Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

There’s an old thesis that if your comedy is over 90 minutes, it’s probably not funny. A funny comedy should leave the audience tired from laughing by that point. That Radu Jude’s satire Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World clocks in at an epic 163 minutes should be a cause for concern – as should be the presence of bullying schlock director Uwe Boll, even in a cameo as himself.

But Jude isn’t looking for belly laughs – more of a wry, sardonic smile in his critique of the contemporary working environment. Indeed, if you start to feel the run time slightly insufferable, that’s also his intention. Modern life is rubbish and getting worse in this scathing attack on the utter dysfunction of the contemporary workplace, as film PA Angela (the excellently arch and disheveled Ilinca Manolache) wastes her life on a worthless project. Dressed ready for the night club, she rolls around Bucharest, disinterestedly recording anecdotes from injured workers to potentially be used in a factory safety PSA. It’s the faux glamor of the movie business, intriguingly juxtaposed with footage from Lucian Bratu’s 1981 drama Angela merge mai departe. In that earlier film, another Angela (Dorina Lazar) finds some liberty as a woman in the male-dominated space of taxi driving, whereas the only freedom modern Angela has is in filtered TikTok posts as her alter ego, Bobita, an Andrew Tate wannabe (this is, after all, Romania).

It’s all very knowing: In the opening act, modern Angela’s seemingly endless driving around a crowded Bucharest seems to purposefully emulate the lane-switching gag from another workplace satire, Office Space. It’s insightful but subtle as a brick. When Angela, her mother, and the camera linger to gaze on a grave inscription 25 minutes in (“Passer-by, don’t pass coldly/I was like you, you will be like me”), one suspects that Jude has explained his thesis sufficiently. Much as with his 2021 sex comedy Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, he’s so good at making his point that it all feels like when a lesser filmmaker has a character deliver a film-ending monologue to spell out the lesson for those at the back (Jude still does that). It’s in explaining a sight gag about Das Kapital or having Uwe Boll whine about how mean critics are to him. It’s the same point, and we got it already.

All of which oddly makes that final summation both more rambling yet focused, and definitely welcome. It’s a half-hour, locked-off shot in which Angela finally gets the interview with the perfect injured worker, and steadily guides him into changes that put the blame on everyone but the company. It stands apart from the rest of the film – not least because, aside from the reused footage from Angela merge mai departe, it’s the only segment shot in color. Jude drops the sometimes overly broad comedy of the first two hours for something more acerbic, angry, and intriguing. What came before is just a well-observed, if self-indulgent, prelude.