On the Silver Globe

On the Silver Globe (1989)

Na Srebrnym Globie

A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.

Date of release
1989-02-10
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (192)
Runtime
2h 45m
Genres
Science Fiction, Drama
Director
Andrzej Żuławski

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Na srebrnym globie. Rękopis z Księżyca

On the Silver Globe is a 1988 Polish epic science fiction film written, directed, and narrated by Andrzej Żuławski. It is an adaptation of the pioneering science-fiction novel series The Lunar Trilogy (1903–1911) by his grand-uncle, Jerzy Żuławski. The story follows a team of astronauts who crash-land on an Earth-like planet and found a society; generations later, a visitor from Earth arrives and is hailed as a messiah, after which chaos ensues. The film stars Andrzej Seweryn, Jerzy Trela, Grażyna Dyląg, Waldemar Kownacki, Krystyna Janda, and Iwona Bielska. Because the actors were unavailable during post-production, Michał Bajor dubbed Seweryn and Maria Pakulnis dubbed Dyląg.

Production

Filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski had long wanted to adapt The Lunar Trilogy by his grand-uncle Jerzy Żuławski (published 1903–1911), especially the first volume originally titled On the Silver Globe: A Manuscript from the Moon (Polish: Na srebrnym globie. Rękopis z Księżyca).

After leaving Poland for France in 1972 to avoid further censorship—following the completion of The Devil in 1972, which was banned and not released until 1988—Andrzej Żuławski achieved critical success with the French production That Most Important Thing: Love (1975).

During this period, Żuławski's marriage to actress Małgorzata Braunek ended, and he returned to Poland with their son, Xawery Żuławski, assuming primary responsibility for his care. Żuławski later associated the sadness and despair he felt at the time with his response to reading his great-uncle Jerzy Żuławski's The Lunar Trilogy, and he obtained conditional approval to adapt the novels.

Żuławski said On the Silver Globe is fundamentally a film about freedom: how to remain free, express ideas outside the accepted vocabulary of the time, and act independently in a system that discourages such behaviour. He equated this with freedom of thinking, including the human impulse to contemplate God.

These themes placed the film in opposition to the communist system. Authorities initially approved the project, assuming the novels were a simple attack on the Church and organized religion; this misunderstanding allowed filming to begin. According to Żuławski, after roughly a year, officials recognized the broader implications and that was the actual reason behind the abruptly halted production.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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