User reviews

This ambitious Polish science-fiction film first began production in 1975, but in 1977, with eighty percent of filming complete, the Polish government ordered production to stop and all sets, costumes and footage to be destroyed, over fears that some themes present in the film were an allegorical criticism of Poland's communist rule. The surviving reels of footage, smuggled out of Poland by the director and crew, lay dormant until the fall of communism and, although incomplete, the film was finally released in 1988. As much of the footage was lost or indeed never filmed, the narrative was incomplete and in a daring move Żuławski decided to narrate the missing scenes and include their destruction as part of the narrative, this narration being presented over footage of a busy Polish city that zips by the camera as Żuławski fills in the gaps, also providing clear dividing points between the three main acts.

The film itself deals with the cyclical nature of existence, the ethics of freedom, the power of belief and the dangers of allowing that belief to fuel ideology, all told through the anthropology of an emerging society created when three astronauts from Earth crash land on a distant planet. For the film's first act we follow the point of view Peter who records events on a video-camera, as he, Marta & Thomas attempt to survive and start a new life in the barren, alien wilderness. After Marta becomes pregnant and gives birth to Thomas' baby, the astronauts realise that the child is growing at an accelerated rate. The film jumps forwards erratically as we are presented with snippets of a society emerging in front of Peter's camera lens, as the astronaut's children grow to maturity and themselves begin to procreate. The children begin to deify their astronaut parents, who seemingly never age as generations pass. The first act ends with Marta and Thomas dead and Peter, now referred to only as 'The Old Man', alone in a society of his children who do not understand his ravings, nor why he will not die like the others and ultimately they begin to resent his presence. Eventually, Peter returns to his space-craft and sends his hours of recorded footage back to Earth.

The second act revolves around Marek, the owner of the space agency that funded the first mission, who himself heads to the planet to escape the pain of a lost love, only to find a savage, incomprehensible and divided society of people who have been awaiting his prophesied arrival. He is regarded as their messiah and through his eyes we are introduced to the advancements in the beliefs and structure of the society since we last saw them. Marek becomes embroiled in his role as deity, guiding the society under his rule and leading the charge against a race of bird- like creatures from across the sea called 'Sherns' who steal women to mate with and produce mutated half-human, half-Shern offspring. The final act takes place primarily on Earth, where another astronaut named Jack is attempting to discern what befell Marek's mission to the planet. He is caught up in an affair with Ava, the woman for whom Marek left Earth, and in a fit of drug addled depression he himself heads to the planet, only to find the people's messiah, Marek, crucified in grisly fashion. Ultimately, Żuławski is dealing with some heavy themes here, asserting that humanity has a need to continually create and destroy his gods, that without belief there cannot be understanding and that without understanding their can be no happiness.

The world Żuławski presents is stark and beautiful, the Baltic shores, Caucasus mountains and Mongolian desert providing the barren and isolated landscapes that so capture the imagination throughout the film, but also it's the wonderfully designed costumes and props and cold, grey-blue cinematography that lend these places a true alien feel. Overall 'On the Silver Globe' is as intriguing as it is impenetrable. The frenetic camera work launches us directly into the midst of the chaos on-screen, events later explained more by action than dialogue as characters descend further into erratic and emotional madness, exploring the reasons for their being and the world around them through pained and awkward ad-libbed philosophical diatribes. While the narrative is most certainly confused, partly because of the unique journey of the film's production and release, and partly because of the confounding dialogue, the over-reaching story told is one that still conveys a powerful message about the nature of belief in human society and the desire to comprehend our existence. While most certainly not a film for everyone, 'On the Silver Globe' is a tough two and a half hour experience to endure, but one that repays it's viewer's diligence with some compelling food for thought and some truly beautiful cinematic scenes.

A really grotesque sci-fi story with some excellent visuals - sadly, the movie was never really finished (production took place in 1976/1977 and was stopped by Polish authorities), in 1988 Silver Globe was presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Because director Zulawski was only able to complete about four-fifths of the film, he used street shots of Warsaw and Kraków to fill the missing parts, while he explains off-screen what is happening according to the script. Despite that unlucky fact, On the Silver Globe is still a really fine journey, but be warned, it is for sure no movie for adepts of Star Wars, Star Trek or such sci-fi movies but for those who hunt after something special. If you dig movies like The Holy Mountain (1975), Zardoz (1974), Stalker (1978), Hard to Be A God (1989, or the version from 2013), O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985) and such pearls, Silver Globe may just be the right kind of movie for you. My rate: 7 + 1 for the visuals.

