Original subtitles

ON THE SILVER GLOBE

The film is based on “The Lunar Trilogy” by Jerzy Żuławski

You will see a film made ten years ago;

a shred of a film;

a two and a half hour story, one-fifth of which is missing.

That one-fifth, dating back to 1977,

when the film was destroyed, will never be recreated.

In place of the missing scenes

you will hear a voice which will briefly explain the original idea.

The project “On the Silver Globe”

was interrupted in 1987.

It fell from the clouds... At night...

From on high...

They were nearby...

They hunted...

They found it in the morning... In the trees...

It fluttered. . . Beautiful...

He traveled for two days...

Across the snow... Tired...

He thought: for them...

For sure.

What is it?

He says they saw it fall...

They couldn't have seen...

Maybe they saw a star...

It is an ancient object. It couldn't have fallen now.

It might have in the past...

Everybody saw it... Two days ago...

At night...

They found it in the morning... Only for us...

It is fifty, sixty years old.

It's a Small Transmission Module STM.

The way it burned indicates Titanium Beta or something like it.

It used to take off from a pad on six propulsion nozzles.

I guess they didn't even teach you that at school.

Why did it fall right now?

It might have roved to lock in on a target station,

but not for fifty years. Unless...

If they are telling the truth.

They usually don't lie.

One of the older radar rigs should crack it.

If the brain has not burned up,

it should tell us where it comes from and why.

Tell her not to enter.

This place is packed with sensitive gear.

It will all go haywire.

Unless she comes to see you.

She doesn't come to see you, she comes to take you.

You don't understand. She is mine.

No, it's you who are theirs.

Go, dress up warm. It’s freezing outside.

Later...

What will happen when you run out of all the chemicals?

Freedom perhaps.

They could kill us and take the chemicals,

or steal them while we're asleep.

But they don't. We are the ones who give,

who do not need to take.

Alien as a tree.

We must be explored and domesticated.

Poisoned, approached, comprehended.

Are we the last of those who retain power,

or the first of those who are defenseless?

Below the manhole where the two astronauts have climbed,

there is a laboratory.

A giant hall filled with machines

capturing sounds from the outer space.

Only one of the oldest machines,

which has remained idle for decades,

can decipher what is inside the container

which the astronauts were given by the rider.

It is a diary, or rather a series of semi-opaque plates

featuring images as if taken with a camera.

The first plates show the flight of a spacecraft;

the pilots losing control over it;

and the spacecraft crashing in the mountains.

Only a small fragment of this recording has remained.

I can see!

The astronauts clamber out of the battered cockpit.

They are amidst mountains and the atmosphere is unbreathable.

They leave the dead body

of the flight commander O'Tamor near the cockpit.

They wheel out land rovers

from their rocket and they ride downhill.

One of the astronauts, Thomas, is injured.

A second rocket following their course

crashes in the mountains and explodes.

Were those who died in it, the Remogners, pursuers or friends?

This planet is an ideal image of Earth.

That is why it was chosen as the cradle for new life.

But the land rovers heading for the sea

run across a huge heap of debris

resembling architectural forms,

as if a civilization used to thrive here.

While they are near the ruins,

Thomas becomes feverish and delirious.

He's seeing ghosts: the dead astronauts,

O'Tamor and the Remogners are approaching him,

trying to capture him.

O'Tamor defends him.

The Remogners want to chain him up.

Come here!

O'Tamor was right. We can breathe.

We shall live...

Wait!

Do you remember a man being born?

The father endows him with seeds of every possibility.

Every man must cultivate it within himself,

watch it grow and bear fruit.

If it is vegetal, he will be a plant;

if it is sensory, he will be an animal;

if it is rational, his essence will become divine;

finally, if it is intellectual,

he will be an angel or the son of man.

Maybe it is time to say that the Republic is in real danger,

that we are cowards who have to defend courage,

sex, consciousness, carnal beauty, quest for love.

The conquest of which may,

after all, become a heroic destiny.

But to utter these words is to reveal how sad we are,

because the most steadfast believers among us

have spent their lives talking about fear,

impotence, stupidity, ugliness, self-love and apathy...

Although we have thus attempted

to get an austere view of this reality

whose existence

may depend on a decent life,

on our work,

our honor

which permits us to express no more

than what we ourselves have seen.

It was...

I did not hear your answers.

I don't believe that any signal could penetrate

the radiation belt enveloping this planet.

The trajectory of their fall carried them over a plain.

- Don't pull! - The wave bounced back and we caught it.

They stood over me...

O'Tamor was walking dead... To take me along...

Maybe what bounces and returns

is not only an electromagnetic wave,

but also bions making up the image of the dead...

- Don't pull! - You are delirious!

I know that whatever you say

carries at least a grain of truth

if only because you are capable of expressing it.

Put him down!

Don't forget what we've escaped,

just to repeat with impunity what we believe in.

Don't forget.

Whatever you say is true,

unless you say it...

to impose your will upon us.

I don't believe in anything.

By saying it, you are peering inside yourself.

You are not blind.

That is why you are here, running away with us.

Yes, you are dying, brother.

After all, there is truth in everything I say,

if I am capable of expressing it.

Freedom exists and resides in darkness...

It turns away from the lust for darkness

to lean towards the lust for light.

It embraces light with its everlasting will.

And darkness strives to capture the light of freedom,

but it cannot do that,

because it is centered on its own lust...

and turns to darkness again.

The wind rises. The night is falling.

The drizzle turns into a downpour

and the downpour escalates into a hurricane.

Thomas is dying.

Before he dies, Martha implores to be left alone with him.

She loves him. She clings to him.

She protects him with her body.

The nearby river is surging and breaks its banks.

It’s a flood.

Martha!

We have to be moving. We cannot survive here.

No chance, until we reach the seashore where we were to land.

Come on.

No, no!

You are sick. You'll have to be carried.

Turn it off, I am telling you, turn it off, you silly.

