DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. Silent Apocalypse

Anyone who has ever worked on a film set knows exactly what it’s like. It involves constant sleep deprivation, crates of Red Bull, and one deadline after another. Overtime and low wages are the unpleasant norm here, but what won’t one occasionally do in the name of art? It’s worse, though, when this “art” turns out to be idiotic instructional videos, advertisements, and promos advocating safety rules—commissioned by a company whose operations regularly lead to workplace accidents. Angela, the main character in “Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” has one of the most thankless jobs in film—she’s a production manager’s assistant.

In practice, this means being an errand girl. She’s glued to her phone, always on hand. For most of her screen time, we see her driving back and forth through the traffic-clogged streets of Bucharest. To avoid falling asleep at the wheel, she listens to loud, rather unsophisticated music and downs cans of energy drinks—up to 16–17 hours a day. No small feat.

In Radu Jude‘s film, Angela is both a fully-fledged character—excellently written and acted—and a symbol. She is the living embodiment of the prevailing workaholic culture and a victim of late capitalism’s logic, which—just as Jonathan Crary predicted over a decade ago—steadily aims to “kill” sleep and replace it with a 24/7 principle. Suffice it to say, the story of the main character was inspired by a real production assistant, a friend of the director, who died in a car accident after falling asleep at the wheel.

Angela expresses her accumulated frustration through social media. She assumes her online alter ego, a character named Bobita. A filter appears on her face, making her resemble the infamous Andrew Tate, and a sexist, racist, classist rant about reality starts pouring out of her mouth (virtually any “-ist” would be appropriate here). This internet persona was created a few years ago by Ilinca Manolache, the actress playing the lead role, as a way to cope with the pandemic lockdown. Jude incorporated it into the film, adding significant political and social contexts to her speeches.

Bobita praises Putin to the skies, wishes President Zelensky a quick death, and tears into Romanian infrastructure. Of course, it’s all just a performance. “Criticism through caricature,” as the protagonist explains at one point, summarizing the essence of the Romanian director’s work. Some characters love Bobita, others see the whole project as a tasteless joke. However, everyone follows her online antics, as nothing sells on social media as well as extreme, controversial content. Sometimes tinged with irony, and sometimes—not unlike the fiery speeches of Wojciech Olszański—quite the opposite.

Bobita’s extensive, extremely vulgar monologues beg to be contrasted with the scenes where we see Angela’s superiors. These people appear orderly and politically correct at first glance. But with the right context, their hidden prejudices surface, manifesting in their treatment of lower-level employees or comments about the appearance of candidates for a promo spot. They compare a deformed man to a character from Todd Browning’s “Freaks” and reject a woman because of her Roma background: unspoken racism triumphs over the inclusivity desired by clients. Here, Jude strikes at what he hates most: human hypocrisy. He had previously denounced it successfully in “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” and “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.”

“Don’t Expect Too Much…” is a continuation of the director’s previous narrative and formal explorations. Jude continues to experiment with the form of film collage, handling narrative structure with increasing freedom. He incorporates short TikTok impressions and an improvised scene with Uwe Boll. Several minutes are filled with silent shots of crosses along Romania’s most dangerous road. He intersperses the plot sequences with fragments from the 1982 comedy-drama “Angela Moves On,” about a young female taxi driver’s adventures. Before our eyes, the two cultural texts begin to converse, alternating between parallel scenes and motifs.

The situations of both heroines seem especially similar: portrayed at work, constantly on the move, behind the wheel. For Angela in 1982, her taxi symbolized independence—a means to earn money on her own. For her contemporary namesake, it’s a prison on wheels where she must satisfy various physiological needs due to constant work, including sleep and sex. Movie magic allows both Angelas to meet: sharing experiences, complaining about reality, and joking to boost each other’s spirits.

The premiere of every Jude film sparks a flurry of similar comments in Polish film critic circles: “This is just like Poland!” “The Romanians have made another film about us!” We regularly see ourselves in the cinema of the “Aferim!” director as if looking in a mirror, simultaneously longing for someone equally brave and cheeky to conduct similar reckoning over the Vistula. These comments are not solely due to the rather superficial and limited similarities between the histories of two post-Soviet nations.

Jude simply has the ability—with a grace and flair unmatched by anyone else—to combine local specificity with universal issues. He blends sharp satire on the cultural, historical, and social policies of his own country with a pessimistic yet humorous reflection on the state of contemporary humanity.

The director concludes his latest film in a more than impressive way: with a nearly forty-minute, static shot behind the scenes of a film set. The ending crystallizes all the crucial themes that permeated the rest of the film. Exploitation. Manipulation. Hypocrisy. Jude leaves us with no illusions: the world, in its current form, is heading for disaster. The apocalypse, however, won’t be caused by a giant meteor like in Adam McKay’s film, but by social injustice, cynicism, and a lack of empathy. Exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and starvation wages. Capitalist realism and its dire consequences. Criticism through caricature? That’s been our sad reality for a long time. According to Jude, we can only defend ourselves with laughter.