"Do Not Expect ... " -- Movie Review

 

On the middle weekend of the 61^st New York Film Festival, I attended the U.S. Premiere of the new Romanian comedy from Radu Jude, “Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World”.

Synopsis

A day in the life of an overworked and underpaid production assistant for an instructional video about workplace safety. 

Story

Angela (Ilinca Manolache) has a long and very busy day driving all around the city of Bucharest.   She works as a production assistant on an instructional video about workplace safety; as a result, Angela must visit various people who have suffered workplace injuries and record their story as a kind of “audition” to see if the German conglomerate putting up the money to finance the video wants them in the project.  In order to stay somewhat sane, Angela uses her short breaks to record her own videos posted on social media; in these videos, she plays a character similar to Andrew Tate – a right-wing male chauvinist who proudly mistreats women. 

The company sponsoring the production of the video makes it abundantly clear that they want the discussion slanted in a way that makes it appear as though it was the fault of the worker who got injured rather than having the accident be the result of some form of negligence by the employer.  Even when it’s clear that the employer was remiss in providing safe working conditions, they manipulate the video to teach employees to be more careful when on the job.  Therefore, when casting the video, they will choose people who they think may come across as less sympathetic.  In order to remain employed, Angela has no choice but to go along with this.

Finally, they start shooting.  Their first scene is shot on the site of the accident and the filmmakers must battle some rather uncooperative weather conditions.  Not only that, but they must also battle the subject of the incident, a worker who now finds himself in a wheelchair as the result of the accident.  Initially, he describes what happened in a way that implicates the employer because they failed to have proper lighting or a security guard available in the factory’s parking lot.  The director is forced to cut at the end of each take and painstakingly explain to the injured worker how he needs to express himself if he wants to appear in the video.  Will he cooperate?

Review

There is that old saying, “Brevity is the soul of wit”.  Clearly, filmmaker Radu Jude – who refuses to abide by any rules whatsoever – doesn’t even remotely buy in to this philosophy in any way, shape or form.  A couple of years ago at The New York Film Festival, Jude’s social satire “Bad Luck Banging” was screened; at a more reasonable length, it did a good job of making its point effectively.  While the first half of “Do Not Expect” went by relatively quickly, it began to wear a bit thin midway through the screening, which may turn off quite a few people.  Its length made it seem self-indulgent and a good bit of editing would’ve been helpful. 

As for the story itself, Jude reminds us that worker exploitation is not limited to the United States alone.  What’s interesting about the film is that this is illustrated not just by observing the production assistant in the course of doing her job, but also by showing the workers who have suffered workplace injuries; not only do we see how Angela is exploited by being overworked and underpaid, but also, the workers who were injured on the job (as if they haven’t already suffered enough) are being exploited as well.  Some of them may not get the opportunity to tell their story in the video and those who do will have their experience twisted.

Director Radu Jude did not travel to New York City for an interview, but he did create a video introduction of his film that was shown prior to the screening; it was done in the spirit of his quirky sense of humor and as a result was quite amusing.  Basically, he apologized for creating a comedy that was nearly three hours long, but rationalized it by saying that he has effectively given us two movies in one, so we should be grateful for the bargain.  However, he did acknowledge that some people might feel the need to complain about the motion picture, either due to its length or for other reasons; he provided his email address so folks could contact him directly about their misgivings.