The sea!

I can see the sea!

George,

Thomas is growing faster than he would on Earth.

Six months old, he is as tall as a one-year-old.

George, is it possible that we will die

and he will be left alone?

Listen, Martha,

it is the rainy season.

It will keep raining.

Six months of waiting is a long time,

you may perish, we may perish,

and then...

Martha, am I right?

Martha, am I right?

Right.

I’ve taken the cameras of Martha and Peter.

They're no longer interested

in recording our experiences.

I have fused their memories into one: mine.

I erase irrelevant pieces. I keep the gist.

Only this recording makes sense to me.

I must be careful.

It costs them so much.

It costs me so little. Why?

Nothing at all.

I don't demand anything. I don't believe in anything.

I believe only in perfect freedom, ours, mine.

Peter says that long, long ago,

I could have been a monk,

because I am not a man yet, but I am already old.

If one is to forget why we are here,

one would be like this. I am.

For it is not us that are lost in contemplation of the world.

It is the world that is lost in our contemplation.

Oh, Earth!

You don't wish to learn with me, Tom?

I can breathe without this.

What is Earth really like?

What is it, old man?

Earth is what I feel for you.

You are alive. My father died.

Martha, talk to me,

Martha, say something!

Yes.

Martha, keep silent.

Martha, laugh.

Martha, cry.

Martha, dance,

dance!

Martha, dance,

dance!

You can think only if you believe.

There is no thought without faith.

Only the one who has faith has thoughts.

Thus one must want to know faith.

You can believe only if you have roots.

Only the one can believe who has roots of his own.

Thus one must want to know the roots.

You can have your roots only if you act.

The one who acts has roots.

Thus one must want to know action.

Here, everything is as on Earth.

The same chaos, the same absence of truth.

- The same lie. - You love her.

To love is to want to be absorbed entirely by somebody.

To love is to feel entirely responsible for somebody.

You can also take lasciviously, without love.

In that case, this word carries no meaning.

It turns into evil and hate.

But we have arrived here in order not to hate anybody.

How can you be so happy here,

- you who have nothing here. - I have you.

You have us, you have what we have,

which means nothing. Nothing! Nothing!

George,

you're not even defending yourself.

Oh Earth!

Peter!

Peter!

Peter!

I found him here.

One day when the Angel of Death came to Solomon

he looked at one of his courtiers.

“Who is that?” the courtier asked.

“The Angel of Death,” replied Solomon.

“It seems he has looked at me.

So tell the wind to take me from here and carry me to India”.

And Solomon did it.

Then the Angel of Death said:

“l looked at him for such a long time, because I was astonished.

For I was ordered to capture his soul in India.

Meanwhile he is here at your side, in your court.

It is true!ӧ

I'm going to have a baby.

Yours.

It will be my last baby.

Say nothing for a while.

I want to be at peace with myself at least once.

Help me.

So far you haven't let me paint you.

Mayð I do it now?

You could have killed him. Peter.

The moment he wanted to be with me alone for the first time.

A girl...

I can see them...

Everyone...

And everything...

Not exactly...

I did not understand, either.

But it's dark here.

You are back.

And Mother?

Mother is dead? Will you die too?

Yes.

- Like Mother? - Yes.

Yes.

Still, I will say it. Perhaps incoherently.

l, a free man,

an dispassionate man,

I am wounded, wounded like an animal.

I suffer like an animal, like Peter...

What I brought along with me was chaos.

All order, all cheerfulness,

clarity, tranquility have left me.

As if her death brought a dreamless nightmare,

a dream without waking, waking without meaning.

I was taught that the world's eye,

looking at me,

is the same eye

with which I look at the world.

This eye is neither cheerful nor evil...

neither feeling nor expectant.

It is indifferent like water.

I will remain in it for as long as I am able.

I will go to the mountains,

looking for metal ores which they could use.

I will be thinking.

I’ll be thinking.

I will feel melted in you,

oh rock,

oh grass...

I will feel.

I will feel in me your non-human translucence.

I will feel impenetrable wind, complete chill.

I am nobody.

I have despised the belligerent.

Now l, I myself deserve contempt,

because I am fighting against myself.

There is suffering, but there is no subject of suffering.

There is action, but there is no subject of action.

There is solace, but there is no man to reach it.

ßThere is a road, but there is no one to follow it.

You are back again, Old Man.

Please,

- go on dancing. - You are back again!

I am Ada, Martha's last daughter.

Why won't you ever die?

Why won't you die?

Why won't you understand what you yourself gave to us?

Why are you not in what exists?

Why are you elsewhere, where nothing exists?

Nothing!

And then fertile mother Martha

conceived thunder with the heavenly Moon.

And she indulged in pleasure to make him stronger than Thomas.

And swept by the flood, she returned, and begot fish,

and animals in the forest...

And Peter gave us settlements, and reason, and the bow...

Always enduring, you bade us to remember.

Why don't you ever say anything?

Oh Earth!

Earth!

The Old Man said:

Oh! Earth!

I want to record myself more often.

No, no!

Come! You, who are poised motionless,

but who are getting closer to me every hour.

She can feel the fire.

She serves the fire.

She gives herself to me,

because I control the fire...

I am consecrated to you, who have arrived.

I could marry him. They are afraid of me and him,

because I play Martha, and you, and the rain.

Love me.

I love everything.

Say something!

Say something!

Say something!

I curse you

in the name of the Old Man.

Say something!

- Say something! - Kill. Kill him.

The Old Man is praying for you.

Something he wanted to draw, for he had forgotten how to write.

Maybe evil?

Evil.

Forgive me.

Don't look at me in this make-up,

in this garb, in this degradation.

You would not have looked for me,

had you not found me!

Record it carefully,

for you are recording a half-god half-animal.

Were you just as afraid on Earth, George?

- That's the source of the coming? - Yes.

- Will you go back there? - Nobody returns anywhere,

I told you many times.

