On an alien planet two astronaut researchers are given a relic found by a race of bird-like creatures. The relic turns out to be a video diary from a group of astronauts that landed on the planet decades ago. The footage relates the events that happened when the Earth spacecraft crashed. Shortly after crashing one of the astronauts, Tomasz (Leszek Dlugosz), dies leaving only three of the ship’s inhabitants alive, Piotr (Jerzy Gralek), Jerzy (Jerzy Trela) and Marta (Iwona Bielska). Marta is pregnant with Tomasz’s child. Marta gives birth; however, the child begins growing at an accelerated rate compared to life on Earth.
Marta continues to have children. Marta and Piotr eventually die, and Marta’s children begin a race of humans on the alien planet. Jerzy lives and grows old but ages slower than Marta’s children. Jerzy is referred to as the “Old Man” and becomes, to some extent, a demigod. Jerzy sends to Earth recordings of the events that led up to the establishment of the new human race. He eventually dies.
Sometime in the future a scientist named Marek (Andrzej Seweryn) arrives on the planet and is believed, by the new human race, to be the return of the Old Man and is hailed as a god. They believe that Marek is there to free them from the planet’s telepathic indigenous bird people called Sherns. Events don’t go as planned and Marek ends up like most messiahs.
“On the Silver Globe” AKA “Na srebrnym globie” was released in 1988 and was written and directed by Andrzej Zulawski. It is a Polish epic surrealist science fiction art-house movie. The film was adapted from a trio of books called “The Lunar Trilogy” which was written by Jerzy Zulawski, Director Andrzej’s granduncle, somewhere around 1900. The film is technically unfinished.
Zulawski began filming in 1976 but was only able to complete somewhere around three-quarters to eighty percent of film before the Polish ministry of culture halted production in 1977 because of the film’s themes of criticism of government as well as communism’s censorship of personal freedom and anti-authoritarianism. It is believed that Janusz Wilhelmi, the vice-minister of cultural affairs, ordered that all prints of the existing film as well as any sets or costumes be destroyed. This was not done so in 1985 Zulawski completed the film, but in a shortened version using voiceover to tie in the missing scenes and inserting random shots of everyday people going about their normal activity as backdrop for the narrative.
The film is long and confusing. It is a surreal experience with a found footage component as well as having a religious tone. For a long time, I had no clue as to what was going on. It is a strange combination of Mad Max meets Blair Witch meets Lord of the Flies, in Polish. I have a subtitled version so perhaps some of the confusion is because of the translations.
I’m not even sure what all the hype is about this movie. I got the general idea of it only after doing some research on the film and re-watching some of it. The visuals are stunning, and the film is full of interesting cinematography, however, I found the movie to be over-the-top acting wise and full of prolonged philosophical speeches that rambled and became ranting to the point where big chunks of the film became tedious.