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Production took place from 1976 to 1977, but was interrupted by the Polish authorities. The film's budget is estimated to be at least PLN 58 million.[2] Many years later, Żuławski was able to finish his film, although not in the format originally intended. On the Silver Globe premiered at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, and has received critical acclaim.
Plot
In the far future, a group of dissidentastronauts crash land on an unnamed Earth-like planet after escaping from a degraded and vaguely dystopianEarth. One succumbs to his injuries shortly after. As a result of the accident, only three astronauts remain, a woman named Marta and two men, Piotr and Jerzy. Communication with Earth is lost and the survivors decide to settle on the seashore and give rise to a new human race.
After the birth of their first son, Marta notices that the child is growing much faster than on Earth. Later, an unseen enemy kills Piotr and Marta dies in childbirth. Decades later, when Jerzy is in his old age, the new humanity is a tribe of several dozen people with whom he can no longer make contact, they are partially feral and view Jerzy as a demigod. Before he dies, he sends a video diary to Earth containing recordings from handheld video cameras.
A planetary scientist named Marek receives the recordings and travels to the planet. When he arrives, the priests in power declare Marek to be the messiah who, according to prophecy, must free humans from the power of telepathicbird-like humanoids called "Sherns", the planet's native inhabitants. Marek accepts this role and leads a military campaign against the Sherns. Back on Earth, we learn that the reason Marek was sent to this planet was because his actress girlfriend was sleeping with a fellow officer and they wanted to get rid of him to continue their affair. At first, the humans succeed and capture the Shern leader Avius, but the subsequent landing in the Shern city ends in disaster. Meanwhile, the priests start to believe that Marek was an outcast from the Earth, rather than a messiah who came to fulfill the religious prophecy. Marek is stoned and then crucified.
Jerzy Żuławski wrote the novel on which the film is based, On the Silver Globe, around 1900 as part of The Lunar Trilogy. Żuławski was the granduncle of Andrzej Żuławski. Andrzej Żuławski left his native Poland for France in 1972 to avoid Polish government censorship. After Żuławski's critical success with the 1975 film L'important c'est d'aimer, the Polish authorities in charge of cultural affairs reevaluated their assessment of him. They invited him to return to Poland and produce a project of his own choice. Żuławski, who had always wanted to make a film of his grand uncle's novel, saw the offer as a unique opportunity to achieve this aim.
Subsequently, the work was stopped on charges of "extremely low labor efficiency and overprices". Żuławski undertook to speed up the work. Until May 1977, further filming was carried out in Police, in Lower Silesia, in the Wieliczka salt mine, in Krakow, again on the coast and in the mountains of the Caucasus.[4]
On June 1, 1977, work on the film was stopped by Janusz Wilhelmi, vice-minister of cultural affairs.[2] Wilhelmi shut down the film project, which was eighty percent complete, and ordered all materials destroyed. The reels of the unfinished film were however preserved, along with costumes and props, by the film studio and by members of the cast and crew.
At the end of 1985, Żuławski agreed to complete the film. In 1986, shots were shot from the streets of contemporary Poland, to which the director added the missing scenes. The acting team and cast members abroad were dubbed.[2]
On July 10, 1987, the film passed inspection.[2] In May 1988, a version of the film, consisting of the preserved footage plus a commentary to fill in the narrative gaps, premiered at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.[5]
Reception
Critical response
On the Silver Globe has an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on six reviews, and an average rating of 8.2/10.[6]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 72 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".[7]