You do not have to say the entire truth.

You are the Old Man.

But tell me, how come you know everything?

Because eternity

is the state of simultaneous possession of everything, Ada.

I am Thomas II, the son of Old Thomas.

Thomas the third.

I don't understand when you speak like this.

Nobody understands you, not even Ada.

We are afraid to look at your face for too long.

I cannot oppose you, Thomas the Third.

This place is getting more and more stifling,

impatient and wistful.

Because you are the Old Man.

Bless me, Old Man.

How?

Old Thomas was sluggish.

He did not try to enlarge the country where we live.

He did not want to know what is beyond and beyond,

as if he were afraid...

Tomorrow the sea might be calm

and we will cross to the other side.

There, on the other side, something is looming on bright days.

What if there is no other side?

There must be.

You are right.

It is I who always forget that I know everything,

but I don't understand anything.

- Do you want to see Martha? - I don't need to.

I believe

that mother Martha had created all parts of the world,

and we must explore them,

because they were made for us.

What are you doing here, Ada?

Be angry with me, Old Man.

Child, child, you are not listening to me.

I know, I know. You cannot say everything.

You will go back there.

Stop raving.

- You are my daughter. - We all are your children,

and you showed us what is good and what evil.

Tell me, why were you banished from Earth?

I,

I am beautiful.

I, I am young.

I can do what nobody can do.

May the blessing of humans be with you.

Give.

Enough.

We've only shreds of memory left.

On the other side,

we found it.

There are huge settlements,

a city like a beehive...

Everybody perished. There... there...

Monsters...

They have wings... Black...

Only the middle eye...

They are flying, flying after me...

To destroy,

destroy the humankind...

They bring death...

Master, Master!

Master.

It's the wind?

Master... Master... Don't go...

I am better than you

and that is why I will be able to play your part.

Earth,

Earth,

Earth, Earth.

Oh Earth! Oh Earth!

People, rejoice!

The Old Man is leaving.

People!

May a man lie with his own daughter?

If a brother seizes his brother's property,

should his arm be cut off?

Should the dead be given food every day, or only on holiday?

...On holiday...

Is the birth of a baby a holiday, even if the baby is blind?

I don't know,

I know nothing.

I don't know!

- I don't know anything! - No, she is not ill.

She is the victory of desire over truth.

And sick, sick is only the one who is playing a part.

Sick is the actor, for he is seeking you within himself.

And he is ugly, although he can see and feel.

And he will not be loved. And he contorts his contorted face.

And he is like a distorted mirror put up to beauty.

The actor is a victory over ugliness,

over the world's beauty.

Can you hear?

Can you hear? Can you hear?

They are flying,

flying, flying,

flying here!

Come,

you bloodthirsty God!

Alone, in his outlandish suit of half-astronaut, half-god,

George reaches the spaceship wrecked years earlier in the mountains.

O'Tamor's body is still there, as if nothing had happened.

With his last effort, George finds the container

into which he will insert his recorded account

of what happened to him, to them, to everyone here.

He will fire the mini-craft into space.

Before it blasts off,

before he deposits the last memory disk,

he briefly films his face. And his tears.

In the tunnel where the two astronauts have watched George's diary,

the screens dims, and silence falls.

“This must be dispatched to the Old Earth,”

says the older astronaut.

He glances at the younger one, who is tense and self-absorbed.

“Let's go back there, home,” says the ÿounger.

“Let us rejoice with them, dance, celebrate for we are alive”.

“Why are you crying?” asks the older.

“Because I don't know who I am”.

The hatch is opened noiselessly above their heads.

A gust of wind penetrates into the passageway.

and with it, a girl sneaks in.

It is the same one who had eyes painted on her palms.

the same girl who died with Thomas on the seashore.

So it is not the same one, only one eternally like her.

Following her footsteps, their bows drawn,

warriors enter the tunnel.

Years later, another spacecraft lands

on the very spot where George's had crashed.

It is more advanced and it alights gently.

A single man, Mark, steps outside.

He turns to the microphone and the camera lens

mounted on the ship's fuselage, and says:

“Everything as described in the transmitted account.”

He gazes at George's petrified face.

“They are beautiful," he says.

“A little funny, old-fashioned.”

"I am going down to meet the people.”

There is crackling in his headphones.

“How am I doing?” Mark replies. “I am fine.”

“Not to be with you, believe that you do not exist? That was a good idea.”

“May it not hurt. Kiss Aza for me.”

He breaks off the connection.

Mark climbs down the mountains.

At the foot of the slope,

where there is air, swarms a thick crowd.

These are monks,

gazing for generations at the inaccessible peaks,

where George had departed, and where now Mark is coming from.

They had waited for him,

because a prophecy said that in due time a new

young god would come: a Victor,

one who would liberate people from the terror

of the hideous giant evil birds called Sherns,

mysterious and cruel monsters

which had crossed the sea and enslaved the people.

“I'm no Savior,” laughs Mark-

“I am a man, like you. “

The father superior smiles slyly:

“Because that is what you want.”

Mark is not inspired by the faith of this denigrated people,

but by the riot that breaks out at the news of his arrival.

The Sherns' troops consist of

half-human creatures born of a Shern and a woman.

They are called Morques.

They are beastly, strong, and dumb.

They put up fierce resistance. Battles multiply.

The last of the battles takes places on the seashore,

where a human settlement has been crammed underground,

and where resides the high-priest Malahuda.

Where is the high-priest?! Where is Malahuda?!

We have come to pay tribute... At the head of the uprising...

- And check... If this is the victor... - If,

if, if...

Grab him, bind him, punish him...

I should kill you.

They mustn't see you wounded, sir.

Hurry!

We shall find the high traitor who has not come to meet half way

the father of your fiancée, sir,

fiancée whom you are going to love for she is destined for you.

- Begone! - Then we will see who was right,

the one who for centuries had waited in the mountains,

or the one who had humbled himself and served!

