This unfinished Polish sci-fi, shot in 1976/7 but not released until the Communist regime was coming to an end more than 10 years later, has fantastic and extraordinary images all the way through, but a screenplay seemingly entirely full of gibberish.
The basic plot is that astronauts begin life on a new planet, and after a few generations forget their knowledge and regress into a weird religious cult, warring with strange birdmen creatures from across the alien sea. When a further astronaut arrives, the cult view him as a messiah, until they don't, and then crucify him.
That's about all the story there is, but it goes on for nearly three hours, and all the characters urgently barking out philosophical proclamations and non sequiturs quickly become exhausting and really a non-fatal form of torture. There's no-one to like or care for; it's just chaos, the whole way through.
Visually, the Soviet-era filmmakers were often far ahead of everyone in the west, even someone like Kubrick, and the cinematography in this film seems 15 or 20 years out of time, not resembling anything else I've ever seen from the 1970s. The costumes and setting (and at least one of the characters) seem startlingly reminiscent of David Lynch's attempt at Dune in 1984, though Lynch's vision of sci-fi was far easier to follow. Let that sink in.
Hard to know how to rate, because it definitely IS a bad film, when weighed as a story, but the visual side of it is so glorious, that its achievements there cannot be overlooked. On The Silver Globe is simultaneously one of the worst films I've ever seen and one of the most dazzling, too.
4½/10.
The basic plot is that astronauts begin life on a new planet, and after a few generations forget their knowledge and regress into a weird religious cult, warring with strange birdmen creatures from across the alien sea. When a further astronaut arrives, the cult view him as a messiah, until they don't, and then crucify him.
That's about all the story there is, but it goes on for nearly three hours, and all the characters urgently barking out philosophical proclamations and non sequiturs quickly become exhausting and really a non-fatal form of torture. There's no-one to like or care for; it's just chaos, the whole way through.
Visually, the Soviet-era filmmakers were often far ahead of everyone in the west, even someone like Kubrick, and the cinematography in this film seems 15 or 20 years out of time, not resembling anything else I've ever seen from the 1970s. The costumes and setting (and at least one of the characters) seem startlingly reminiscent of David Lynch's attempt at Dune in 1984, though Lynch's vision of sci-fi was far easier to follow. Let that sink in.
Hard to know how to rate, because it definitely IS a bad film, when weighed as a story, but the visual side of it is so glorious, that its achievements there cannot be overlooked. On The Silver Globe is simultaneously one of the worst films I've ever seen and one of the most dazzling, too.
4½/10.