I have seen this movie recently, and it wasn't bad. I was amused by some of the comments made on this site about the movie, like the one disappointed viewer that said "I'm not a fan of Balkan or gypsy music and especially not a fan of national anthems". From some of the comments you would think this movie was a musical. No, it contains very little music, and it is often obligatory to sing the national anthem at school, especially during communism, so it is not something you like or no, it is something that you do.
I understand that the title may be misleading, that one may expect something else, and especially if you are not Romanian, you may not "feel" the movie very well. One viewer that posted a comment said he was confused about the story line, that there was no plot, but only events and people that didn't make sense. I found the story line quite simple, and I found the so called mystery of it to be necessary. It made everything seem as if it was somebody's experience and not real events. I don't know how others found the camera work, some complained that there were objects in front of the camera that seemed carelessly done. I thought the camera work was like that on purpose. Again, for me, it was as if somebody was observing all this in a certain way, and thus the camera tried to adjust to it, to make it more into an experience rather than a clear cut picture. I expected myself the movie to be more about the actual revolution. However, this movie is not about the Romanian revolution as the events of the story only culminate in the revolution at the very end of the movie. The end of the world rather, contains of months that were spend before the revolution, and I think captures well the hopelessness of everything, and the feelings that something is about to come to an end, to change somehow. Thus, those sad months are the so called end of the world, and the end of the movie is a new start.
Last thing to mention was also that this movie does not offer a global view of Romania or of Bucharest or the Romanian Revolution. The story only centers around one family, and their situation, fears, friends, etc. Thus, restricting the story to such a small scale might make viewing harder especially for non-Romanians. Even for some Romanians it may seem pointless to watch this family for the duration of the movie. However, for others like myself, you may find that the story was nicely told, the characters were well portrayed and that the movie was well done. One can argue that it is not perfect, and that it could have been this and that, but generally I thought it was very nice to see.