I finally managed a track down a copy of this film after looking for it forever. And not only did it live up to expectations, it surpassed them in every way possible! I had no idea what to expect from a Polish sci-fi film from the 70ies and the first thing I noticed were the lavish costumes, extremely impressive sets and great make-up. If someone would attempt to pull off something similar in the US today it would cost insane amounts of money. This is a film by Adrzej Zulawski so it figures that there is a lot of philosophical dialog and religious metaphors aplenty. In a way I was reminded of the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and maybe if he had made his adaptation of DUNE, as he planned for many years, it would have turned out to be something like THE SILVER GLOBE. The copy of the film I watched was taped from the German TV station 3 Sat who actually paid for subtitling the film in German! The rather poor picture quality only stressed the otherworldly beauty of the images. Often the film felt like a transmission from another time or maybe even another planet. It is a truly unique gem, even in it's unfinished form, and a film that is overdue for rediscovery.

first off, the copy of the film that i was able to track down, was in polish with a very difficult to follow English voice-over narration/dubbing that spoke everyone's lines. Yet, despite the tedious dubbing issue and the frustrating image quality on the bootleg i tracked down, the wonderfully unsettling lunacy of the whole affair was able to shine through and really hit home for me.

One earlier reviewer, in an attempt to discredit the film, described the actors' performances as similar to the ramblings of mental patients. I thought about it a bit, and concluded that, yes, all of the performances did have an element of hysteria and frenzy that someone might attribute to psychotics, but for me, thats part of what made the picture so extraordinarily unsettling (in the best way). The point-of-view style of camera-work and delivery that carried the first half of the film was really unnerving. The entire thing had a dizzying sense of madness that threatened to crumble at almost any moment, but managed to hold together long enough (around 3 hours) to hit you with the savage power of its staggering ending.

It had more going for it than simply being "crazy" though, as i felt it also offered a fascinating look at the cyclical nature of human civilization, and perhaps more so, the ultimate hopelessness of it. It is a terrifyingly bleak film.

if you can track down a copy of it, and feel as though you can handle the often tedious viewing experience, its definitely worth it. There's nothing else out there quite like it.

only a truly gifted artist could make something this uncompromisingly weird-it makes lost highway look like an episode of meet the press.okay,let's take a story about a few astronauts leaving earth and landing on a distant planet.the astronauts die off relatively quickly and their children grow up at an accelerated rate-the children spring into being btw,no copulation is ever hinted at much less shown-so quickly as to reach their tenth (or so) birthdays in a matter of days.the children welcome the next visitor,presumably from the planet poland,as a god...and i'm not sure what happened after that...that last sentence which probably took you about ten seconds to read is the only synopsis for this 2hr30min minute film i can muster.and i have no idea if what i wrote is even remotely accurate.to say i didn't really follow this movie is besides the point,its greatness lies not in its storytelling abilities so much but in the tough to discern netherworlds of aura and atmosphere.whatever the holy mountain,electra,my love,mulholland drive,blood of a poet or the other 2 giants of polish sur-reality,the saragossa manuscript and the hourglass sanatorium have-this movie has too.i lack the ability to describe sufficiently all the films i've just mentioned so all i can really tell you is that after i watched on the silver globe i knew that i had liked what i had seen.yes,it's totally insane but it's not bad...just don't ask me why....

Crazy original film.. trying to encapsulate almost everything about the human condition.. from simple human emotions, trust, love.. to opposition, hierarchy, religion, politics..how we perceive the world, the relationship between man and a woman, heavy philosophical and transcendental scenes.. the first 30 minutes are almost unbearable though.. at one point it got so boring, i could not sit still, i was going mental.. some people left the cinema.. mainly because of the heavy overly poetic and dramatic dialogue.. the rest is a joy for the imaginative mind.

It is based on a Sci-Fi novel, written by the grandfather of Zulawski. The novel had a great influence on Stanislaw Lem as he was growing up.

Mind-blowing stuff. A must-see for the serious cinephile.

The film looks really intriguing so I was excited to watch it. It definitely wasn't the experience I was hoping for.

