and the Ark, the Soviet grip and the mirage of the West, is only one among many interpretations that can be found inO-bi, O-ba, political, religious or emotional. There remains a particularly desperate look on the enslaving power of belief, on the predisposition of some to embrace it and on the will of others to exploit it.

In the aftermath of a nuclear war, the last survivors are jammed together under one giant concrete dome, which is protecting the remnants of human civilization from the deadly atomic winter. As resources grow scarce people become more and more rampant, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a fabled Ark which is supposed to save them all. Amidst this mess we find Soft, whose job is to check the structural stability of their shelter. When he discovers that the dome is close to collapsing, he plunges himself into the pandemonium of the last human civilization in order to find out more about this mythical Ark.

I was able to watch a subtitled version of 'O-Bi O-Ba - The End of Civilization' at a festival, which had a segment dedicated to Eastern European sci-fi flicks. I didn't know what to expect - none of the actors rang any bells, neither did the director. Boy, was I in for a surprise! The acting is very solid throughout the movie, I especially liked the laconic fatalism of Soft's boss (Marek Walczewski) and the performances of Jan Nowicki as the Engineer, and of Soft himself (Jerzy Stuhr) who acts as our guide into the depth of the dome, and does a wonderful job of trying to keep calm and rationalize his way out of certain doom.

What struck me most, though, is that this movie works perfectly as an post-apocalyptic dystopia. It displays the (at times pointless) struggle of Soft against his and the others' fate, while at the same time painting a very dark and cynical portrait of human society living on borrowed time on the brink of certain oblivion. As we follow Soft into the underbelly of the dome's society, we discover its secrets layer by layer and realize how paper-thin the wall between madness and reason really is. I am not overly familiar with the circumstances in which the movie was made (it was shot when Poland was still a Socialist Republic), but the social commentary is quite clear. The movie lends itself to be read as criticism of a capitalist society, basically (and at times quite literally) devouring itself. My guess is that it works both ways and can also be applied as an attack on Socialist societal mechanisms (as the movie was shot during the last years of collapsing Polish Socialsm), but I'd venture on very thin ice if I were to substantialize this claim.

At the very least, this film revolves around the human condition and contests if the human race has grown in any way over the last centuries and millenia. Great stuff, go see it if you have the chance - especially if you're a fan of dystopian fiction!

I like Polish films, I've seen a lot, all of Andrzej Wajda's films, all of Polanski's, some of Jerzy Skolimowski's, some of Andrzej Zulawski's, some of Krzysztof Kieslowski's, some of Krzysztof Zanussi's, etc. They are not easy to digest, just as this "O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization" is not (the meaning of "O-Bi, O-Ba" is not clear at all). It is the first film made by director Piotr Szulkin that I have seen. I saw Jerzy Stuhr in the very special "Sexmission" (1984) and in "A Year of the Quiet Sun" (1984). I saw the beautiful Krystyna Janda in "Man of Iron" (1981), "Mephisto" (1981), "The Conductor" (1980), "Man of Marble" (1977). Another well-known name is Leon Niemczyk, probably the most prolific Polish actor of all time (325 films) seen by me in many, the most famous being "Knife in the Water" (1962). OK, about the movie now: I'm not going to narrate it like many do. I'll just say that it's worth seeing, even though it's just talk in a closed space, an underground bunker (where, strange situation, after the nuclear war, there is electricity, there are neon lights everywhere). The fact that it is filmed a lot in motion by the talented Witold Sobocinski, mitigates the phenomenon of claustrophobia.