On the Silver Globe

A group of astronauts flees Earth and lands on a distant planet. Their recorders are running; they narrate everything themselves. Children are born, the language degrades, dead astronauts are taken for gods, and within a few generations a religious order appears. Then someone new arrives from Earth and is declared a saviour. The subject is not space but how a religion is manufactured from nothing. The film shows the birth of myth step by step: a misunderstanding, a death, and a narrative that arranges them. The man declared saviour eventually accepts the role himself. The form is suffocating and exhausting. The camera never settles, the actors shout their lines, the scenes explain nothing. It is not an easy film and does not try to be. The story of the production is as strange as the film. Shooting was stopped in 1977 by a decision of the Polish culture ministry, the sets and costumes were destroyed, and Andrzej Żuławski left the country. Ten years later he was allowed back to the material; instead of completing the missing scenes he added a commentary in his own voice describing what should have happened in them, laid over footage of contemporary Polish streets. The gaps were not covered over, they were displayed. Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela and Grażyna Dyląg are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental science fiction and the extremes of Eastern European cinema. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a legible narrative; the film is deliberately fragmentary and some passages are nothing but spoken summary.