Get out!

Nor did I realize what I was or what I could learn with ease.

What remained was the ease

of using my own intelligence,

which was searching for a grown-up goal,

while I was just a youth.

The most stupid thing is to fail to understand one's own charm.

- Who are you? - We are actors, sir, saints.

We must not take part in battles nor die with people...

nor cross thresholds. We serve, sir.

You are human.

Good. I will be able to play your part.

Why are you crying, child?

Our underground state, sir...

where we have gathered for centuries to celebrate

the promise of your coming.

Sects of suicides and flagellants, poets and iconoclasts,

formed here... Here, monks wrote prophecies.

Above ground, extended an abyss, as dark as the human soul...

For the human soul accepts the Shern, justifies his actions...

talks to him as if it were dreaming awake.

This is your church, sir...

Sir, they are leaving!

But they are ridiculous.

Defenseless.

Defenselessness is strong,

good is bad, beautiful - worm-infested.

Is that all, is it the end?

The Shern Aviya has not been caught, sir.

Now reinforcements will fly from across the sea.

Mark visits the high-priest

who resigns his power. He also tells him about his daughter, Ihezal,

consecrated to the victor and to the cult of the Old Man.

A young warrior, Yeret, is in love with Ihezal.

“It was me who talked to the Sherns,

“begging them to reduce the size of tribute.

“l bargained for human lives

“and tried hard to grasp the meaning of lawlessness,

the absurdity of their way of life,” says Malahuda.

He is tired. “The end of faith is imminent,” he says,

“since you appeared. Now reality begins.”

I am alone.

A prince in a glacial room, in glacial space.

I carry my own space within me.

I am taking it to an absurd country in absurd times.

As if the entire world, the big one and the one within me,

blended into a hateful vision of their bodies

looking for meaning in one another,

meaning which the bodies cannot contain.

Do not look over there, sir.

Children were being caught by the Sherns, they were...

Their mothers said...

that the Sherns wanted to see the demon inside man,

- to see how the soul leaves the body... - And you put up with that?

There is no way to understand them, sir.

The Morques say that their proximity is a poetic proximity.

But it stinks here!

Don't laugh, sir.

The Sherns have a single eye in the center

of their forehead, and they speak using that eye.

Silent, they speak,

and you can understand every nuance of their speech.

Morques say that this is beautiful:

these are forms, they say.

They say we are defective,

unable to steer either the evil within us,

- or the power. - They are killing you.

Inadvertently.

You won't understand why they let some live,

while exterminating others.

- Haven't you negotiated with them? - They don't negotiate, sir.

Until they realized that they could take women,

there were swarms of them And they were still able to fly.

Now they are lying around, watching, talking.

With their eye, they play-act. We can feel it.

Anxiety reaches us through the thickest walls.

- Then we can see everything. - Everything!

Nothing! Nothing!

Nothing, sir. There is a sect of scientist who claim

that they do not exist,

that they are only a reflection of ourselves

conjured in the dark.

They are what?

I don't know.

- Do you believe them? - No, sir.

And do you believe in me?

Who are you?

A man.

Hours of lead.

Nights of lead.

Lead in the heart. Heartache turned into lead.

Thoughts of lead, about nothing, about lead.

Lead cancer gnawing at my body, liquid as an amoeba.

An amoeba in my selfishness,

in its right to search for places of greater delight.

She's playing the woman, sir, whom you left to come here.

What?!

You did leave her, sir, didn't you?

- The one you left to come here. - How do you know that?!

It's in the prophecy.

- Stop remembering! - What?!

She is asking you never to go back.

- Where?! - To Earth, sir.

Fear the signs of fornication, the signs of decay,

the depraved signs of blindness on the fallen body of a woman...

Don't fear that which exists,

for exists only that whcih you cannot feel.

It is terrible to be caught in the hands of a living god!

Aza!

- And that shall be my name, sir. - Ihezal!

Aza!

I want go outside and be left alone,

without you.

I knew you would come.

If you are an intelligent being, as they say, you are curious.

You think: Who is that man? Where is he from?

I saved your life. I did not denounce you.

They would have beaten you to death, and I would learn nothing.

Maybe you will talk to me instead.

After all I am able to understand who you are.

I can hear.

I am trying to understand.

You are me. I am you.

Everything is identical.

Even when I think I'm talking to myself, I am talking to you.

Even when I think I'm talking to God, I am talking to you.

You are the gateway, you are the tunnel,

you are the light on the ultimate threshold.

This is bullshit.

How? How?

With what?

What is this? I don't know this notion. I don't know this.

I don't understand this.

That we are brothers... that we together...

You are following a new train of thought.

You were only a step away. I was...

Now I see only flashes...

You say... No...

Light...

Why are you repeating: God...?

Why: death?

Why resurrection?

Come back!

You are survival, because you are shut off,

because you dissolve in your power time,

and air and the contradiction which is us, the animals.

I am an animal among the animals. A wolf in a forest.

The one who devoured everything is alone.

Only he endures. Those whom he devoured are inferior.

They must be bled,

to get the nightmare off their chest

and to return cold to the cold realm.

Excellent, excellent.

How do you know? Why are you repeating her name?

Aza!

Aza!

What does she hold against me? That she gave herself to me?

Whereas I have never given myself to her entirely?

When am I whole?

I, within whom an eternal battle of darkness takes place.

You, come here!

Aviy!

Oh Martha! ... People! ...

The Victor!

Keep on talking to me... monster,

damn you!

Leave it!

- Chain him. I will talk to him! - You were alone with a Shern?

- She caught him. - She starts showing the signs!

- Enough! I give the orders here! - Sir, the law says that such a woman....

I am the law.

I take her in my care. She is mine.

I didn't know what bliss is.

I don't know what it's like not to be responsible for oneself.

Everything here is yours, sir. You liberate.

How do you feel facing the Victor, louse?

I shall serve him with all my might, until doom.

