Original subtitles

“ON THE SILVER GLOBE”

This film is based on “THE LUNAR TRILOGY” by JERZY ZULAWSKI.

You are about to 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, which dates back to 1977, when the film was murdered,

will never be recreated.

In place of missing scenes, a voice will explain

what was meant to be.

We completed “ON THE SILVER GLOBE” in the year 1987.

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

From up high...

They were close...

hunting.

They found it in the morning,

in the branches.

It fluttered... beautiful...

He travelled for two days... across the snow... tired...

He thought: it must be for them... for sure.

What is it?

He says they saw it fall. They could not have seen...

Maybe they saw a star.

It is an ancient relic. It could not have fallen just now.

It could be from the past...

Everybody saw it... Two days ago... at night...

They found it in the morning... It can only be for us...

It is fifty, sixty years old.

It is a Small Transmission Module STM.

The way that it is burnt indicates Titanium Beta or the like.

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

I guess they did not teach you about that.

Why did it fall?

It could have honed in on a target station fifty years ago.

Unless...

If what they are saying is true...

They usually do not lie.

One of the older rigs should crack it.

If the chip is not fried, it should tell us where it came from and why.

Tell her again that I demand she not intrude.

This place is packed with delicate gear. It will all go haywire.

Unless she would come to see you.

She is not coming to see you. She is coming to take you.

You do not understand. She is mine.

No, you belong to them.

Put your mask on. It is freezing outside.

Later...

What happens if you run out of those chemicals?

Freedom, maybe?

They can kill us at any time and take the chemicals,

or steal them while we sleep.

But they will not.

We are the givers,

not the takers.

Aliens like trees.

They want to tame us. To poison, to engulf...

Are we the last of those who have the power,

or the first of those to be defenceless?

Under the hatchway into which two astronauts enter, there is a lab.

A huge room filled with machines that listened to sounds from outer space.

Only one of the oldest machines, which has remained idle for decades,

can read out what is inside the container,

which the astronauts received from the rider.

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

featuring scenes as if shot with a camera.

The first shows the journey of a spacecraft,

the pilots losing control, it crashing into the mountains.

Only a fragment of this recording survives.

I can see!

DEATH...

The astronauts struggle out of the battered cockpit.

Around them are mountains. The air is unbreathable.

They leave behind the dead body of their commander.

They wheel out buggies from their rocket and ride downhill.

One of the astronauts, Tomasz, is injured.

Another rocket crashes into the mountains and explodes.

Were those who died in it, with them or after them?

This planet resembles Earth perfectly.

This is why it was chosen to start a new life.

Heading to the sea, the buggies come across a large mound of stones,

piled together like an architectural form,

as if a civilisation once existed here in the past.

While near the ruins, Tomasz’s fever turns to delirium.

He sees ghosts: the dead astronauts are coming to capture him.

One tries to defend him.

The others want to chain him up.

See.

The commander was right. They allow us to breathe.

We shall live...

Wait...

Do you remember when a man is to be born,

the father endows him with the seeds of every possibility?

What every man nurtures in him

will witness it grow inside and bring fruits.

If it is vegetal, he will be a plant;

if it is sensual, he will be an animal;

if it is rational...

his being will become... divine!

Finally if it is intellectual,

he will be an angel, or the son of Man!

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

that we are cowards who have to defend courage,

sex, consciousness, carnal beauty, the quest of love,

the conquest of which may become a heroic destiny after all.

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

because the strongest believers among us

have spent their years talking about fear,

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

although we have thus attempted

to take a severe view of this reality

which may depend on our decent life,

our work,

our own honour

which permits us to say no more

than what we ourselves have seen.

It is over.

I did not hear your answers.

I believe no signal can pierce this world’s radiation belt.

While falling, they were above this plain.

- Stop pulling! - The wave bounced, so we got it.

It was them standing over me...

The commander was walking dead... To take me away...

Maybe what bounced back

was not just an electromagnetic wave,

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

- Stop pulling! - You’re delirious!

Surely you know that whatever you say

must carry at least a grain of truth

just because you are capable of saying it.

Put him down!

Do not forget what we escaped from,

Just to repeat with impunity what we believe in.

Do not forget!

Whatever you say is the truth,

unless you say it...

to impose your will upon us.

Me, I do not believe in anything.

If you say it, you look into yourself.

You are not blind.

That is why you are a fugitive like us.

Yes, you are dying, brother.

After all, there is truth in everything I say

if I am able to say it.

Freedom exists and is lying in darkness...

It turns away from the lust of darkness

to lean towards the lust of light.

It embraces light with its everlasting will.

