Romanian satirist and experimental filmmaking punk rocker Radu Jude told us to not expect too much from the end of the world in, well, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, an epic farce of an essay about what it means to barely get by off the backs of those who really aren’t getting by at all. Its beleaguered protagonist uses her side hustle to scream into the void, igniting the manosphere’s toxic atmosphere with an Andrew Tate filter and an armoury of profane anecdotes to distract from her miserable work life, mostly centred around finding the ideal injured patsy for a health-and-safety video to absolve her mega-corporation managers of any wrongdoing or guilt. Jude is fascinated by the smaller cogs in the capitalist death machine, the supposedly-good human beings who ostensibly feel little more than vague ennui over the exploitation of someone just one rung below them on the unjust ladder of the world. He traces out a similar slow-rot apocalypse in his new straight-faced dramedy, Kontinental ‘25, which forms an understated B-side to his previous fiction feature with another cutting examination of the modern human condition.
We open in admirably stark form following homeless man Ion (Gabriel Spahiu) on his daily grind; collecting plastic bottles, politely begging around al fresco cafés, trying to find work from whoever will give him any. Such as it is, his humble abode can be found in a windowless boiler room, which is soon violated by bailiff Orsolya (Eszter Tompa), and a squad of masked police officers, serving him an eviction notice and giving him 20 minutes to get out and stay out. This routine turfing-out goes awry, leaving Orsolya with a guilt so tremendous that she has to cancel her holiday to Greece and pick up the pieces of her ruined reputation. Thus follows a painful odyssey between coffee with friends to confessions to a priest, with Orsolya teetering on the edge of a depressive episode as professional and reputational ruination looms large over her unhappy little life.
Taking inspiration for its title from Robert Rossellini’s Europe ‘51 is exactly the sort of deep-cut joke Jude deals in, and much of his satire spawns from how obviously well-read he is. In Rossellini’s film, a similar crisis of faith is found in Ingrid Bergman’s titan of industry who is shaken by a personal tragedy and has a moral awakening; it’s an underseen gem of parable storytelling, anchored by a triumphant turn from a bonafide screen legend. Jude’s version is decidedly more street-level, casting an actor capable of playing someone who feels astonishingly small even when the emotions are large. Tompa is a rather fearless presence here, unafraid to bring Orsolya’s downtrodden neediness into every moment, whether it be affectionate voice notes for her holidaying kids or her blasé tolerance of a really bad date. She is modern misery incarnate, an apologetic presence stuck in a thankless job and a new-build property, financially comfortable but emotionally bankrupt. Centring the film on such a pitiful character who does very little to redeem herself, other than ask for absolution at every conceivable turn, is a bold move from Jude, leaving behind any convention of having a likeable or even sympathetic protagonist and further underlining the horror of how the man, the system and the powers that be can crush someone into such a tiny version of themselves.
Its dryness is at once its most uncompromising element and its hardest to swallow; it’s a healthy pill for our modern moment, administered without lubrication straight down our gullets.
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Smaller still is his camera, choosing pointedly to shoot on an iPhone, turning impeccable compositions into off-kilter snapshots of pure truth. There’s a strange natural occurrence to shooting like this that loosens Jude’s grip on just what we’re looking at; the intuitive auto-focus occasionally wracks back and forth when you least expect it, turning what is already a bleary-eyed experience into something downright dissociative, snapping the illusion of film as a perfect construct and reminding you that this is a raw endeavour. Other visionaries like Danny Boyle have used the pocket tool to hyper-kinetic ends (who could forget 28 Years Later’s insane iPhone rig/headshot cam?), but Jude utilises it as both a reality checker and a timestamp, dating his film to this very moment and reminding you that this is (unfortunately) as real as it gets.
As a result, Jude’s commitment to verisimilitude somewhat undoes his acerbic style that many may look for in his work. His satirical eye remains unblinking, yet his razzle-dazzle techniques are firmly under lock and key this time, remaining as deadpan as humanly possible, even something as simple as his trademark people-free portraits of the city. There’s a linearity here that feels fatalistic in its plodding progression, reasserting that the weight of history (the setting is Cluj, Transylvania’s biggest city, which has a long and sad legacy of colonisation and hatred central to the film’s conflict), the drudgery of the present and the impending doom of the future will grind us all to dust unless we actually take a stand for ethics, goodness and happiness.
That is, of course, easier said than done, as iterated by the brilliantly irritating Fred (Adonis Tanța), an overbearing know-it-all who takes a shine to Orsolya and bombards her with Buddhist proverbs that become so inane that he might as well be telling ‘knock knock’ jokes. The quest for inner peace has rarely been as meaningless when ancient ideas are reduced to smart alec hobbyists spouting them with infuriating over-confidence and undue authority, and Tanta’s performance is admirably committed to destroying any zen in his wake.
Ideas like this rattle around in Kontinental ‘25 like beads in a coconut husk, not making an unpleasant sound, but hardly sweet music to the ear. Its dryness is at once its most uncompromising element and its hardest to swallow; it’s a healthy pill for our modern moment, administered without lubrication straight down our gullets. With its honest judgement that weighs society’s moral turpitude against the values its protagonist is desperately trying to hold onto, it may not be the end of the world just yet, but it may feel like we’re done as a species while you’re watching it.
KONTINENTAL ’25 IS IN SELECTED CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM TODAY
