On the Silver Globe (1988)

A team of astronauts land on an inhabitable planet and form a society. Many years later, a single astronaut is sent to the planet and becomes a messiah.

Director:

Andrzej Zulawski

Writers:

Andrzej Zulawski, Jerzy Zulawski (books)

Stars:

Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela, Grazyna Dylag

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Andrzej Seweryn	...	Marek
Jerzy Trela	...	Jerzy
Grazyna Dylag
Waldemar Kownacki
Iwona Bielska
Jerzy Gralek
Elzbieta Karkoszka
Krystyna Janda	...	The Actress
Maciej Góraj
Henryk Talar
Leszek Dlugosz
Jan Frycz	...	(as Andrzej Frycz)
Henryk Bista
Wieslaw Komasa
Jerzy Golinski

Storyline

A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to find freedom and start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They eventually die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god. Some time later, a space bureaucrat, running from a broken heart, arrives and finds the colonizer's descendants enslaved by bird-monsters called Cherns. Society is divided into numerous classes, and everyone is waiting for the arrival of a messiah. The newcomer is considered a suitable candidate, and for some time he lives as a god. In the end he is crucified by his people.

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Plot Keywords:

pole the person | broken heart | explorer | freedom | children | 

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Genres:

Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish

Release Date:

10 February 1989 (Poland)

Also Known As:

On the Silver Globe

Filming Locations:

Pustynia Bledowska, Slaskie, Poland

Company Credits

Production Co:

Zespól Filmowy "Kadr"

Technical Specs

Runtime:

166 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Orwochrome)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Andrzej Zulawski began filming after the success of _L'Important c'est d'aimer (1975)_, completing around three-quarters of film before the Polish ministry of culture halted production in 1978. After the democratization of Poland in 1986 Zulawski completed the film. Because production was interrupted from 1978 until 1986, the final film was released in an "amputated" form, with voice-over narration covering missing scenes.

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Connections

Featured in Renegade Cut: On the Silver Globe (2017)

User Reviews

strange and haunting

first off, the copy of the film that i was able to track down, was in polish with a very difficult to follow English voice-over narration/dubbing that spoke everyone's lines. Yet, despite the tedious dubbing issue and the frustrating image quality on the bootleg i tracked down, the wonderfully unsettling lunacy of the whole affair was able to shine through and really hit home for me.

One earlier reviewer, in an attempt to discredit the film, described the actors' performances as similar to the ramblings of mental patients. I thought about it a bit, and concluded that, yes, all of the performances did have an element of hysteria and frenzy that someone might attribute to psychotics, but for me, thats part of what made the picture so extraordinarily unsettling (in the best way). The point-of-view style of camera-work and delivery that carried the first half of the film was really unnerving. The entire thing had a dizzying sense of madness that threatened to crumble at almost any moment, but managed to hold together long enough (around 3 hours) to hit you with the savage power of its staggering ending.

It had more going for it than simply being "crazy" though, as i felt it also offered a fascinating look at the cyclical nature of human civilization, and perhaps more so, the ultimate hopelessness of it. It is a terrifyingly bleak film.

if you can track down a copy of it, and feel as though you can handle the often tedious viewing experience, its definitely worth it. There's nothing else out there quite like it.