The Victor is unjust...

As you stand over the captive evil,

let the good be good,

even suffering...

Yes, yes, yes.

I am tired,

- Hush! - Tired.

Listen.

You've taken me. I am yours.

I would be consecrated to you even if you had not come.

Then anybody could take me.

I would be a woman of the temple,

and the children that I would bear would be slaughtered.

I accept everything you do. I am you.

I am what you are.

- Do you love Yeret? - I love you. No one else.

I came here out of the frailty of my heart.

I was betrayed by a woman I loved, the only one for whom...

for whom nothing seems to matter anymore.

Such is the power others have over us.

What do l have? Who do I have... What am l?

One knife blow was enough to release the dark balloon

and set it adrift. And the traveler,

who had built his coccoon solely out of air,

saw night's darkness, and began to scream:

I am in the prison of my own freedom,

in the hell of the one watching me...

I can afford to love you and that woman.

Be.

Don't think!

It can't hurt me!

And yet I am alive! Alive!

You must not tell anybody of what has happened here.

Yes.

- I was thoughtless. - As you wish, sir.

- I am weak. - Yes.

I am a man...

from Earth.

I am the one who has taken you inside me.

You are of two minds, sir.

You have not finished your work, and you hesitate whether to go back.

I know whom you want to talk to, sir.

My father, to get him out of your way;

and to Shern Swiny because he opposes you.

Do you feel disgraced? Spurned?

I love you, sir, as nobody ever will.

...I have arrived from There, from the depth of faith.

From beyond life, from beyond death and resurrection:

as the Old Man. From today on the lack of faith

will be punished with all severity...

Worthless are those who do not believe... Believers!

Now either the Sherns retaliate,

or we wage war across the sea...

May the Sherns' white hands never take our women.

To arms, believers!

To Yeret's troops! To the troops!

I am sure you understand...

Yesterday, it was nighttime, the heat of the battle. Today it's different.

I have come to ask you...

They are getting ready to cross the sea.

However cruel and inhuman you may be,

there must be some truth in you, your own truth...

I’d like to talk to you... They tell me about your crimes.

I don't know...

Tell me

if the transformation of visible into invisible is reflected within us, how do we make it happen?

I used to believe that all excesses of faith and illusions

are equally unjustified and unimportant,

and that deep down in everyone, there is goodness.

Everything is truth.

There is a grain of truth in everything that exists...

I am to act as I wish... As everyone...

You are saying it with such contempt.

I can feel your hatred, indifference... Why?

Across the sea, the city is beautiful, sweet and rich.

I am not asking you about it. I am asking you this:

You said everything had a name,

a secret principle, an asnwer. What is it?

Where is the place

where everything unites and becomes one. Or does it?

Keep on talking. It's beautiful.

I don't understand a word. I am afraid. Chaos. Darkness.

I can hear. It's water moving. No, it's the night,

no, it's the movement, movement of will.

What do you want to say?

Irrationality. Slavery.

A kind of ritual genocide as the objective?

Cruelty as a virtue? Inertia of the totality.

Then why do you spit on me?

You have nothing for me but contempt

and contempt will take you nowhere.

I can hear... its power over me is infinite.

Whose power? Whose power?!

You are an animal.

- You are an animal and yourself. - So you can talk!

No, it's only you who can hear...

- So why are you talking? - Because you feed me.

So, you want to live?

l don't know. What do you think? Am I alive?

You are an animal... Therefore you are alive...

Is it only the animal in you that is alive?

What about that which lives thanks to the animal?

I, I don't understand.

You are an animal and so am l.

I am consistent. You are not.

I am a reflection of what is in you.

You are not a reflection of what is in me.

l want to know one thing only. Earth, the planet you come from:

- What is it? - A Star, you see? A star.

I forgot.

Their conceit, rush to death,

my death, for I see myself in them.

The image of her in the ecstasy of love... impaled on him,

screaming. You say... within. To get inside.

To excrete. The same. Infinity is within.

I don't love. Loving is inward...

Loving not a person, not things, not myself.

Loving everything, you are everything and to everythin indifferent.

You come in contact with the existence of truth,

with the name of animality without which you would not exist...

Oh, I see. Beyond words. Truth... evil..

they signify nothing.

I yearn for this pain... this flow.

Now I feel melted. Rock...

Water! I feel your non-human transparence. Your complete cool...

I am a nobody.

I have always been nobody.

I hated and despised the reconciled ones.

Now I, I am the most despicable.

Because I have come to terms with myself.

I will not change anything in the world.

My illusion is not even a ripple upon the world's cool, metallic surface.

I can see... It is an ocean.

You are showing its beauty to me.

Speak more slowly,

speak more slowly!

It is opening.

Slower! I am in the doorway.

Slower! It hurts.

So much beauty that it hurts.

I was taught to be intelligent, efficient, cool...

to conquer... I have no feelings.

Who? How?

What am I to do?

Unbind yourself... The iron breaks your wings...

Worms are eating your skin... You are beautiful... You are divine...

I love you. Master... I want to vanish in your wisdom.

He wants to kill you!

It's God!

You hear something which does not exist at all...

He's not saying anything you wouldn't know...

- I can hear this! - This god is in you, god!

How... How do you know this? Woman?

I am playing this role... I know it.

I can feel birth and death, the truth and the untruth of everything.

She's been lying and committing adultery for months.

You are only beginning to learn about others.

You are only beginning to perceive... to sense...

The only important things is what you demand of yourself.

You are too wise for me.

He is speaking to you... singing to you.

I can feel it from the anxiety in me.

He is laughing at you... He is saying...

saying that you never had me and you never will

because you are dry and dead... you are not alive,

because you are an object created by objects,

and you know neither the name nor the meaning...

Nor do you know anything about yourself...

- a blind man... a weakling. - No... no!

Take him!

I’ve been learning...

for many years. You know, victor,

constrained by my duties,

on sleepless and doubt-ridden nights,

I thought that I would be gone while learning,

that I would turn my life inside out like a glove.

