Usually when a movie is set all in the course of a single day, it’s got a sprawling, Altman-esque character array. Or the focus is on a specific space, and we get a feel for how communities inhabit and interact within that space. Romanian writer-director Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World thwarts those expectations, because its goal is something different. We’re spending the day with Angela (Ilinca Manolache), from when she first wakes up till she’s finally, completely done with work for the day. And though she’s ostensibly a production assistant for a Bucharest-based production company, Angela’s day never stops.
There’s always something that needs to be done. There’s always some crisis that only she can fix. There’s always some rideshare money to be made to keep the car going. So at heart, this is a vivisection of what the gig economy actually means and entails. We are with Angela constantly, and we feel The Grind in every possible way. This way of working is always couched in terms of “opportunity” rather than “nickel-and-diming,” and that’s a malignant choice from lawmakers and CEOs who tend to rely on just one job. Always look at who’s defining the terms.
Angela is a great protagonist — she’s determined, independent, fierce, fiery and always conscious of how the many facets of the world are working. If there’s any justice, Ilinca Manolache will find work with adventurous directors the world over, because she’s a force of nature. There’s a version of this film where Angela could have accepted every whim and crisis thrown at her with stoic resignation, but who would want to watch that? Patient endurance always gets bandied about as the proper response to any and all injustices, but if there’s one thing the age of TikTok has given us (other than a chance to see legislators spin hypocrisy out of nothing — this film was made before the recent kerfuffles over TikTok, but it still feels inescapably current), it’s a chance to access the unfettered reflex of people just trying to keep their shit together.
And in this case, that’s Angela’s alter ego Bobiţa, a digital fuckboy avatar steeped in the moment and every bit of the social detritus that gathers at the feet of anyone spending time online these days. Bobiţa is both a safety valve and an acetone-spraying gun, a blurt of rage that isn’t discernible as satire by those who should most bear the brunt of its fury. Make no mistake: This film is filled with the festering anger that comes from being on the business end of economic inequality, and we see without explanation how Bobiţa is both mirror and machete. Jude’s 2021 film Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was a modern masterpiece of social analysis (currently available on Hulu and Kanopy in a wittily and creatively censored version), with a final section that articulates every bit of frustration and exhaustion that insistent and supercilious reactionaries spur in their manipulation of school systems. Jude has a gift for accessible and perceptive satire, and he’s not afraid to bring out the poking needles as necessary.
There’s an ongoing dialogue with the 1981 Lucian Bratu film Angela Moves On (whose star Dorina Lazar turns up here, a “what if” that says volumes about post-communist Romania), depicting what the workplace (a taxi driver during the communist era) was and what it has become. And then, as the film progresses, we experience the world of Romanian film production from several differing angles. Uwe Fucking Boll is an interesting choice to embody renegade can-do spirit. As a symbol of breaking away from established systems, sure. And as a representative of external filmmakers exploiting Romanian crews because they’re cheap, oh absolutely. But he best serves as an indictment of European film financing and influencer culture in the way that having someone famous attached helps get your stuff seen. Boll is the mercenary aspect of this, a man who exploited tax loopholes and known IP to subject the world to increasingly diffident and mediocre video game adaptations. (He’s also an asshole — just ask the Chattanooga film community.) The opposite approach to this phenomenon is Nina Hoss, who pops up out of respect for the director and who relishes the chance to fling some mud at international corporate malfeasance. (Tilda Swinton and Isabelle Huppert do this sort of thing all the time.)
Romania’s grand export to the world is the legacy of Dracula, but it’s with the deposed/executed Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu that that fictional legacy finds fruition — pageantry-obsessed grifters whose thirst for power and wealth continues to diminish the land even after their death. The difference between the Ceauşescus and the modern-day oligarchs are simple — today’s billionaires don’t tend to make such easy targets of themselves by taking credit or responsibility for anything in public fora. The ones who do (the usual suspects) have some sort of humiliation kink.
The last sequence, done in close to a single take, is just vicious. Throughout the day, Angela has been trying to facilitate the filming of a video where someone injured because of corporate neglect does a safety awareness video for that corporation. It’s all manner of legally and personally icky, and it is treated as a major financial opportunity (there’s that language again). What’s insidious (and sad) is that it is; integrity and authenticity are the only things that hold value that doesn’t tarnish. And the making of this video is somehow a process that goes from absurd to brutal to enervating to emotionally violent and back again. It’s a takedown of corporate practice and irresponsibility that should hurt anyone with a conscience. If you’ve worked in production, or cared about someone who has, you know the process and the demands it places on the behind-the-scenes workers. But this is like a tripartite depiction of the way that dehumanization gets deployed against pretty much everyone involved in the whole process. You feel it in your soul. You feel it in your spine.