And darkness strives to capture the light of freedom

but it cannot do that,

because it wraps itself around its own lust...

and turns to darkness again.

The wind rises. The night is falling.

The drizzle turns into a downpour, and the downpour into a hurricane.

Tomasz dies.

Before he dies, Marta begs to be left alone with him.

She loves him. She clings to him. She protects him with her body.

The river rumbles, swells and overflows. It is a deluge.

Marta!

We have to get moving. We will not survive here.

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

Come on.

No! No!

You are sick. You will have to be carried.

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

The sea!

I see the sea!

Jerzy.

Tomasz is growing faster than he would on Earth.

At the age of six months, he is as tall as a one-year-old.

Jerzy, could it be that we will all die and he will be left alone?

Marta. 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...

and then...

Marta, am I right?

Yes.

I took cameras of Marta and Piotr. They no longer bother to record.

I have transferred their memories onto mine.

I have erased the irrelevant passages. I have kept the gist.

Only by recording do I make sense out of myself.

I must be careful.

It costs them so much.

It costs me so little. Why?

Almost nothing.

I do not demand anything. I do not believe in anything.

I believe only in perfect freedom, ours, mine.

Piotr says that long, long ago,

I could have become a monk,

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

For if one is to forget why we came here,

I did.

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

It is the world that is lost in contemplation of us.

Oh, Earth!

You do not wish to learn from me, Tomasz?

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.

Marta, talk to me.

Marta, say something!

Yes.

Marta, keep silent.

Marta, laugh.

Marta, cry.

Marta, dance!

Dance!

One can think only if one believes.

There is no thought without faith.

Only one who has faith has thoughts.

This... one must want to know faith.

One can only believe if one has grown roots.

Only one that believes that they have grown roots.

Thus one must want to know one’s rootedness.

One can have roots only if one acts.

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 without love. In that case, this word is meaningless.

It turns into evil and hate.

But the only reason we came here was not to hate anybody.

How can you be so happy here...

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

Yes?

If you have us, you have what we have!

That is, nothing. Nothing! Nothing!

Jerzy,

you don’t even fight me.

Oh, Earth!

Piotr!

I found him here.

One day, when the Angel of Death entered King Solomon’s presence

he looked at one of his courtiers in a fierce way...

“Who is that?” he said.

He said: “That was the Angel of Death.”

“I saw him looking at me as if he wanted my soul!”

“I want you to order the winds to take me to India.”

And Solomon did.

Then the Angel of Death said:

“I was surprised to see him here with you,

because I was ordered to take his soul from a place in India.

But he is here at your side, in your court!”

Can it be true?

I will have a baby. Yours.

It will be my last baby.

Say nothing for a while.

For once I want to be at peace with myself.

Help me.

You have not yet let me paint you. Can I do that now?

You could have killed him, Piotr.

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

A girl...

I see them...

All...

Yes, like everything...

Darkly...

Me too, I never understood.

Because here it is total darkness.

You are back.

And Mother?

Mother is dead. Will you die too?

Yes.

- Like Mother? - Yes.

Yes...

Still, I will say it. Perhaps disjointedly.

I, a free man, an unimpassioned man,

I am wounded, wounded like an animal.

I suffer like an animal, like Piotr.

What I brought along with me was chaos.

Any order, any serenity, clarity, tranquillity has gone.

As if her death awoke a night terror, without dreams,

A dream without waking, awake without sense.

I was taught that the eye of the world

which is looking at me

is the same eye with which I see the world.

This eye is neither serene nor evil...

neither feeling nor expectant.

It is indifferent like water.

I will stay under it for as long as I can.

I will go to the mountains,

Searching for metals which they can use.

I will be thinking.

Yes...

I will be thinking.

I will feel dissolved in you,

rock,

grass.

I will feel.

I will feel in me your inhuman translucence.

I will feel your incomprehensible breath, your absolute coldness.

I am nobody.

I hated, I despised the warriors.

Now I, I myself deserve contempt,

for I am at war with myself.

Mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found.

The deeds are, but no doer of the deeds is there.

Nirvana is, but not the man that enters it.

The path is, but no traveller on it is seen.

You are back again, Old Man.

Please,

- Go on dancing. - You are back again!

I am Ada, Marta’s last daughter.

Why do you never die?

Why do you not die?

Why do not you not understand what you have given us?

Why are you not in what exists?

Why are you elsewhere, where nothing exists?

Nothing!

And then Fertile Mother Marta,

begot thunder with the Moon in heaven.

And she indulged in pleasure to have him stronger than Tomasz.

And so she returned swept by the flood and begot fishes,

and animals in forests...

And Piotr gave us settlements and wisdom and the bow...

