Blog Post on The Way I Spent the End of the World

In contrast to such films as Reverse, Little Rose, and Walking Too Fast, which highlight urban landscapes, Cătălin Mitulescu’s The Way I Spent the End of the World (2006) bares the modest, frustrating living conditions of Romanians living just outside the big city. The buildings in the Romanian town are cobbled together from brick and sheet metal rather than concrete, and when it rains, the unpaved roads turn into a muddy bog. Conditions inside the houses are also less than luxurious, with the brother and sister protagonists Lali and Eva sharing a bedroom that consists of little more than two beds that are pushed together and a desk.  There is also a small kitchen with just enough space for a dining area. And while there seems to be enough food to go around—as evidenced by the neighborhood party thrown following the birth of a child—there is definitely a shortage of certain desirable goods. In a scene at the beginning of the film, Eva has to spread a very small piece of cheese over three slices of bread, and she tempts Lali with a jar of fruit jam as if it were a delicacy.

Throughout the film, the trams are depicted as crowded, the buses are outdated, and personal vehicles are all in various states of disrepair. Scenes of transportation often involve the younger generation and their desire to improve their situation or to somehow remove themselves from the deficiencies of the regime. For example, Lali and his little friends pretend to operate motor vehicles, while at the same time they plan to murder Ceaușescu. The boys seem to associate the two, as if they could use these vehicles to end the oppression of the regime. As evoked in the film, however, modes of transport signify a much more complex motif than simple fantasizing and dreaming. Transport connects individuals with new realities that may exceed their expectations. On one hand, a boat serves as a pragmatic means of crossing the Danube to escape Romania while on the other hand the image of a big ship on the open sea itself symbolizes freedom.

 The Way I Spent the End of the World captures the pervasive everyday disgust that ordinary Romanians felt for Ceauşescu and his cult of personality. While Andreï’s parents are mentioned and blacklisted as dissidents, such people do not play a primary role in the film.  Even the son of a secret policeman does not respect the regime. In one of the very first scenes of the film, Alexander brings Eva, then his girlfriend, into an empty classroom and shows off to her by taking a few fake but defiant swings at a plaster bust of Ceaușescu before accidentally shattering it. Eva shows no remorse for her involvement in the shattered Ceaușescu bust; her refusal to apologize is grounds for school officials to transfer her to a trade school. Eva and Lali’s father brilliantly responds to Ceaușescu’s cult of personality by satirizing a newscast by Ceaușescu himself, to Eva and Lali’s delight. Even the slow-witted, kind-hearted Bulba messes with dissent when he finds Lali hiding in some reeds by a fishing pond;  Bulba promises to “take care of Ceaușescu for hurting my little friend [Lali].”

The close-up and medium shots of Eva throughout The Way I Spent the End of the World project her inner fortitude as well as the key decisions she makes that drive the plot.  She seems to process these decisions thoroughly and silently before acting on them, but it is difficult to tell whether she is feeling regretful, indifferent, or quietly triumphant.  Hers is the face that Lali and we must constantly try to decipher.  Eva’s stubbornness vis-à-vis her elders and peers motivates her actions during the first half of the film, landing her in the trade school and leading her to reject Alexander and other would-be boyfriends for the company of Andrei, who plans to flee Romania.  She proves her mettle to Andrei when she refuses to move from a train’s path until right before it is about to hit her.  Yet Eva is not completely sure to what extent she should exercise her propensity for risk-taking.  After preparing with Andrei for their great escape and traveling with him in a freight car to the Danube, she abandons him and swims back to the Romanian shore, unable to leave her family and,  in particular, her little brother. In other instances, Eva seems compliant, dancing with Alex at her mother’s request, earning an honorable mention in trade school, and working at menial jobs without complaint.

Lali’s role in the film is dynamic.  At certain points, he is the source of tension and concern for his family, succumbing easily to illness or clumsily attempting suicide when his sister seems to have gone away. At other times he resolves tension between other people, trying to mediate the relationship between Eva and their mother when Eva returns home from her failed Danube crossing and eating with Eva when she sits alone in their bedroom. The antics of Lali and his friends often interject humor and hope into The Way I Spent the End of the World.  They are constantly playing and dreaming up fantasies of traveling, being warriors, and even killing Ceaușescu. Lali may represent the “I” in the film’s title because he embodies the most profound desires of many of the nation’s citizens, keenly aware of the regime’s hardships but still attempting to enjoy

a normal, often pleasurable, existence. “The end of the world” is a relative concept; for some people it could mean the end of an oppressive regime, but for others it could be a big sister’s journey to a distant career. Alternatively, though the title The Way I Spent the End of the World implies a singular perspective of the last year of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in Romania in 1989, in many ways the “I” in the title goes beyond the main characters Eva and Lali, taking on a much broader, more inclusive, collective representation of a major shift for the Romanian people.

