Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

2023 [ROMANIAN]

Action / Comedy / Drama

12
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 70% · 82 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 70% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.3/10 10 5957 6K

satire misogyny internet culture workplace comedy workplace fatalities late stage capitalism

Plot summary

On behalf of a multinational company, a production assistant drives around the Romanian city of Bucharest, interviewing various citizens who have been injured due to work accidents to cast one of them in a “safety at work” video.

Director

Radu Jude Photo
Radu Jude

Top cast

Nina Hoss Photo
Nina Hoss as Doris Goethe
Nicodim Ungureanu Photo
Nicodim Ungureanu
László Miske Photo
László Miske as Gyuri
Uwe Boll Photo
Uwe Boll as Uwe Boll
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1080p.WEB
1.47 GB
1280*694
Romanian 2.0
NR
Subtitles us   de   es   fr   it   nl   pt   tr  
24 fps
2 hr 43 min
Seeds 14
3.02 GB
1920*1040
Romanian 5.1
NR
Subtitles us   de   es   fr   it   nl   pt   tr  
24 fps
2 hr 43 min
Seeds 13
2.72 GB
1920*1040
Romanian 5.1
NR
Subtitles us   de   es   fr   it   nl   pt   tr  
24 fps
2 hr 43 min
Seeds 32

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Goloh 8 / 10

Expected Little, Got a Lot

After deducting one star for over-the-top vulgarity, much of that from protagonist Angela's TikTok alter ego Bobita; and one more star for being way too long; this left eight stars to work with, and the film earned them all. My first impression of Angela was dim, but she was just a tough, bright cookie doing her own thing - mostly driving, apparently -- in rough circumstances. Terrific acting.Can't say how well the "movie within a movie" device worked. I understand it was to provide both contrast and context, but after awhile it became intrusive and repetitive, like prolonged scenes of Angela's gum-chewing during relentless drives, and a wholly gratuitous sequence of highway fatality crosses. The scene at the end filming Ovidiu and his family is especially sharp, with quite a few lessons hidden in there.Not exactly sure why, but the film overall reminded me of Fellini's Nights of Cabiria ... not for any obvious reasons, but a similar tone.The ending was abrupt but appropriate and satisfying. Closing credits are wacky, not something I often see. Major credit too goes to whomever did the English subtitles: they were spot-on, very nuanced.Not too sure about how it makes Bucharest look, though.
Reviewed by brentsbulletinboard 7 / 10

Inventive and Ambitious But Overlong

Some may find it discouraging to look upon the world with a robustly cynical outlook, yet, given prevailing conditions in the world today, it may sometimes be unavoidable, an attribute reflected in many contexts, including art and cinema. And that's just what Romanian writer-director Radu Jude has done in his latest feature outing, a biting, darkly satirical comedy-drama that lays bare many of the everyday frustrations that his countrymen experience in areas like politics, corruption and economic opportunities. The film tells this story through the experiences of Angela Raducani (Ilinca Manolache), an overworked, underpaid, sleep-deprived movie production assistant as she struggles to make it through her daily work routine, an unappreciated effort not unlike that thrust upon many contemporary Romanians. To compensate for the tedium of her career and to let off some considerable pent-up steam, Angela makes short videos of her own featuring a foul-mouthed, sexually provocative male alter-ego, Bobitja, who swears like a sailor and describes explicit erotic encounters that would make a porn star blush. She also wrestles with the many self-serving demands of her arrogant Austrian corporate sponsors and a bloated Romanian bureaucracy that proves ineffectual in resolving property ownership issues related to her family's cemetery plots. Moreover, the picture draws uncanny parallels in the living and working conditions experienced by the nation's present-day residents with those who lived under the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1980s, presented here through intercut thematically linked film clips from the 1982 Romanian melodrama "Angela merge mai departe" ("Angela Moves Forward"), the story of a taxi driver whose circumstances mirror those of the beleaguered PA. It all makes for quite an intriguing and engaging mix of story elements, one the holds viewer attention well for about two-thirds of the release, especially in its deliciously bawdy, ribald humor. However, with a 2:43:00 runtime, it becomes somewhat trying as a comedy (and as a movie overall), serving up an excess of almost everything. Unlike comparably long offerings such as "Triangle of Sadness" (2022), which manage to successfully sustain their humor for such a lengthy duration, this effort starts getting repetitive, running out of gas to keep propelling it forward, especially in the somewhat exasperating final half-hour. Like Jude's previous release, "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" ("Barbardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc") (2021), this outing definitely could have benefitted from some judicious editing, particularly in its endless footage of the protagonist driving through heavy Bucharest traffic. To the filmmaker's credit, "End of the World" deserves kudos for its irreverence and its ambitious inventiveness and willingness to try the untried, but this is yet another example of a project where the creator fails to kill his darlings, an undertaking that could have been accomplished successfully in lobbing off about 20 minutes of extraneous material, especially in the closing moments. This one is worth a look if you're willing to be patient with it, as that's essential to make your way through all the way to the end. But, if you don't go in with that attitude, you might be expecting too much from the end of the film.
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