In his new work Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Radu Jude explores the mechanism behind media making.
Radu Jude returns with Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World after winning the Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn in 2021. As one of the most prominent Romanian filmmakers who departed from the Romanian New Wave, Jude leads us to a dreamy black-and-white modern Romania where exploitation is embedded in media production.
Jude divides his film into two chapters. In the first chapter, a production assistant Angela spends her day driving around Bucharest to put together a shooting for a safety information video. Its client over Zoom is Doris (Nina Hoss), the marketing director of an Austrian company and the great-great-granddaughter of Goethe. One of the people she auditioned for the safety video is Ovidiu, who was semi-paralyzed because of the Austrian company. Angela keeps asking for rest between auditions but is never allowed to go home. Perhaps to just let the stress out, Angela has a TikTok alter ego Bobiță Ewing: a bald bearded man who supports far-right ideology. Shot in black and white, this chapter is edited together alternately with a 1981 colour Romanian film Angela Moves On, where a different Angela works as a taxi driver and looks for romance.
In a more compact second part, Jude makes us gaze at the shooting material of the advertisement. It is a single fixed long shot that records the shooting of the safety video. As the shooting is constantly interrupted by the crew and bad weather, the suffering of Ovidiu’s family multiplies. The director’s repeated references to green screens and editing techniques make it highly improbable that Ovidius will win his case against the company. It seems that Ovidiu will take the blame for his own tragedy eventually. It serves as a cautionary tale, highlighting the sobering reality that films are gradually losing their ability to accurately document history and preserve collective memory. In the age of technological progress, the integrity of films has become increasingly vulnerable, as they can be easily manipulated and altered to suit individual agendas.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World also has a mesmerising and challenging format. As a collage film born in the era of TikTok and Instagram, it comprises a collection of media elements that have been created through various production mechanisms and techniques: Zoom, short, TikTok, Angela Moves On, and an advertisement shot from the production team’s point of view. In his wily way, Jude juxtaposes past and present, reality and fiction, Romania and the EU, as well as his film and great films in history. Formats are not mere technological issues. It could mean a different path of rationalising the world, an extra method for propaganda, or a new relation of production. Short videos and filters construct parts of our souls. Jude, thereby, questions the ethics of capturing, altering, producing and creating realities through cameras and filters and asks whether we are prepared for this alternative reality.
In a world crazily moving forward, maybe there is no need to expect too much from the end of the world because we are living in it.
“Nina Hoss (Berlin Film Festival 2013) cropped” by Nina_Hoss_(Berlin_Film_Festival_2013).jpg: Siebbi derivative work: César is licensed under CC BY 3.0.