The Way I Spent the End of the World conveys the “bittersweet nostalgia” that Roumania Deltcheva evokes in her article, “Reliving the past in East European cinemas.” The film attempts to show that though there were many hard times during the regime, the good memories cannot be forgotten. Even in the literal winter of the Romanian Revolution, the environment still seems colorful and vibrant, an atmosphere that Deltcheva identifies as the “golden hue.” This film is permeated with peach, bright beige, and other warm colors, consistent with feelings of serenity or even subdued happiness. After the riot against Ceaușescu and his death, the film became infused with even brighter lighting and more vibrant colors, suggesting the hope for a brighter future. The film also focuses more on individual experience and complex characterization than the atrocities of the Ceaușescu’s regime. Eva and Lali grow up under Ceaușescu; for them, the regime is all they know. Lali enjoys a relatively carefree childhood which contrasts with Eva’s harsh reality of enforced compliance and obligation. The film’s indulgence in the imagination of Lali and his buddies also indicates that an oppressive regime isn’t strong enough to suppress the creative, wandering mind of a child.  We see the boys driving their neighborhood to foreign lands in broken-down buses and blowing such large bubbles with their imported gum that these blow away into the golden brown sky.  This film does cherish childhood, but it certainly does not long for the bad old days of Ceaușescu’s regime nor does it romanticize that era in any way. Hatred towards Ceaușescu and painful consequences of his oppressive reign are present throughout the film.  This is the balance that Mitulescu manages to achieve: the bittersweet with the sinister.

Edited by Rajlakshmi De, Tahsin Zaman, Song (Sean) Zhiang

Walking Too Fast Blog

Director Radim Špaček chooses to express the bleak atmosphere of Czech “normalization” in the 1980s with gray, dimly lit exterior shots.  In general, colors are muted; beige, grey, black, dark green, and blue dominate the film. The drab color scheme of the film may convey Gustáv Husák’s aggressive repression of dissidence and difference.  For example, the viewer can tell that the character Klára’s hair is a bold red, but the intensity of that color is only fractionally conveyed by the cinematography. The cinematography also conveys the sense of being followed and controlled, in keeping with the film’s original Czech title, Pouta, which means “handcuffs.” Long distant shots and strange camera movements help create the feeling of being followed, and the many scenes shot through doors, windows, or railings reinforce the feeling of isolation and the fear of being watched.

The cinematographer portrays the urban Czech landscape as a series of smoggy streets and anonymous, industrial-style buildings. Buildings shown in the background have peeling paint or crumbling concrete, revealing the city’s decay.  The soccer field and track where the secret policemen exercise is surrounded by Soviet bloc architecture and devoid of sunlight.  The office of the film’s protagonist, the secret policeman Antonín, with the dark browns and yellows of its walls and furniture, seems drab and lifeless.  Natural landscapes are also industrialized and tainted, as in the scene where Antonín gets out of the car to relieve himself. The place he stops seems naturally beautiful, but is also clearly the site of a mine or quarry.  Only two things appear to bring color and meaning into Antonín’s life—his vividly colored dreams and Klára, with her red hair starkly contrasting with everything else around her.  When the film comes to a close and Antonin, as well as the audience, achieves a final escape from the clutches of his mind, the shot is not at all separated or claustrophobic, but radiates with sunlight and ends in an unusual white screen.

The Czech dissidents in Walking Too Fast are portrayed as troubled characters whose motivations are conflicted. The audience quickly learns of Tomas Sykora’s adulterous affair with Klára Kadlecova and bears witness to his double life as he leaves a wife and children at home to have sex with Klára in his friend Pavel Vesely’s apartment.  Tomas is distinctly unheroic when his wife discovers his infidelity; his only response to her hurt and fury is a short “sorry”. He does, however, have his courageous moments in the interrogation room with Antonín.  In one scene he refuses to submit even when he is being tortured. The cinematographer uses conventional lighting in this shot, casting Sykora in brightness and moving Antonín into the shadows.

