On the Silver Globe (1988) by Andrzej Żuławski is an unfinished yet visionary sci-fi masterpiece, halted by Polish authorities due to its subversive themes and relentless style. It presents a complex meditation on power, human nature, and the destructive potential of idolatry, using the framework of a cosmic journey to explore deeply philosophical and political ideas. Despite its incomplete state, the film’s haunting visuals and intense narrative leave an indelible mark, underscoring the tragedy of its censorship and the brilliance of Żuławski’s daring vision.
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By chance, a video recording made years earlier by a human named Jerzy (Jerzy Trela) falls into the hands of two Earth astronauts. The recording documents how Jerzy, along with two other cosmonauts, Martha (Iwona Bielska) and Piotr (Jerzy Gralek), landed on a distant planet. On that planet, Martha and Piotr join forces and, with unimaginable speed and frequency, generate an entire tribe of children. Eventually, Jerzy becomes the sole survivor of the trio and is worshipped by the tribe as a demigod. The recording is later viewed by a scientist named Marek (Andrzej Seweryn), who embarks on a journey to the same planet, where the tribe’s descendants welcome him as a true Messiah—a role that proves to be highly perilous.
Eastern European science fiction cinema, with rare exceptions, leans more towards philosophical and existential themes than purely scientific ones (think of Tarkovsky’s Stalker). This approach, though often elliptical, frequently manifests as a political metaphor, making the genre unpopular with Communist authorities.
Andrzej Żuławski, a true maverick of 1970s Polish cinema, had already made a name for himself with a controversial yet striking debut, The Third Part of the Night (1971). In this film, the young director, using a partially autobiographical story from his father’s experience during the Nazi occupation as a pretext, deeply explored human nature and its aberrations. This perspective extended to his next unsettling film, The Devil (1972), which, though ostensibly a historical film, effectively portrayed the dissolution of a country reflected in the disintegration of a noble clan.
Despite being under the scrutiny of the authorities and Communist censorship due to his “suspicious” themes and uncompromising visceral style, the overwhelming success of a film he shot in France (That Most Important Thing: Love) rehabilitated Żuławski in the eyes of the Party. This success granted him the opportunity to realize a project dear to him: bringing to the screen the first Polish science fiction novel, written by his great-uncle Jerzy.
Thus, On the Silver Globe was born—a layered and complex reflection on power and its origin from the people. Marek finds in the indigenous people, with their feverish anticipation of a Messiah, a mirror of his own repressed megalomania (perhaps unknowingly stemming from a betrayed passion). However, he fails—or refuses—to grasp how fragile his imposture is and how the innate human tendency toward irrational idolatry can easily transform into an equally irrational explosion of violence.
Contrary to Kubrick’s premise in 2001, Żuławski’s film does not feature a final apotheosis of the protagonist elevating him to a higher state. Instead, there is an ignominious execution, a crucifixion drawn from Christianity. More generally, there is no trace of human evolution, but rather a regression into a primitive state that devolves into savagery.
Given the potentially subversive content, the Polish Ministry of Culture decided to halt production of the film, which was already well advanced. The film was never completed (about 20% of the scenes remained unshot), and the material was seized, with the beautiful and evocative costumes (by Magdalena Biernawska-Teslawska and Krzysztof Tyszkiewicz) being destroyed.
This iconoclastic fury was motivated by the film’s intrinsic allegory, which had not gone unnoticed by the Party bureaucrats. It was clear that the director had used the alibi of a sci-fi story to complete an ideal triptych on oppression, begun with The Third Part of the Night and continued the following year with The Devil. This triptych offered a bleak and redemptionless vision of history and human nature, which clashed with Communist rhetoric. The film’s anti-religious skepticism and implicit condemnation of all dogmas, in a context (Poland) still steeped in Catholicism, further compounded the regime’s discomfort.
Beyond its content, it is the visual style of the film that leaves the most lasting impression, and likely irritated the censors. The film juxtaposes dizzying, relentless tracking shots and virtuoso, hallucinatory wide-angle frames with feverish ruminations and spasmodic movements of tortured bodies, in a frantic delirium reflected in the shouted dialogues and monologues (evidently influenced by the theater of Grotowski, Beckett, and Artaud).
Additionally, the film’s innovative use of jump cuts in the first part, as well as its early nod to found footage (with expertly simulated body-camera use), was well ahead of its time. Żuławski also made extraordinary use of backgrounds featuring boundless beaches, caves reminiscent of Dante’s Malebolge, and desolate landscapes (locations in the Gobi Desert, Baltic Sea, and Crimea), all superbly supported by Andrzej Jaroszewicz’s evocative cold-toned cinematography, which lends a metaphysical tone to the story—more metastoric than sci-fi.
Though the film’s difficulty is evident—not only due to the mutilations inflicted at the time—Żuławski’s staging undeniably exudes a captivating allure, heightening the regret for this work’s fate, not unlike that of the remarkable Sayat Nova – The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov.
In 1987, when the Polish regime began to relax its grip, a miraculous recovery of much of the material allowed the director to assemble a version of the film in which the numerous unshot scenes were replaced by Żuławski’s voice-over explanations, while the screen showed dizzying footage of urban and natural landscapes. This version underwent a complex but successful restoration in 2016, after Żuławski’s death, and can now be admired in all its coruscating splendor.
The definition coined by an English critic—”The greatest Science Fiction movie (n)ever made”—perfectly fits this film, marked by frantic and desperate visionariness, a symbol in its own way of the toxic distortions of censorship.
Claudio Ceriani
