Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Romania’s Radu Jude tackles everyday life and comes close to making a masterpiece.
For some years now Romanian Cinema has been on fine form and one can readily pick out four directors who have played a strong role in this. Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu, Cornelius Porumboiu and Radu Jude were all born within a decade and each in his own way has turned his eye on what life is like in Romania. However, of these four it is Jude whose style has most fully captured the tone of our times. Although he is the youngest of the four, he is now forty-six but his recent work is so much of this day and age that one might well be surprised that he is not younger.
The film that put Jude in the spotlight was 2009’s ironically named The Happiest Girl in the World, a modest piece sat in Bucharest but already so critical of Romanian society that it played as the bleakest of comedies. Since then Jude has made many more films including documentaries and shorts, but in Britain at least we had to wait until 2021 for another feature of his to get a release here, that being Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. That film may have had a story built around a private sex tape that goes viral but nevertheless it retained the unusual blend of the wryly comic and the seriously critical that Jude had established earlier while displaying in addition a degree of deliberate provocation that gave it real edge.
Having now seen this further work of his, I don't hesitate to believe that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is the film that comes closest to being Jude's masterpiece. If ultimately it falls a bit short of that despite fine performances from all the leading players, it is due to it eventually falling into a degree of self-indulgence. Even so, it is a remarkable piece and far more effective than I had expected. When I sat down to watch it, I was aware that it told the story of a woman named Angela (Ilinca Manolache) living in Bucharest at the present time and employed as an Uber driver while currently working as a production assistant on a film project. That work involves the making of a video for a big company, one that is intended to promote their concern for safety at work. The greater part of the film takes place in the course of a single day during which Angela’s duties involve interviewing three possible participants who had previously been employees. They are candidates for being photographed telling of their own injuries and then giving a strong recommendation to the company’s workers that they should wear the safety hats provided. Before the end of the day the company’s Austrian marketing director, Doris Goethe (Nina Hoss), will pronounce on the taped interviews and recommend which of the subjects (two men and one woman) should be chosen and thus became entitled to payment for taking part. When the choice is made it falls on Ovidiu (Ovidiu Pîrşan) who had suffered an accident that had put him in a coma for a year and had subsequently condemned him permanently to life in a wheelchair. The film then goes on to show fittings for the shoot which will also include his mother (Dorina Lazǎr). Presented as a separate section, the last half-hour or so of the film deals with the actual shooting of the video.
As a plot for a movie that sounds acceptable enough but what in prospect raised doubts was the fact that Jude’s film runs for a full 163 minutes. The story doesn't begin to sound like one that could justify such a length. As it turns out, however, the material is extended by incorporating unusual additional footage: Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World includes fairly substantial extracts from a pre-existing film, namely one made by Lucian Bratu in 1981 and entitled Angela Moves On. That film starred Dorina Lazǎr in the title role and László Miske as the unreliable man she ended up by marrying and it is the same characters played by the same actors who now appear as their older selves and are presented to us as being the parents of Ovidiu. The old clips used, whether presented straight or slowed up to emphasise background details, enable Jude to compare Bucharest as it is today with how the city was when Céauşescu was in power and the many ways in which life has not improved are indeed central to Jude’s film.
While it may seem an unexpected decision, the film’s contemporary scenes are shot in black-and-white (there is superb photography here by Marius Panduru). They stand apart from those scenes taken from the 1981 movie which was made in colour. However, Angela being a young woman in today's world has chosen to set herself up on TikTok spouting outrageous comments of a kind all too common today: there is a relish in what she does but she nevertheless justifies it by claiming that what she is offering is "criticism by way of extreme caricature". In contrast to all the other footage we see of her these video rants are shot in colour. Her appalling comments, made with her wearing a mask, are part and parcel of Jude’s ability to make his film seem bang up-to-date. References to Andrew Tate, Ukraine, King Charles, self-driving cars and the ready availability of guns in America in contrast to those being supplied to Ukraine are all part of this. In contrast to that, some of the elements that Jude makes his own here echo the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, be it references to artists (Beethoven, Proust) or an appearance as himself by a director (here it's a cameo by the critic-hating Uwe Boll) and there's even talk of death that references Godard’s own and throws in that of the actor David Hemmings as well.
The film’s use of contemporary pop music in Angela's car as she drives around is another sound of the day for better or worse, but its rhythms give the film tremendous energy. Other aspects of modern life are ruefully observed as long present but on the increase. This is a world in which progress is illusory, the divide between rich and poor ever greater, prices rise while those running companies make huge profits, workers submit to excessive working hours to earn vital overtime pay and big developers have no trouble at all in being allowed to build over a former cemetery. If the recent French drama Full Time made viewers readily identify with the impact of transport strikes on a working woman in Paris, Jude’s film hits us as being a wider and recognisable view not just of modern Bucharest but of what life has become in the world today.
Spending so much time with Angela we may want to see her as the film’s heroine since at heart she is not happy with her life but, although she might sometimes feel at war with the world, she tends to just get on with her job (she’s good at it) and thus to go with the flow. As we know from the first audition interview filmed by Angela her work involves dictating what the candidate must say and that in itself is an echo of the earlier times in which Angela Moves On is set. With points such as that having been made early on, the second section of Jude’s film – the actual shooting of the video – is only elaborating what is already clear. Furthermore, it does so in a minimalistic style and virtually all of its 35 minutes is offered from the viewpoint of a single static shot. In the scenes just before this final segment the extracts from Bratu’s film have come to seem less relevant than before and, although the long finale shows the chance of truth being told on the video reduced step-by-step to zero, it is the most predictable part of an adventurous film which elsewhere can surprise, amuse and shock but is always serious. That keynote is evidenced by a silent montage of memorials to those killed in accidents on a road that is dangerous despite the Romanian authorities being aware of that and yet doing nothing about it. That the latter stages of Jude’s film resonate less than what precedes them disappoints, but it still deserves a rating that makes it stand out. What we have on screen here is our world captured with such precision that the film demands to be recognised as one of the most remarkable that we are likely to see this year.
Original title: Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Ilinca Manolache, Ovidiu Pîrşan, Dorina Lazăr, Nina Hoss, Laszlo Miske, Daniel Pope, Alex M. Dascalu, Uwe Boll.
Dir Radu Jude, Pro Ada Solomon and Adrian Sitaru, Screenplay Radu Jude, Ph Marius Panduru Pro Des Cristian Niculescu and Andreea Popa, Ed Catalan Cristutiu, Music Jura Ferina and Pavao Miholjević, Costumes Radu Jude.
Les Films D’ici/Kinorama/4 Proof Film/Sovereign Films/Bord Cadre Films/ Paul Thiltges Distributions-Sovereign Film Distribution.
163 mins. Romania/Luxembourg/France/Croatia/Switzerland/UK. 2023. UK Rel: 8 March 2024. US Rel: 22 March 2024. Cert. 18.