I have to admit I basically understood nothing of what was going on. The plot is already complex, and when you add in the attempt to reconstruct the missing scenes using voiceover, it becomes pretty much impossible to follow the story.

As it stands this seems to be more of a curiosity than an actual film.

It's difficult to describe the film The Silver Globe to the average person. Many people describe it as being similar to Jodorowsky's unfinished Dune project. The version I found had no subtitles, so I had to guess what was happening, but that didn't bother me since it was unlike any film I had seen. The movie takes place in a post apocalyptic future that has almost been destroyed by man. People decide to start over, and they build a village on the moon and choose a leader. They're are many disturbing and unforgettable images of people shouting at the brink of their sanity, bizarre bird creatures and a brutal crucifixion scene on a cross that's almost 100 ft high. There is one scene where people are in the air with poles stuck up them, the poles are almost a couple stories high. (Hard to describe but think of the impalement scene in Cannibal Holocaust 100 ft. in the air) The movie has some of the most amazing cinematography and insane camera angles. Fan's of directors like Jodorowsky, Tarkovsky and David Lynch won't be disappointed.

Andrzej Zulawski's On the Silver Globe was a movie I was so excited to see ever since I heard of its existence. Even to track it down to watch was something I struggled with for so long. And eventually, once I did come across a way to watch it, I was more than excited to do so.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't keep up. It was a cram fest of any and every philosophical conversation the film could explore, and done so in the most noisy, nauseating and mind numbing way possible.

It had a great first act... Somewhat slow, but consistent and remarkable. Actual conflicts of body and mind. And then it dissolves into madness... the unwatchable kind. The final two acts are just all over the place; with dialogue which people call explorative and introspective, but I feel was vapid, inconsistent and meaningless, with characters that have no individuality, appearing out of thin air at will, all echoing one sentimental philosophy depriving the film of any need to keep its consistency, and with a plot that twists and complicates itself for no apparent reason than to provoke conversation that ends up going nowhere.

Although, one thing that will never cease to amaze me are the visuals; the set designs, costumes, makeup and its unconventional cinematography providing what can only be described as truly otherworldly in its presentation, setting the tone for the movie as accurately and descriptively as possible.

At the end of the day, I'm not hating on it, but simply find it shallow as opposed to what most people say about it in artistic circles. But I'm at least glad that I got to finally watch it, and will forever be content with the knowledge of this movie's existence.

A SF Movie that was started in 1977 - as long as I know from a polish group of people that worked at the Arts Academy.

The project was then stopped due to problems. 10 years after, in 1987, somebody collected the original tapes which were about 75% of the script.

What you see is this tapes glued together. The other 25% you see somebody driving around in a polish city holding a handcam out of the window of the tramway or running around with it and a speaker is reading the corresponding part of the script.

It is a SF Movie that deals with Men and contact to other races, men land on an distinct planet. They live there. They leave their land to see what is behind the sea. They fight with the other race. They got sex with the other race. They get cruzified.

The basic in this movie is the Question "why?".

It is a low-cost production with very effective pictures, sometimes bizarr. 3SAT, a german cable television channel made german subtitles and aired it in about 1995. I was lucky to videotape it and looked for it since then in Search engines. 2004 is the first time that I found information on IMDB.

This is a very nihilistic saga that mocks spiritual misconceptions by means of anthropology, myth, religion put under a microscope. It's amazing how Zulawski managed to engage me in this three hour gibberish monologue. The whole thing is very reminiscent of performance art and butoh dancing. That's not to say that the cinematography was uninspired, it was gorgeous.

This highly influential Polish sci-fi epic is akin to what Jodorowsky's Dune would look like if it had been filmed. The story-an adaption of the work of a Polish writer-bears a close resemblance to Frank Herbert's Dune. Probably because the Polish writer may have been influenced by Dune when he wrote his novels.

On the Silver Globe is basically an unfinished film with outrageous visuals and hysterical acting in the usual Zulawski mode. In place of the missing footage we get random footage of an Eastern bloc city with voice over. This can become very frustrating for the viewer at times. Maybe a better solution would have been to recreate the missing scenes via storyboards.