Pavel, the film’s second dissident, is torn between trying to collaborate with the secret police in order to save his skin and feeling guilty for not standing up to the secret police and fighting for a free life. It is true that he does seem to believe in the ideals voiced in his writing. That being said, he does not have the courage to live these ideals. He informs on Tomas to stay on good terms with the secret police, and ultimately (at the request of the secret police) convinces his friend to leave the country. During his interview with a German magazine, Vesely tells a story he read: in a future autocratic state, dissidents free themselves from its control because they trust each other. Off camera, it turns out that Pavel is the one who abuses the others’ trust and “slits their throats.”

In Walking Too Fast, Czechoslovakia’s secret police force is a disjointed group of individuals who don’t seem to trust each other. Secret policemen are initially depicted as very privileged, living a seemingly carefree lifestyle with a bar and other amenities installed in their headquarters. The viewer sees just how intimately the secret police establishment is integrated into the lives of its agents – in their leisure pastimes and at home. We are privy to secret police interrogation rooms, offices, long hallways, detention cells, dark alleys, and car rides. The film portrays the secret police as omnipresent and omnipotent in society. Their power is clear: individual police officers can dictate to society through the use of their badges. Antonín uses threats and violence to reinstate Klára in her job, and he uses his badge to thwart interference when beating up a man who was flirting with Klára at the bar. Antonín also uses his power to continuously interrogate and imprison Tomas.

A definite hierarchy is evident within the organization. Both Antonín and his partner, Martin, report to the Major, and the Major reminds them both of the secret police “family.”  He tells Martin to “take care of [Antonín] like a brother, if anything happens tell dad” and explains that the secret police “don’t like people who don’t care about the family; if they disappoint us, we punish them.”  Yet, as subsequent events show, this family is one that cares only about the institution, not the individuals.

The film depicts Martin as jovial and extroverted, whereas Antonín is introverted and never content.  Antonín is tightly wound and this self-induced pressure eventually causes him to crack. Martin, on the other hand, is easy-going and kind of a goofball. Although less intelligent and often manipulated by Antonín, the sociable Martin is ultimately able to salvage his sanity by keeping a lighthearted attitude and refusing to let the job dominate all of his relationships and interactions. The introverted Antonín, on the other hand, lets “the service” become his “dad, wife, and old lady”—in the words of the Comrade Major—and slowly loses his mind. While Martin plays ball with others, the running Antonín ignores the football that Martin throws at him. When the intoxicated Martin tries to entertain everyone, Antonín drinks alone and feels sick. Antonín is tough, knows the miseries of life, assumes the role of driver, and always wants to go “somewhere,” while Martin is simple, never thinks of things too deeply, and enjoys living in the present and sitting in the passenger seat.

Klára, Tomas’s lover and, increasingly, Antonín’s obsession, seems to be a special character because she does not appear to apologize for who she is or have any illusions about her actions. Her job at the factory emphasizes this—she is above it all, above the rats in the maze, as she skillfully drives a crane. In some ways, this attitude makes her similar to Antonín. She has an affair with Tomas, and seems indifferent to his wife’s inevitable suffering. This is in line with Antonín’s actions and character, as he is a man who will do anything for what he wants no matter how much collateral damage he may leave behind. In his desire and quest to have Klára, he ruins the life of not only Tomas and his family, but also his own wife, whom he kicks her out and dispossesses. Loneliness is a common experience for both Klára and Antonín, and drives both of their actions. Antonín even tries to highlight their similarity by telling Klára that she is unhappy and alone, just as he is. It is only when Antonín becomes directly involved in her life and expresses his desire to protect and be with Klára that she becomes disillusioned with her “reality” and sees her world and the people in it as they truly are. Klára’s gradual disenchantment and acknowledgment of the forces operating around her parallels Antonín’s growing delusion and loss of control of the people and circumstances around him, though she refuses to follow him into his “chasm.”

Before the film begins, Antonín apparently served as a model agent, rigid and professional. Over the course of Walking Too Fast, he retreats further into isolation and instability as the stress of his work and jealousy towards Tomas take over.  As he becomes more enamored with Klara, Antonín grows increasingly violent. He begins to use his power as a secret policeman not to suppress dissent but to further a personal agenda.  He loses control of almost everything in his life: his health, his job, his emotions, and his allegiance to the state. First, Antonín begins to have panic attacks where he temporarily loses control of his breathing. Second, as his infatuation with Klára warms up, his fellow officers become suspicious, which in turn, stimulates his paranoia while at work. Next, his feelings for Klára escalate while his other personal relationships deteriorate. Finally, Rusinak is completely out of control. His self-deluded love for Klára trumps his allegiance to the state, which causes him to act impulsively and irrationally, paving the way to his suicide at the end of the film.

Edited by Torrey Lubkin, Alex Stine, and James Wu