User Reviews

...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?

Angela is a movie Production Assistant in Bucharest, overworked and underpaid. Romanians seem to be suffering from inflation, blamed on the Ukrainian war. In this story, she is part of the team shooting a workplace safety video for a multinational compamy.

In day 1, she is frantically racing around (on streets where the other drivers are crazy), interviewing injured workers who are potential subjects, doing other errands, and squeezing in some personal time as well. This part is shot in black and white, to distinguish it from the color sequences, which illustrate the back story of some of the characters of the day, and also her alter ego, a sex-obsessed bald man. However, at 2-3/4 hours I find this extraneous, plus there is an overlong sequence of the crosses along a road memorializing traffic accident victims. Deduct one star for this "creativity".

For day 2 (before lunch break), the selected subject (and selected family members) are assembled at the site of the accident for the shoot. Contrasting with the previous day, this is basically a fixed camera situation, assuming that this is the camera that is shooting the actual corporate video. Complications happen, including the "big boss" demanding his own creative idea - not prevously expressed.

The film is a moderately interesting slice of life in Romania, and it is up to the viewer as to whether the creative touches add (according to some critics) or subtract (according to me) to its enjoyment.

There's something very natural about Ilinca Manolache in this gritty and occasionally quite funny story of "Angela". She seems to spend much of the film driving her car around the streets of Bucharest garnering interviews from the victims of industrial accidents. Why? Well apparently some Austrians are making a safety film and they want a real person to go on screen advocating the common sense of adhering to the rules! Don't go pole vaulting over a volcano kind of thing. As she becomes increasingly weary, being sent from one end of the city to the other, she encounters some of the more moronic road users and that allows the dialogue to get ripe and lively - much to the chagrin of her mother. Anyway, eventually she alights on one would-be contributor who seems quite happy to do whatever is required for his 500 Euro fee - but it's at this point, and through the subsequent quite scathingly delivered production process that I found the whole thing pretty much ground to an halt - despite the briefest contribution from Uwe Boll. The pithy and characterful "Angela" becomes trapped in a repetitive series of similar scenarios - interspersed by some foul-mouthed and sexually charged rants from her alter-ego video blogger "Bobita" and the odd deferential reference to the recent death of HM Queen Elizabeth II. Meantime - and these scenes are in a nicely photographed-to-look-dated colour, we flit back to the Romania of Ceausescu where "Angela Moves On" - a fictitious film from 1981 depicts the life of a taxi driver who finds her daily grind not dissimilar to the modern day story. Misogamy and sexism thriving unfettered! Unfortunately, after about an hour I was really struggling to stay interested. It all went from being entertainingly plausible to overly and rather unpleasantly contrived and at just shy of 2¾ hours long, it really does lose it's way just once too often. To be fair to the writers, the pace of the dialogue is thick and fast and it does take a few swipes at the modern day opt-in culture, but we spend far too much time in her car - she changes gear a lot - and I'm afraid I really rather gave up. It could easily have lost an hour, tightened up what's quite a fun and politic premiss and been much better. As it is, it's all just a bit disappointing.

A very strong satire of human nature under capitalism featuring corporation cults, ads everywhere, exploitation, imorality and profanity. Main character Angela, runs on what it seems 5 coffes, 6 energy drinks and one Dristor shaorma. She is driving around Bucharest doing her job as production assistant working 16h a day. Global Traffic Congestion Index places Bucharest at number 8 as the most crowded city in the world and 4th in Europe. Also, the capital's streets are flooded with billboards.

Film is made in paralel with an older film, Angela merge mai departe, about the life of a woman driving around Bucharest in the '80s as taxi driver. Angela from communist Bucharest, seems more calm and living a simpler life, enjoying her job as a taxi driver. As film progresses she ecounters diffrent problems, especially misoginistic encounters. We also get to see a diffrent Bucharest, less cars, all cars look the same, no ads, some angry drivers but definitely not as angry as capitalsit Angela. A question arises: was life in communist Romania that calm and simple or is it the censorship working on the film?

Then capitalist born Angela meets communist born Angela, in capitalist times, both being miserable. One being extremly exploited by her company, other bitterned by a small pension and probably many traumatic events of the free market transition in Romania. As the film starts I am trying to categorise nowadays Angela. She wakes up mad next to a Proust book, she makes here and there some jokes meant to be smart and political, she refrences books and history events. She seems a pretty cinical girl, with decent internal universe maybe rude because of being overworked.... film progresses and she has a terrible way of chosing her clothes for the occasion.... and a passion for chewing gum when most unnapropriate... and really into the Andrew Tate filter. Most of the corporate charcters behave the same, constantly referencing and even lecturing cultural aspects, films, books, ancient greek philosophy. A question arises: are these people innate ignorants or is it the capitalist enviorment that kills spirit and passion? There are many human traits crushed or modeled by the rulling ideology.

I laughed so hard at the Bobitza scenes, but couldn't help feeling gulity at the end with the thought of: aren't we degrading together with our entertaiment sources?

More context: a film company and a giant furniture company collaborate in order to produce a short work place safety video. One of the top scenes is a Zoom meeting between all staff, in which we can see the complete and utter ignorane of these marketers, also their rasism. They basically denigrate people that suffered accidents in the furniture factory, seeing them not as victims but as competitors for a 500 euro prize. The furniture company becomes everybody's church, making the employees forget decency in order to server the institution's needs.

We also encounter the perfect capitalist, that assures Angela about the excellent conditions in which the grave of her grandparents will be moved in order to build a new apartment complex. Film is completely hilarous all the time, a dark comedy that shows massive degradation of human spirit. It also signals a cultural crisis in which classic books are sold in traffic for 5 ron and Goethe's niece is a marketing specialist.

10/10.

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.

Absolute film. This stunning protagonist takes us to inside the car and also into the reality of the romenian proletariat. Her daily vlogs as a man character on social media's make criticism uncomfortably funny.

Flashes of "Angela goes on" sometimes fit perfectly with romenians women's nowadays issues, especially as a car driver. On the other hand, at other times, it highlights the aberrant contrast behind different eras: "it's later than you think".

Personally, as a third world citizen, this universal theme brought up by the film touches me deeply. Government corruption, nonsense ideological fanaticism among people, and our impotence in the face of all of this.

Uncomfortable until the end and necessary.

The movie makes you think about some issues present in Romanian society (and elsewhere) but the director could have cut the film by half (from 2h and 45 minutes ?!) and still make his point.

The weak parts of the movie are the endless car scenes where the driver is just stuck in traffic. One or two scenes like that is enough really. We get it. But no, half the film is shot in the car. Another weak part is the 4 minutes of showing christian crosses on the Bucuresti-Buzau road. It felt like an amateur way of trying to create emotion. Really there is no need for long scenes like this.

The movie is strong with the social satire and it manages to do that in a subtle, non-direct way. That is the only good part that I see. Maybe also some funny scenes with Bobita and excellent acting of the main character.

Ok!!! So what's the hype about this lethargic film?? Nothing worked for me ...I was bored to death while i was watching people walk out of the theatre and half of them sleeping.. So boring...so taxing.. And the boredom is not coming out of the creativity of the film but because it's so tiring to watch it...N what was the unnecessary obsession of the black and white???

Only 2 scenes were decent,one when the production meeting is happening and the other with the director when she makes her video with him .. Apart from that , even if u sleep during the film and then wake up u will only find the woman driving nonstop and I have missed nothing...There are other ways to show what u want to show ..and it's not the only way .to bore the audience to death...arrgghhhh.