What surprised me most about On the Silver Globe was how influential it turned out to be- especially in the costume and art design department. But how is this possible? This film was not shown until 1988, yet lots of the images of On the Silver Globe found their way to the mainstream. On the Silver Globe seems to have been a main inspiration for an entire generation of MTV artists. Some examples are the Duran Duran videos done by Russel Mulcahy, and the Field of the Nephilim videos done by Richard Stanley.

David Lynch's Dune and Ridley Scott's Prometheus are two of the films heavily inspired by Zulawski's unique vision. Even the scene with the impaled woman in Cannibal Holocaust seems to have been lifted from On the Golden Globe. There is also a gory crucifixion scene that rivals Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ.

There is no doubt that if Golden Globe had been completed the way Zulawski wanted, it would have become one of the most important sci-fi/fantasy films of all time. It is truly a unique film, but viewer beware. If your idea of good sci-fi is Avatar or Star Wars, proceed with caution.

If you like stuff like Solaris, Stalker, The Saragossa Manuscript, The Making of Jodorowsky's Dune, you will certainly love On the Golden Globe. The 2018 restoration process has turned On the Golden Globe into one of the most visually impressive films ever, yet due to its fragmented nature it might be a challenge even for viewers who enjoy "difficult" films.

I have not felt this way about a movie since watching Tarkovsky's Stalker for the first time. In a way, this movie is a lot like Stalker with its minimalist approach to this grand sci-fi setting and troubled production.

When I first read that 20% of the movie is lost and replaced with narration, I assumed it to be a big chunk somewhere in the middle or maybe the end, but it's much more sporadic. This makes for a quite jarring and almost incoherent experience at first but don't let that turn you off.

The costumes and sets are gorgeous, the heavy use of the blue filter in the barren wasteland makes for a convincing alien landscape, and the long takes with handheld cameras and wide-angle lenses combined with diegetic cinematography make for a unique experience I have yet to see in any other film of the time.

I can't help but wonder how different cinema might have looked if On the Silver Globe was completed in 1978, give or take a year. Maybe a lot? Maybe not so much. Who knows. We can only thank Andrzej Zulawski and the people on the production team who saved what had been shot from the Polish censors.

It might be incomplete and lack a proper conclusion to the story, but when the credits rolled it left me with a poignant and powerful feeling that I have not felt since watching The Holy Mountain for the first time.

Maybe if mankind was given a completely new slate on a different planet, starting civilization over again, it would still end up in the darkness of ignorance, superstition, and warfare. Maybe man lives in an absurd condition, forever groping, and the oppressively dark visuals in the film and the delirious raving of its characters mirror that. I don't know. I just could never connect with this, though I really wanted to like it, and appreciate the struggle director Andrzej Zulawski had in making it (the ending scene of him in a window reflection is truly heartfelt). On the other hand, the way the voiceover bits over periods of lost footage was done, showing things like regular people taking an escalator, was pretty amateurish, and the only real points he scored with me were for some of the visuals in the final half hour.

The plot to this film is far too obscure, without a lot of connective tissue in between characters chaotically raving on in religious mania. Seriously, the script is 98% sheer gibberish. There's lots of shrieking, lots of madness, and lots of emotional excess - and no rationality or introspection of any kind to balance it out even a bit. The commentary seems to be in the raving itself, as opposed to what anyone is actually saying, and it's a pretty dark, nihilistic view. Just following the characters or what rituals they're going on about is tough, and the film has an incredible denseness to it that made it very hard to endure for 157 minutes. When it ended, I was relieved that what amounted to a torture session was over.

Blink at the wrong time and the plot will become incomprehensible. On the Silver Globe is without a doubt the most eager and challenging film I've ever seen. But there's something so magical and inexplainable about the viewing experience. That's truly how I would describe what I witnessed: "an experience". The amazing story behind the production of this film is already interesting, but then the actual "finished" product is somehow completely whole and even more fascinating. I found myself captivated and enamored with this mysterious, but familiar world. There's almost no time to connect to a character before they're physically gone, but their saga continues, endlessly for the remainder of space and time. And don't get me started on the acting performances, costumes, and set design. Truly a 100% original and unique film. Everyone should watch On the Silver Globe just once even if it's not "for you".

This is one of the most impressing films I ever saw. Not only the fantastic sound of the polish language (i saw the film with german subtitles)but the great scenery of the mongolian landscape lead me to this opinion. This film is one example of films which are not just the "american standard cinema movie".