Oh... Oh... !

Look!

I'd always thought there were two ways.

As if acting in what we play for real

did not give me any satisfaction. Now I have it.

- Tell me how... ! What am I to do? - You know well,

certainly you do, since you took my daughter

and turned her into a woman.

The Sherns. What do you know?

You cannot beat the Shern within you.

Victor, you have probably experienced it yourself.

If you were unable to beat one,

how are you going to beat thousands?

As you see, I am play-acting,

and making room for you.

You are to take action.

Hope will return once you are gone.

- What is hope? - Hope is...

faith in becoming the materialization of form.

Blindly, groping in the dark.

I am longing.

Everything endures. I endure.

More and more often, I think of closing my eyes

and abstaining from everything.

l, an eunuch in the landscape of despair.

Sir, we'll cross the sea.

I gave you gunpowder, ammunition. You can go by yourselves.

But sir, it is you whom they worship,

in whom they believe, for whom they are waiting.

- I’ll give her back to you. - You need a woman, sir.

Why must the riddle of chaotic behavior lie in a Shern?

Why does evil act selectively and why is its method absurd?

Is truth only the most absurd thing I can think of,

understand or utter,

the most cruel thing I can muster?

What about courage?

We've come to inquire about your designs, sir?

The designs are laid down in the prophecy.

It's been known for a long time. Why are you asking?

Sir, you must appear before the people with all ceremony.

A vague rumor has spread across town that the sea had not parted

when you gazed upon it. Sir, it's necessary to levy taxes.

We need metal,

saltpeter,

and manpower.

You have decided, sir.

People of little faith. Can it be otherwise?

Isn't this right, dancer?

You know everything, sir.

Oh, world!

What have I done not to comprehend you?

- Are you satisfied? - Sir, we are savoring you.

You are in us like marrow in the bone...

- What did you say? - ...like the cause of existence.

Nothing, nothing, sir. You let us rejoice.

They are play-acting... That in the beginning, the Shern, out of vanity,

created the world which he thought ideal.

But when he looked up,

he saw the light which he did not create himself.

Then he returned to his homeland. And then his masculine creative power

turned into feminine readiness.

Oh, sir, how hard I am trying!

Gentle Malahuda, her father,

is seen hanging around town at nights. He mocks you,

- undermines the faith of the people. - What does he say?

That peace will return only once you are gone...

I did not come to bring peace, but war.

- Gentle Rhoda... - Who?

A scholar, sir.

He improved the weaving plant, invented fuel for the flame,

- measured the length of the roads... - What does he say?

He claims there is no Earth; there has never been any Old Man;

that everything is silent and empty.

And that only we exist, and the Sherns who are like animals.

So where do I come from, in his opinion?

He says you are like a worm, sir,

- that you came up to the surface... - So why did I come?

You did not come,

you were expelled.

- Where is Yeret? - Yeret is leading the parade.

The Morques we have caught will be slaughtered in your honor, sir.

You did not tell me that you have caught somebody.

- Not somebody, sir, something. - Don't instruct me, you fool!

Nobody will be killed here without my knowing.

But you know everything, sir.

Indeed you are a man. I recognize your anger.

I am being carried by the river of love.

It may be disgrace, betrayal and pain,

but it encompasses good and evil.

It is good, if it is love.

But... after all, the only thought which sets thoughts in motion,

the only fidelity which gives a form

to something which is the churning chaos of biology,

that thing is fidelity to a pre-determined goal...

Only it creates a sense that this chaotic void

can be buckled with the braces of one's own making.

Certainly... but everything is of my own making, including understanding

that everything is everything, and it is a bottomless and echoless well.

Did you like me?

Sir, stand on her. Give her back her dignity.

They will kill me!

Leave me alone!

What?!

Morques,

I don't believe you descend from your fathers alone...

You must have something human in you after your mothers.

I am appealing to what is human in you.

Morques, your lives will be spared, if you join us,

if you come with us.

Morques!

Mother, mother...

chains...

child... mother.

Kill nothing, you -- nothing.

Oh Shern.

Everything -- pain. Sleep -- pain.

Day -- pain. Fear.

Quiet, Shern. I -- Shern.

When the Shern sings. I -- animal.

You -- less. You -- death.

I -- the bow. Trees. Grass.

I -- see -- Morque. You -- fear. I -- the run.

Alone. I go.

I far. You near. You fear -- pain.

Weight. You -- voice. I -- silence.

We -- go away, perish, float.

You -- Shern. Let him sing.

I can see earth, grass, forest.

I can feel the warm air over the path...

The flight of two grey birds which I associate with death...

Which means... I'm afraid?

Unbind Aviya!

Ihezal has just asked to bring him here.

What?

Whoever comes to know the world, shall find a corpse.

And who will find a corpse,

shall be too good for this world.

Elem wants to burn them in pyres.

He is right, sir.

They are already nothing.

A Shern's touch burns out their sex.

If they can still speak, they speak of the delight so great

as to be hideous, sir. The Shern touches

their very kernel,

their very darkness, and pries it ajar,

fills it up, clears it up.

You sound as if you yourself...

I know nothing, nothing.

What do you want?

What am I to do? How am I to defend myself?

I didn't know that there could exist such great love.

On Earth things are different.

- Is there day and night? - Yes.

- White and black? - Yes.

- Love and hate? - There is no killing on Earth.

There is killing when there is life.

No.

What do you feel?

Joy and the power of fulfillment.

You teach me something which I did not know.

I feel love.

But now only my body is suffering.

The pain I feel is merely physical.

I can touch it. I can also,

oh, new art, I can tell myself; turn your thoughts away from her.

May she not be present so that you don't suffer.

Thus, through my body swollen with pain,

the soul is taking shape smoothly, soothingly,

and, I would say, not-materially.

The soul does not suffer.

I recognize indifference in it, like in a warm river.

