Posts Tagged ‘reviews. Bfi’

Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (2023)

Dir/scr: Radu Jude. Romania, Luxembourg, France, Croatia. 2023. 163mins

Radu Jude is emerging as one of the most challenging directors on the European scene at the moment and his latest outing, described as ’part comedy, part road movie, part montage’, looks at the eternal theme of exploitation in the workplace and otherwise.

Not one for a minimalist title (apart from his debut Afterim): his recent outings have been as garrulous as their content: I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians, The Happiest Girl in the World and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn – and have discombobulated the best of us. Jude continues the trend with Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World a multilayered comedy concoction, named after a maxim by the Polish poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec.

Jude once again takes history by the scruff of the neck to come to some thought-provoking realisations on how the goal posts have moved, and are constantly being manipulated in modern life through fake news. The past is invariably viewed as rosier than the more aggressive present and reflected here in grainy monochrome, in contrast to colour.

The action centres on the fraught everyday life of spirited production assistant Angela Raducanu (Ilinca Manolache), not unlike Kalia in Animal (another Locarno Golden Leopard contender), she is besieged on all fronts: over-worked, underpaid, and sometimes not even paid at all.

But Angela is certainly no fool. Careening through the streets of Bucharest in a mini van with the radio blaring out a sparky selection of tunes, she is en route to interview people for a safety video commissioned by an Austrian company (headed by Nina Hoss as Doris Goethe). This marketing tool expounds the virtues of taking protective measures. Jude interweaves Angela’s chaotic journey with his customary literary quotations, and excerpts from a film by Lucian Bratu in which the heroine (Dorina Lazar) searches for love in the sexist Ceausescu-era Bucharest of the early eighties (this segment goes by the title of ANGELA: a conversation with an 1981 film).

To gee herself up Angela posts videos pretending to be Andrew Tate taking off Putin. There are clearly analogies between present day Angela and her character from the past. And today’s Angela has great fun lampooning contemporary Romania in a jittery, broad brush, freewheeling approach not dissimilar to that of Bad Luck Banging, which has become Jude’s style in recent years. Nothing has really changed since Lazar’s era but social media has just amplified all the negativity and misogynist attitudes through its portals of Twitter and TikTok.

A character called Ovidiu, a wheelchair user, is the focus of part B. His testimony will feature in the safety video but his claims are then ‘groomed’, in one take, to provide sufficient evidence for him to claim compensation from the Austrian company. But will they believe him or even take him seriously? This moment is the most revealing of Jude’s entire film. Exhausting but certainly fizzing with energy. MT

Now On BFI PLAYER 2024  

 

 

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) | Bfi re-release


Dir: Werner Herzog | Cast: Bruno S, Volker Prechtel, Gloria Dor, Willy Semmelrogge, Brigitte Mira, Walter Ladengast | 109min, Germany

Werner Herzog drifts into visionary territory with a film based on the true story of a man who appeared in a town square in Nuremberg in 1828, barely able to talk or walk, but carrying a cryptic note to a senior cavalry officer in his outstretched hand.

At the time, It was a case that caused much controversy and Herzog’s poetically pastoral costume drama attempts to recreate early 19th century life in rural Germany with detailed interiors, retro scenery and a haunting score featuring the music of Johann Pachelbel and Mozart.

The opening scenes see newcomer Bruno S as Kaspar grovelling around on the floor of a straw-covered hovel, playing with a toy horse and chomping on crusts of bread.  A cloaked stranger discovers him, hauls him out and, teaching him a few basic words and his name, then abandons him after drafting the letter.  Fortunately for Kaspar, he falls amongst ‘friends’ in an upmarket milieu and is taken in by the wealthy Professor Daumer (Walter Ladengast) who then begins a process of sensitive rehabilition with overtones of ‘Pygmalion’, although obviously far more radical given Kaspar’s regressive mental state. He then becomes the subject of intense curiosity and experimentation by the so-called intelligentsia of the era, who appear equally as disturbed as Kaspar, who then falls under the glare of a visiting English eccentric Lord Stanhope, from whose effete clutches he makes a lucky escape.

But what fascinated Herzog was the purity of Hauser and Bruno S (a non-actor) gives a performance of genuine authenticity as a complete innocent, an open book; untouched by guile, social conditioning, education or influence yet gifted with intuition and a canny animal instinct. Bruno’s distinctive voice and emphatic delivery, due to learning difficulties and a regional accent, contribute to this clearly disturbed but also deeply touching portrait of an outsider who has suffered and feels desperately disconnected from his fellow man while finding a deep connection with the animal world.

The ending is tragic and unexpected but marks this as a deeply philosophical piece with an enduring message that highlights the treatment of the outsider by the community, and resonates as clearly in the contemporary arena as it did back in the seventies, when it received much critical acclaim.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser picked up three awards at Cannes Film Festival in 1975: the Grand Prize, the Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize. Herzog dedicated the film to the memory of Lotte Eisner, a film critc and historian, who encouraged him in his career. MT

NOW ON RE-RELEASE AT THE BFI CELEBRATING ITS 50 Anniversary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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