This was one of the only movies I'll sit through these days over two hours, and it was totally worth it. From start to finish this movie brings sensationalism to new extremes. There is a voice-over narration which tells that one fifth of the movie is taken from a documentary, which happens to be mostly of subway tunnels and blur-vision scenery in what I'm assuming is the home country of Poland where it was shot. The scenes which it navigates are astounding and follow a group of astronauts from another planet who have colonized from Earth. The dialogue and monologues of the film are intriguing and supremely anecdotal and breathe life into the intense cinematography. There are scenes of robots from the future, and golf-cart-like rides through amazing landscapes which fuse the surreal experience of the film. The last scenes are blood-soaked, and many of the sequences which feature the alien "species" are insanely grotesque and imaginative. It's one of the best movies ever made, in my opinion.

Imagine watching this back to back with Hard to be a God. Has anyone done that and survived? I'd love to know.

I imagine this would still be overwhelming and kind of hard to follow if all the scenes had been filmed. Perhaps less so, but even if so, maybe that would be okay. You can kind of get the gist of what's going on and, when that's hard to penetrate, On the Silver Globe looks, sounds, and feels so amazing that all else sometimes feels secondary.

Okay, the philosophical ramblings did test my patience after a while, but little else about the film feels repetitive, and it covers more ground than I was expecting. Maybe that's a consequence of having this mixed up with Hard to be a God in my brain for many years; I was somehow anticipating this would also be one-note and more exhausting.

It's a little exhausting, to be honest, but it's also exhilarating. So much of it feels reminiscent of so many other weird things that became parts of more well-known films (like, is this a proto-found-footage movie? Has Terrence Malick based his post-Thin Red Line style entirely on the first 70 minutes of this film? Did David Lynch base the scary alley lady in Mulholland Drive off the weird bird people in this?)

Probably not for everyone, but everyone should give it a try at least once. I'm almost certain I'll watch it a second time at some point in my life.

I have seen many bad films but it is hard to remember any which equaled this one. The film has very little if anything going for it. Like other parts of the film the beginning of the film wasn't needed. There is little continuity to the scenes. It will be a real struggle for even the most die-hard film lover to get through this monstrosity. It lasts two and a half hours long and is horribly written. The film tries to be poetic but the script is stilted and the story line becomes constantly disjointed. (The fact there is one-fourth of the film which was never shot doesn't help matters.) In place of lost scenes viewers will see modern shots of life on Earth as the director narrates what the missing scenes would have looked like. The acting is overdone and is laughable if it weren't for the fact they are trying to be serious. I get the idea that the actors were allowed to ad-lib their lines which go on for an inordinate amount of time. I'll do my own ad-libbing right now which will give you an idea of what is in store:

A rainbow is like a light never reaching its essence. It is the light of life that glows that way. Life is that way everyday in the morning. I like the morning it gives me a feeling of freshness. Feeling fresh I can see the light.

Yes it is that bad. As previously stated the film has several scenes which should have been cut or not used as they add nothing to the storyline. The lighting is very dark and shot with a blue filter to the point that fire looks green. The soundtrack (or lack thereof) will also make you question the director's ability to bring a coherent story to the screen. The only joy I experienced while watching came after the two hour mark when I knew it was almost over.

Throughout the ages, humanity has always seen the future with hope. With all our mistakes, errors, and vices, a deep belief in the attainment of some sort of utopia always lingers on, reflected on ideas about the limitless of knowledge. Amidst all the chaos and destruction of the present, we seek refuge in a tale of "progress" and "communion", wherein everyone will transcend the current limitations and achieve a state of perfection. In all of this, one can discern the presence of a pressuposition that history moves in a linear way, towards an end goal, as if eventually the utopia will be reached. But is such pressuposition correct? Are we in a constant state of enhancement, or is it that our "selves" are in their roots divided, corrupted, hopeless?

In what is essentially Zulawski's magnum opus, despite never being entirely finished, "On the Silver Globe" tells the tale of a group of astronauts that crash in another planet, in hopes of finding an alternative to their dying planet. In the process however, we see them going back to an almost primitive state, where instinct reigns supreme, and where the law of the strongest reigns supreme. With this, they are lost, and whatever their was of their personalities is suddenly filled in by group identity, by tribal customs, by rituals. Rationality, autonomy, the "self", loses in a constant struggle against the collective, and by the end of their lives, the only things that exists are myths and the collective. Every gap in knowledge, every moral conduct, every branch of human conduct is thus solved by an appeal to the supernatural, to their creators, to their "Adam and Eve". Suddenly, the tribe acquires a given belief system, and a society is formed around it.