My soul and I are identical.

She was beautiful and famous?

Yes.

You've never loved her.

What is this for?

For your departure tomorrow.

To pay homage to what exists and reject nothing of what doesn't.

The tangibility of evil which we see around.

The submission to the narrow labyrinths

of one's own sensual passion.

The belief in the importance of those who wield power over us

means creating evil, conjuring it in the dark,

transforming oneself into a murderous gland which considers everything its own property.

Why does a woman concern you, sir?

For holiness enters a man as he gains hysteric purity of the visitation.

Visitation of what?

The Shern.

What if the Shern is evil, while I am your god.

What is greater and more tranquil than god?

Let us depart. There will be the fervor of victory after a long night.

Guard her, remember, preserve.

Can you feel it?

Feel it?

Those who have not showed their faith...

treacherous women...

Those who have hidden their sons from the expedition

and those who have not paid their taxes... I remember you.

- What is your name? - Sevim, sir.

- What were you? - A priest.

Will you serve?

Against whom, sir?

The sea is calm and a gentle breeze propels the ships.

Before they reach their goal, they come across a tree trunk

adrift and carrying the Actor and the scholar Rhoda,

banished for their lack of faith.

The scholar is looking at Mark with contempt.

“You do not exist,” he exclaims.

“You have never come.” Mark replies:

“If I die, go to the mountains and find my spaceship.

Get inside, seal the hatch and press one button.

The red one. “

“Count on me, sir,” Exclaims the Actor.

“l will transmit you”.

“My oxygen helmet

is in the monastery of the Expectant Brethren at the foot of the mountains,” says Mark.

“You are cunning,” replies Rhoda.

“You are leaving me in the open sea

while you talk of the mountains.”

“Yes,” Mark answers. “Our odds are equal.”

Mark!

Mark!

Can you hear me? Mark!

Aza!

The next step,

the next threshold which I will have to occupy with my whole body,

is death?

- Speak. - Still nothing.

What if that's not what I wanted to ask about?

When her truth speaks, her darkness speaks.

And clear is only that which one formulates against oneself.

- Speak. - Still nothing.

What if that's not what I wanted to ask about?

There.

I must know.

There, there...

Here,

- not there. Here. - There. I must see.

In the end, every reduction to physiology

is fascism of the soul.

It is shrinking instead of growing,

just as if everything came down

to the judgment that, alive, man does nothing.

Man creates only if he's crippled.

or dead.

“Master Jack,”

say the doormen standing before him at attention.

Dressed in the same garb as he is,

the audience is sitting in a huge dilapidated hall.

They are leaning, their eyes fixed on Aza

who stands singing in a brightly-lit corner of the hall.

The hall acoustics is clear.

Aza is singing what the actors are playing:

about herself, about her divine love. About herself. Me, me.

Jack shuts his eyes tight,

takes a few steps back, stumbles and runs out.

- What's wrong with you? - I succumbed.

That quack fed me some some poison.

Still no news from Mark?

We sent him there so that we could make love.

- Yes. - Now.

- Now is ever. Now. Here. Ever! - Love, love, we are making love.

For a few months

your girlishness, beauty and youth have disappeared.

You have aged and your face scares me.

For pushing the limits causes matter to spontaneously combust,

as beyond a certain point there was just pulp

and, at the very bottom, death.

Once again, you are one among many.

You are taking part in an auction.

You exist anew thanks to your love affair.

But you don't know that it is not you who sets the price,

the value of merchandise in this market;

that the hand which fumbles inside you

and which cruelly turns your glands inside out,

is the hand of the very principle of the market,

the murderous hand or eye

which finds pleasure in seeing actors

waste away like dogs lustfully wagging their tails.

Rows of ceiling-high

metal filing cabinets.

Their drawers,

hundreds of identical drawers, are filled with electron tubes

similar to old radio-set valves.

All valves are the same. Mark bends over them.

The Sherns swoop down on him. Mark fires his weapon.

From the skull of the dead Shern, an eye rolls out onto the floor,

still shining. When it finally grows dim, Mark repeats:

“That is all.”

Thousands of Shern eyes,

thousands of Shern brains are lying in the drawers, waiting.

Mark notices that the temple walls are covered with frescoes.

Moldy and faded, but legible,

they depict Sherns sitting on their thrones, pompous;

sacred Sherns, conquering Sherns,

Sherns gazing upon the supreme Shern

who gazes higher yet, into the sky, with admiration.

Mark speaks without uttering any sounds:

“Home. Home.”

Aza,

are you crazy?!

I am crazy! I am crazy!

You see,

one can reach a state in which one has to confess,

submit, spill one's guts,

as if admitting that there's nothing else inside,

and that the sight of one's entrails means renouncing the secret,

exposing and rejecting one's ego...

without remainder.

You,

and if not you, then who?

I?

We are pleased with your coming, sir,

...but so many of you set out and so few came back!

War, diseases.

Yeret, whom you sent in advance, told me

that you have done all that was in your human power,

human power, and nothing more...

- Where is Yeret? - He is at your side.

We sent him back with reinforcements, as you had requested.

Don't you remember?

- I was sick. - So we heard.

Why?

For lack of faith, of course.

It's not faith that calls for the gift of grace,

- but life itself. - Why did we retreat, sir?

We should have held out to the end, for man, to the very end.

It is written:

Who comes to know oneself, comes to know God.

I already know who I am.

And you, brother?

Secret killings have been rife since your left, sir.

People are in panic. You have retreated.

- Their anger will be terrible. - Where is Ihezal?

Ihezal!

Ihezal!

Get up! Get up!

You are the only man without a secret.

You speak of it, but you don't believe in it.

You are like an animal following a scent.

Still the same.

You are an actress playing the value of a feeling,

its transience.

You are biology,

speculating about the mystery with your belly

which you fill with heat which in turn you mistake for yourself.

Because we are sinful and dead. We call from the depth.

