The alarm clock, just before six in the morning, starts howling loudly. At first, he screams for a long time, and then turns to intermittent grunting, like a pig with bulging eyes turned from side to side. Most likely, he would clap his hands next, but Angela spits out a steamy word and ends the unrecognized talent's performance.
Recently, the girl hasn't noticed how the days pass by — even a cat that sees a cocky dog is less agile. She works for a Romanian company that makes ads for foreign contractors and is sometimes distracted by real movies. However, the filming process doesn't really concern Angela, as she travels around Bucharest most of the day.
Meeting a customer at the airport, looking for lenses in the depths of Tartar or arguing with gypsies are the most challenging tasks Angela can aspire to. And the reward for this flickering is the opportunity to sip some wine before going to bed and surrender to a young old man right in the car. A layout that is not at all like a fairy tale.
Forty years ago, another Angela, a taxi driver with a confident look and a fighting temper, drove along the same avenues and yards. Bucharest in 1981 was not much different from the modern version. Before Romanian Revolution and Nicolae Ceausescu's execution was a decade away, but, as at all times, ordinary people's concerns reveled in their own conservatism.
While some were building their careers in a job they didn't like, others dreamed of human warmth and family comfort. Some dreamed of the fall of the dictatorship, while others were looking forward to a policy of austerity. But the rest of the time, Romanians did their usual activities: standing in lines, walking with the children, talking to their neighbors and stuffing their feet with cotton wool in wine bars.
This was the time of Angela's mature youth and the most fateful events. Working in a taxi brought her together with her new husband, who drank as zealously as the previous one. The birth of a son, infidelity and forced separation. In those years, life was in full swing, like a stream of scarce champagne rushing to an equally scarce TV.
It might seem like “Don't expect too much from the end of the world” Radu Jude is a social drama that simultaneously exists in two time planes. In fact, a few episodes from the eighties are borrowed from “Angela Goes On” by Lucian Bratu. This sounds like a tribute at first, but Radu Jude later goes much further.
He's literally taking someone else's job. In addition to the fact that the films were partially shot in the same locations, the modern part includes the main characters of their predecessor into the frame. Hit down by time and anxiety, but remembering very well the times when Angela worked in a taxi. Thus, Radu Jude turns someone else's work into a forerunner of his own invention.
Fantasies overlap until they turn into a believable, almost documentary work. Robert Machoian did a similar thing in the film “The Killing of Two Lovers” when he deliberately mythologized what was happening and brought it into a tangible reality that almost went beyond the scope of a work of art.
Moreover, Radu Jude did not limit himself to visually and semantic domination of someone else's work but changed her mood. On the one hand, both films are about the plight of the Romanian working class: Angela from the eighties was salt of the earth herself, and her vulgar namesake works with people who are teetering on the edge of poverty.
The nuance lies in the fact that Lucian Bratu seemed to be genuinely grieving over the injustices faced by ordinary people. But Radu Jude, to match his cocky alarm clock, laughs loudly in the face of all adversity. A familiar and moderately prosperous world will one day be lost between the floorboards, like a button that fell off a leaky robe. But this is not a tragedy.
And Angela is well aware of this. Working 16 hours for a miserable salary, she doesn't lose her fortitude; she constantly swears, gushes through steamy jokes, shoots provocative videos as a balding macho man and laughs that her lover's seed has stained her dress. It would seem that such a life is a reason for despondency and disappointment, but she has no time to think about it.
Perhaps unwittingly, Radu Jude gave a new meaning to his painting, which follows from its own title. Contrary to imaginary globalization, the modern world is rather ugly and heterogeneous; it is enough to look at it beyond the veil of your own comfort. Therefore, the end of the world that humanity dreams of will most likely result in collective disappointment.
While some are afraid of a nuclear winter, a global cataclysm or a deadly virus, others are in awe of a multi-ton lizard. But these processes are too radical and quick. In fact, hope fades gradually and thousands of times a day, but in each case a little differently. The small end of the world comes with unpaid bills, an empty fridge, and prolonged binge drinking.
Probably, the true apocalypse came in parallel with the events of “Angela Goes On”. At that moment, the past took on color, and the present was immersed in black and white. But no one noticed, because everyone was doing their own business: planting potatoes, gossiping and hurrying the line at the checkout. So the question is whether we should expect so much from the end of the world when you can laugh at it to your heart's content.