While the first half tackles all these difficult themes, the second follows from a narrative akin to a retelling of Jesus Christ. Already consolidated as a society, what was once a cohesive group is now divided according to belief in the return of the "chosen one". A new astronaut (named Marek), upon finding the recording of the previous cosmonauts, ventures into this new world, only to be identified with God himself. Should Marek accept his "fate" and play God, or should he hold on to his own identity. In other words, are we defined by how others perceive us, or are we defined by how we perceive ourselves? From this dilemma, madness insues deep in his soul, and much like his colleagues before him, his "self" ends up being lost. Upon constant battles with a bird-like civilization, Marek chooses to portray himself as the saviour. His whole existence, his whole purpose from thence forward is subjected to the preservation and defense of the collective. Marek is no longer an individual, but an attempt at transposing the divine to the terrestrial. Despite his efforts, faith starts to decrease, while his arrogance increase. The systems of power in place start to question his omnipotence, dooming him from the start.

In the end, the society portrayed in "On the Silver Globe" ends up being nothing more than a copy of our own. Chaos, destruction, faithlessness, an endless desire for power and perfection assume themselves as the norm. Zulawski's vision thus encapsulates a pessimistic and cyclical vision of humanity and the human nature, meaning that all of us will, forever, be condemned in some sense or another.

It's hard to write a review for such a production, you don't really have anything to say. Extremely boring and chaotic, a film without any meaning. Long, almost three hours of spinning on the seashore of some crazy characters, who talk, talk, never stopping to add words that convey nothing. I will quote the actor from minute 1.20.21: "I carry my own space in me." I am convinced that Andrzej Zulawski, with this "On the Silver Globe" Original title: Na srebrnym globie 1988, carries his own space in which he stuffed his own crazy obsessions, the same in all his films. I will quote the same actor further: "I am carrying it to an absurd country at an absurd time." It only defines the film, absurd, in an absurd Poland, in an absurd time: the communist period when films were banned and/or censored (in all ex-communist countries being the same, see Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, etc.) One star for the beauty of the locations, another star for the costumes and another star for the make-up, that's all it deserves, unfortunately.

I suspect this may be a kind of fake. It's all that remains of a film whose production was stopped in the middle: a science fiction film that, to judge from this paste-up, might have been something like Stalker done in the style of Weekend. Unfortunately, the sequences that were never shot included virtually all of the science fiction and most of the action, so that two-thirds of what's left concentrates on three people trekking through barren landscapes and going crazy into the camera, as in Blair Witch Project. I found it difficult to track the progress of their degeneration, which all seemed very much the same. Based on this, I'm not surprised the Polish film bureaucrats canceled the production, only that it took them as long as it did. Now the extant footage has been edited into what the DVD case calls a reconstruction. But is it really? Or is it a new construction using the old materials? What made me begin to suspect this was that throughout the film, while the director summarizes the unshot sequences in voice-over, the screen shows what seem to be outtakes, but the last of them closes on a shot of the director, taken contemporaneously. So were the other interpolated sequences shot then or forty years ago? And if forty years ago, were they to have gone in where we see them or elsewhere, and as we see them or in some other form? Or were they just scrap? Much of the rest consists of long tracking shots of scenery, which also look like outtakes. And the film is edited in a style now fashionable--with series of multiple cuts on the same angle, a few seconds apart--which I don't remember being the fashion forty years ago. This made me wonder whether the director had cut the film as he would today, rather than as he would have back when. I also wonder whether he had done so partly to disguise the incompleteness of the available material. And where did the music come from? If the film was never finished, it can never have been scored; and to me the music sounds new, too. So all in all I don't know how to judge the "reconstruction" on the basis of what it was to have been because I don't know how much I'm seeing of that. If the gaps could have been bridged with staged readings of the missing portions of the script, maybe read by the surviving actors, the film might come together into something; as it is, it seems to be little more than what another, better known film was deliberately intended as and named for: ashes of time.