YIKES! Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (wri/dir by Radu Jude, w/ Ilinca Manolache, Romania, 163mns, 2023)
There's a lot going on in Romanian moviemaker Radu Jude's very funny satire Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.
Young gig-worker, TV & commercial production assistant Angela (Ilinca Manolache) drives around traffic-riddled Bucharest filming wounded workers so that an Austrian production company can pick their favorite for a safety helmet commercial.
Angela, exhausted, overworked, makes vulgar Tik Tok videos to pass the time. She uses a filter to look like a reactionary Romanian young man to satirize Romania's increasing disregard of its own people.
At the same time, Jude intercuts the story with scenes from a 1981 Romanian movie called ANGELA GOES ON (Dorina Lazar) about a taxi driving Angela who encounters sexism, traffic, frustrations during her own daily grind in Communist Romania.
The whole thing culminates with a 20-30 minute sequence of the filming of the safety commercial itself.
Somehow Radu Jude and his team spin out of this premise an incredible tapestry of observations about our current very f@!*'d up moment.
While many moviemakers have decided to make movies about the past, Radu Jude tackles the bewildering 2020's. Hard.
Angela works so non-stop and so hard as a gig-economy driver/production assistant, she can only grab sleep a few minutes at a time.
His formal strategy of intercutting the 1981 Communist era movie about a single working woman with his 2023 post-revolution capitalist era movie about a single working woman is clear. Things appear to be no better (and maybe even worse) now.
Like other great angry perceptive filmic satirists-Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder all come to mind-Jude doesn't spare anybody. He panders to no side or ideology.
Instead, through the movie's near three hour length, he's driving home all the daily indignities everyone endures that grind us down. And like good moviemakers, he makes us aware of things we experience daily but never think about critically.
…Still her joy comes from making satirical 1mn Tik Tok videos where she gets crude and vulgar to shock her fellow Romanians.
Modern day Angela may be crude and vulgar in her Tik-Toks but she's personally kind in her interactions with the homeless, the Romany population, the poor families she films who have had their electricity cut off, etc. But how long can she keep this up before she crashes her car from overwork?
She has almost no free time. No down time. No re-charging time. The modern world is so relentless, it has robbed her of a private life.
The final "oner" of the movie which shows the filming of the safety commercial is both hilarious and tragic. Throughout, it's clear that the wounded employees have been maimed because of the company's own negligence. Yet they are willing to say they should have worn their "safety helmet" because they need the 1000 Euro commercial shoot fee to get by.
The zoom call from hell…
Many people during this sequence make biting comments about corporate insensitivity, hypocrisy, maltreatment BUT they all continue to do their jobs to get the paycheck.
But what can you do? You gotta make that dollar. Gotta pay that rent.
Ultimately DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD is an inditement. There are still good people in the world. The movie does an admirable job showing us that many if not most of the people we encounter have some core decency.
But everyone also reels from the disorienting feeling of powerlessness in the face of money, power, unreasonable demands.
Nobody has an answer how to start changing this but to soldier on.
It's a tough movie. It's also one powered by the heartbeat and understanding that something is wrong. Angela hasn't crashed her car yet. But that day is coming if things don't change. For her and for society at large.
Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club
The final oner of the movie which lasts over 20 minutes…