Na srebrnym globie
366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.
DIRECTED BY: Andrzej Zulawski
FEATURING: Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela, Iwona Bielska, Grażyna Dyląg, Waldemar Kownacki, Krystyna Janda
PLOT: Three astronauts are stranded on an Earthlike planet and populate it with their offspring over the years. Decades later, another astronaut, Marek, travels to the planet and is revered as a messiah who the people believe will lead them to victory over the birdlike Shern. Meanwhile, back on Earth, it is revealed that Marek was chosen for the mission by two scientist, one of whom was his girlfriend, who wanted him out of the way so they could continue their affair.
BACKGROUND:
- Based on the novel series “The Lunar Trilogy,” which was written by director Zulawski’s great uncle Jerzy Zulawski.
- In the books, completed in 1911, the “silver globe” is the Earth’s Moon; in this modern adaptation this obviously had to be changed to an extraterrestrial planet. The Moon location explains why travel between the two locations is a relatively simple and quick matter.
- After his second film, The Devil (1972), was banned by Polish authorities, Zulawski moved to France in a mutually-agreed-upon exile. When his first French production, The Important Thing Is to Love (1975) became a prestigious art-house hit, the same authorities invited him to return to Poland to work on a project of his choice. He chose On the Silver Globe.
- On the Silver Globe had a torturous production history. In 1977 Polish authorities shut down the shoot before completion, citing both cost and ideological objections, and ordered the footage destroyed. Fortunately, this instruction was not completely followed (in the film’s prologue, Zulawski laments that the government “murdered” 1/5 of his work). In 1988 the director was able to reconstruct the surviving footage and create a nearly complete film, using narration spoken over new footage of Polish streets to fill in the gaps for the missing scenes and hiring new actors to overdub some of the old ones. The reconstruction debuted at Cannes in 1988. You can find more detail in El Rob Hubbard‘s reviews of the film itself and on the documentary Escape to the Silver Globe (2021).
- Much of the dialogue was taken or adapted from various mystical texts, rather than from the novel itself.
- Voted onto the Apocrypha by readers in this poll.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: On a beach, dozens of soldiers are impaled (apparently through the anus) on spikes which must be thirty feet high. (One crane shot shows us an actor who is actually precariously perched on the pole.) Two robed Pharisee types in leprous caked makeup converse as they are shot from below, with the torture victims soaring above them like orbiting bodies in the sky.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Messy orange-blooded bird/woman sex; interplanetary travel pill
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: On the Silver Globe is a Cubist science fiction epic, presented as if it were being performed by a severely stoned 1970s avant-garde theater troupe enacting obscure Masonic rituals on a beach in Estonia at a point when every single actor is undergoing either a devastating breakup or a profound existential crisis (usually both). Without commentary, the plot is nearly impossible to follow in a single viewing, but the movie is definitely something you’ve never seen before.
Trailer for On the Silver Globe reconstruction
COMMENTS: On the Silver Globe‘s plot is so difficult to divine that Continue reading 61*. ON THE SILVER GLOBE (1988)
Calamari Union is The Great Escape for idiots. A collection of 14 low-level criminals all named Frank (plus an additional traveler who speaks exclusively in English that he seems to have picked up from watching movies) join forces to escape certain doom in a bad Helsinki neighborhood. Are the cops closing in? Is some crime boss about to bring the hammer down on them? No, they just don’t fit in. Too many hills, with kids and dogs running around willy-nilly. No good can come of all that. They all agree: “A sick branch must seek a healthier tree.” They must escape to the paradise of Eira.