By always being here you make us remember.

But why do you never say anything?

Oh Earth!

Earth!

The Old Man said:

Oh! Earth!

More and more I want to record myself.

No, no!

Come, you, who is so still,

yet draws closer to me by the hour.

She feels the fire.

She serves the fire.

She gives herself to me,

because I am the Master of the Fire.

I have devoted myself to you; you who have arrived.

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

because I interpret Marta, and you and the rain.

Love me.

I love everything.

Well? 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 has forgotten how to write.

Maybe evil? evil.

Forgive me.

Do not look at me, in this face paint,

in this garb, in this degradation.

You would not search for me,

if you had not found me!

Record it carefully,

for you are documenting half a God and an animal.

Did you feel the same fear on Earth?

- Yes. - And the Coming was from over there?

Yes.

You will return...

Nobody returns anywhere, I told you many times.

You do not have to tell the truth to the end,

you are the Old Man. How do you come know everything?

Eternity is the state of simultaneously possessing everything, Ada.

I am Tomasz the Second, son of Old Tomasz.

The Third Tomasz.

When you talk like this I do not understand. Nobody does, not even Ada.

Looking at your face for too long frightens us.

I cannot oppose any of you, Tomasz the Third.

It is becoming too difficult to breathe. Too much anxiety.

Too much longing.

Because you are the Old Man,

bless me, Old Man.

How?

Old Tomasz was lazy.

He did not try to extend the lands where we live.

He did not wish to know what lies beyond and beyond,

as if he were afraid...

Tomorrow the sea will be quiet, 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 has to be.

You are right.

It is I who keeps forgetting that I know everything,

but I understand nothing.

- Do you want to see Marta? - I do not need to.

I believe...

that Mother Marta had created all parts of the world,

and we must explore them, because they are 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. Stop raving. You of all people should not rave.

You are my daughter.

We are all your children,

and you showed us what is good and what is bad.

Tell me why we were expelled from Earth?

I,

I am beautiful.

I... I am young.

I can do things nobody else can.

May the blessing of the Humans be with you.

Give it.

Enough.

There is only so much memory left.

On the other side,

we have found...

There are huge settlements,

a city like a beehive...

Everybody perished. There... there...

Monsters! They have wings... black...

One eye in the middle of their foreheads...

They are flying, flying after me...

To destroy...

destroy the Humans.

They are carrying death.

Lord, Lord!

It is the wind?

Lord, Lord. Do not leave...

I am better than you

and that is why I will be able to play you.

Earth...

Earth...

Earth, Earth, oh Earth!

People, rejoice!

The Old Man is leaving. People!

Is it right to sleep with one’s own daughter?

Or brother?

If a brother steals his brother’s property should his hand be cut off?

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

Is the birth of a baby a Holy Day? Even if the baby is blind?

I do not know,

I do not know.

I know nothing, nothing. Do I not know anything?

No, she is not sick.

She is the victory of yearning over truth.

And the sick one... the sick one is the one who is playing.

The actor is sick, because he is looking for you in himself.

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

So he will not be loved. So he pulls his face

and he is like a bad mirror for beauty.

The actor is the victory of ugliness

over the beauty of the world.

Do you hear?

Do you hear, do you hear?

They are flying! Flying, flying!

Coming!

Come.

You bloodthirsty God.

Alone, in his odd attire of half-astronaut, half-deity,

Jerzy has reached the rocket that crashed in the mountains years ago.

The commander’s body is still there, as if nothing has happened since his death.

With his last breath, Jerzy retrieves the container, into which he puts

the record of what happened to him, to them, to the Humans.

He aims the module into space.

Before he launches it, he takes one final shot of his face.

And his tears.

In the tunnel where the two astronauts have watched Jerzy’s diary,

the screen goes blank, and silence sets in.

“It must be sent to the Old Earth”, the senior astronaut says.

He glances at the junior one, who is sitting tense, self-absorbed.

“Let’s go back to them, home”, says the junior one,

“let us rejoice with them, dance, celebrate that we are alive.”

“Why are you crying?” asks the senior.

“Because I do not know who I am.”

The hatchway opens above their heads. Wind creeps into the tunnel passage,

and a girl sneaks in with the wind. The same girl who died with Tomasz.

A second on the seashore.

So she is not the same, but an eternal recurrence of herself.

Warriors follow her into the tunnel, stringing their bows.

Years later, another spacecraft lands on the spot where Jerzy crashed.

It is of a more modern design and lands gently.

One man, Marek, climbs out of the spacecraft.

He addresses a camera mounted on the rocket shield:

“It fits with Jerzy’s diary.” He glances at Jerzy’s petrified face.