Let us crawl to the grace of your resurrection,

melt in your goodness,

and experience your mercy in order to attain resurrection

together with you,

oh mystery, because we are small and dead.

Ihezal!

Why are you hiding?

I've missed you so much!

I waited.

I knew that only my fidelity mattered... my chastity...

- and our mutual attachment. - Why don't you let me touch you?

- Your speech is blurred. - Maybe we are sick, sir...

sick of evil and passivity.

Maybe we live briefly as an ulcer. And you want to rearrange our destiny.

Maybe I am a disease turning towards the new...

- unfamiliar freshness. - I don't understand you!

Sweet are my embraces, remember, sir?

But they are nothing compared with the delight one's body can feel...

if it wants to, if it is in touch with its feelings.

I am a body, sir!

Splitting.

The idea of splitting. Self-awareness in split.

There is duality of nature here and duality of life.

The thought of duality is part of my nature.

It's the contradiction between form and desire...

Between the answer and the language of darkness.

Hence I am God.

- I am God. - Come, sir.

Sir!

Sir,

your spacecraft. Sir.

The Expectant Brethren saw it rise in a pillar of fire...

I don't want to see any more. I want to know.

I want to be there.

You -- here. There -- nothing.

Nothing is there.

Everything is here.

You may die.

I beg you.

I am not afraid of dying.

The sea!

We must change their cruel laws, expel the priests,

give an equal share to the people, destroy false hopes.

- They will not agree. - Then we will do it alone.

Cannons.

Aimed at whom?

The city,

the city.

Oh, they are right, sir.

Blessed be who existed before he came to be.

And you shall become those who are passing by.

The Shern Aviy alights above Marek's head.

He observes, curious,

and jeers: “Hello, brother”.

“Without that eye which somebody had programmed for you,

which perhaps you had programmed yourselves

when you still were able to think,” says Mark.

The Shern answers: And who has programmed you? “.

“Who am l? “- asks Mark.

The Shern kneads some dirt in his claws clutching the wooden cross,

and replies: “This is you.”

“Will I ever emerge from this darkness,” asks Marek.

“It does hurt, brother, doesn't it?” answers Aviy.

Jack fires at him. The Shern falls onto the sand,

spinning more and more slowly,

and like a dying wind-up toy, keeps repeating

“Love, love, love. “

Force, my force, you have abandoned me!

Who?!

What?!

Why?!

Welcome...

grace.

How much can one endure?

How much must one love life

so that one doesn't turn into a Shern?

In a casino, astronauts are playing roulette and baccarat.

Jack is passing by catching shreds of conversations.

Somebody says: “He was not to blame.”

“He was an animal among animals, a wolf in a forest.”

Somebody else: “Soul does not reside in the brain,”

but in form.” A third voice:

“The Angel symbolizes the transfiguration

from the visible into the invisible which we are accomplishing.”

Television screens set up along the wall, come on,

transmitting the images from the camera mounted on Mark's spacecraft.

The camera seems responsive to motion and body heat,

because the scholar Rhoda and the Actor are making their way to the ship,

sharing an oxygen helmet.

Jack calls out to them, but they can't hear him.

Cautiously moving past George's corpse,

the Actor and Rhoda board the ship.

The casino manager grabs Jack by the arm, saying:

“Master,

they are looking for you. Strikes, demonstrations.

The conspiracy of the Gnostics... Those who know, should...”

Ihezal is seated at the end of the baccarat table.

She is wearing Aza's dress.

She laughs provocatively, looking at Jack.

She is surrounded by admirers.

Jack's assistant's face appears on the TV screens.

Master, we have a signal.

Keep talking.

Where's Marek?

Who sent you?

We can see you.

There is a white round spotlight over your heads.

There is the eye which can see you.

Speak to the eye...

We are going to the earth's interior,

where we will find the truth,

and human happiness,

and the revelation of all mysteries.

Because we have always been right... Always...

Right. Right. Right...

- He's gone mad. - No, he is performing.

Master, we can bring them over to us.

They are close enough,

master.

Take them on board.

Where to, master?

To the Old Earth.

Jack turns his back to the screen.

Very slowly, he sinks to his knees,

and bends to the ground.

It's a heart attack. Jack is dying.

The astronauts rush to his side.

They are pounding his chest with fists. In vain.

From the corner of the hall, master Jack observes his own death.

The astronauts are struggling to rescussitate him,

and nobody notices when he walks out of the casino.

Outside, it's dark.

There are bonfires in the distant steppe.

Around the bonfires there is a tribe gathered. The same tribe.

There is the Rider there and the girl with eyes on her palms,

so very much like Ihezal. Jack comes up to her.

She rises to her feet and opens her arms.

The camera zooms in on the darkness of her body.

The sound of her even heart-beat can be heard.

A moment later,

the hoof-beats of a horse riding away.

The final shot of this film

described in the script, was as follows:

428. Long shot. 3 meters.

In the dawning light:

a horse without a rider galloping across the steppe.

Due to the decision of the vice-minister of culture,

vice-secretary of state for Polish cinema,

the production of the film “On the Silver Globe”

was stopped in the spring of 1977.

At that time the film crew were staying on the Baltic seacoast.

At the same time, the film set, with props and costumes

needed to complete the 2-year-long production,

had been finally created and awaited the film crew in Wrocław,

in Lower Silesia, in Masuria Lake District, and in the Caucasus Mountains.

All these decorations, costumes and props were destroyed.

The employees of the film studio: make-up artists, costume designers, script writers,

have preserved in warehouses

and their own apartments

whatever they managed to salvage.

I am finishing this film thinking of them.

Meanwhile the small drama of this film

and the grand and hopefully honorable drama of our lives,

will continue to intertwine

in a common mosaic of successful flights and crash landings.

My name is Andrzej Żuławski,

and I am the director of the film “On the Silver Globe.”

Starring:

SUBTITLES proofread & revised by: aileverte