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Throughout the film, the trams are depicted as crowded, the buses are outdated, and personal vehicles are all in various states of disrepair.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