Romanian writer-director Radu Jude often approaches topics – social, environmental, political, or metaphysical – that would paralyse others with anxiety with a detached tone but certainly not devoid of emotion. In his latest long-titled feature, DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, the impossible ironies of the modern age are laid bare. Here, freedom of opportunity is pitted against histories of oppression, and technological and medical advancements become both the driver and product of capitalist exploitation.
The film follows Angela (Ilinca Manolache), an assertive but desperately overworked and underpaid production assistant at a film company. She is constantly hustling for her big break; when this comes, it is when she is hard at work on a “safety at work” video, which ends up unearthing her own company’s failures. It could endanger her career, but she savvily turns the situation into an opportunity for herself and her employer. At the same time, she finds time to film TikToks and live streams as an angry, Andrew Tate-worshipping (satiric) alter ego. The juxtaposition of Angela’s sympathetic yet amoral pragmatism and her alter ego’s doom-driven reactionary screeds (regardless of their sincerity or lack thereof) points to the fundamental, irreconcilable dichotomies at the heart of post-communist Romania: a country trying to do right by its future while drawn towards the figureheads of its totalitarian past. That Manolache makes this frenetic energy almost luminous is a feat of star power.
“The narrative detachment feels like Jude observes his characters and subjects in a test tube, but his story does not neglect their human hearts. The hopes and dreams of Angela and every person she meets with as she attempts to make her video are palpable.”
The narrative detachment feels like Jude observes his characters and subjects in a test tube, but his story does not neglect their human hearts. The hopes and dreams of Angela and every person she meets with as she attempts to make her video are palpable. They might not be realistic, they may be counterproductive, and they might be hidden behind self-deprecation and pessimism, but their vibrancy is undimmed.
As a high-class marketing executive and descendent of Goethe (who is namechecked more often than expected – perhaps Angela is a modern-day Wilhelm Meister on her own far-less-romantic apprenticeship), Nina Hoss’ business-as-usual demeanour is a subdued, startling foil. As Angela narrates the dangers of the highway she is chauffeuring the present-day Goethe down, while insisting she has only worked the maximum allowed hours per day, Jude cuts to an extended montage of crosses on the side of the highway. These lives are lost, but how people reckon with memories is best displayed in the tangible, non-digital realm.
“The [final scene’s approach] brings home the droll, devastating impact of capitalism’s most exploitative urges and the anti-art practicalities that prevent genuine truth-telling.”
The final scene of DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD stretches almost thirty minutes with barely any camera movement. Despite its static nature, it is anything but anticlimactic. The effect brings home the droll, devastating impact of capitalism’s most exploitative urges and the anti-art practicalities that prevent genuine truth-telling.
Despite its title and the in-your-face delivery of some of its most fevered sections, DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD is not all apathy and ironic resignation. There may not be hope, as such, at its heart, but there is an unending belief in human ingenuity and creativity despite the dangers lurking behind each new development. Whether we use these powers for the right ends and to make the world better is ultimately undecided.