“They are beautiful”, he says, “a bit absurd, old-fashioned.”

“Now I shall look for the Humans.”

There is a chattering noise in his headphones.

“How am I doing?”, Marek asks. “Fine.”

“Not staying, believing that you no longer existed, was a good idea.”

“So it no longer hurts. Embrace Aza for me.” He switches off.

Marek comes down from the mountains.

On the plain, where one can breathe, a cluster of people expect him.

They are monks, the Brothers of Waiting, for generations facing the Holy Mountains,

where Jerzy ascended and from where Marek is descending.

It is Him they have been waiting for, as it is written in their holy scriptures,

a young God will come, the Conqueror, one who will liberate the Humans,

from the hideous, bird-like creatures called Sherns.

Unbelievably cruel monsters,

which flew from across the sea and enslaved the Humans.

“You got the wrong Saviour!” “I’m a man, just like you.”

The Abbot smiles slyly: “Whatever you say.”

It is not the faith of these poor people that carries Marek away,

but the fervent uprising that breaks out upon his Coming.

The Shern army consists of creatures born of women impregnated by Sherns.

They are called Mortes. They are beastly, strong, and dumb.

They put up dogged resistance. Battles multiply.

The last occurs on the seashore where humans have been driven underground,

and where hides the High Priest, Malahuda.

Where is the High Priest? Where is Malahuda?

We come to pay homage. We are leading the uprising...

And be sure that this Conqueror is The Conqueror...

If, if, if!

Seize him, chain him, punish him!

I should kill you.

They cannot see you wounded, Lord!

Stop clowning!

We shall get the High Traitor who has not come to bow before The Saviour.

The father of your fiancée, Lord,

one with whom you will fall in love, as it is written.

Away with you!

We will see who is in the right, the one who waited for centuries,

or the one who humbled himself and served!

Get back to the beach!

I never knew who I was. Nor did I know what I could do with such ease.

What I had was the ease of being intelligent,

looking for an adult aim, while I was just a youngster.

The stupidest thing is not to understand one’s own charm.

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

We are forbidden from fighting and dying with Humans...

nor can we cross the threshold. We serve, Lord.

You are human.

It is good. I’ll know how to play you.

Why are you crying, child?

Our underground state, Lord.

Where we have gathered for centuries to worship the promise of your Coming.

Here sects appeared of suicides and flagellants, poets and iconoclasts.

Here the monks wrote prophecies.

The abyss was above, a darkness as dark as the soul of man...

For the soul of man accepts the Sherns, justifies their actions...

converses with them as if sleepwalking.

This is Your church, Lord.

Lord, they are coming out!

But they are grotesque. Defenceless!

What is defenceless is strong, good is bad, beauty is in worms.

Is that all? The end?

Shern Aviy has escaped. Reinforcements will now fly in from across the sea!

Marek seeks the council of the High Priest, who hands over his powers

and confirms that his daughter, Ihezal, loved by Yeret, the young warrior,

is consecrated to the Conqueror and the worship of the Old Man.

“It was me who negotiated with the Sherns, to lower the tributes,

“like a beggar bargaining for human lives,

“it was me who tried to understand the sense of lawlessness,

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

He is tired. “The faith is coming to an end”, he says,

“since you have come. Now reality is beginning.”

I am alone.

A prince in the middle of an icy room hollowed out of an icy space.

I carry my own space in me.

I am carrying it in an absurd land in an absurd time.

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

merged into a hateful vision of their bodies, looking for meaning in the other,

a meaning which the bodies cannot accommodate.

Do not look there, Lord. The Sherns captured the children. They...

Their mothers said the Sherns wanted to see the demon inside human beings,

- to see how the soul leaves the body. - And you tolerated that?

There is no way to understand them, Lord!

The Mortes describe their closeness as poetic.

But it stinks here!

Do not laugh at them, Lord.

Sherns have a third eye in the middle of their heads, they speak through it.

While silent, they speak, and you understand their slightest nuance.

The Mortes say that this is beautiful:

It is like shapes, they say. The Sherns say that we are defective.

We do not know how to direct the evil in ourselves,

nor the force.

They are killing you.

Perfunctorily.

You will not understand why they let some live, and exterminate others.

Did you not negotiate with them?

They do not negotiate, Lord!

Until they took women,

they swarmed in this place. At that time, they could still fly.

Now they are lying around, watching

with that eye of theirs. We feel it. Through the walls we feel anxiety.

- Then we see everything. - Everything!

Nothing! Nothing!

Nothing, Lord. There is a sect of scientists who claim they are not there,

that they are only a reflection of ourselves called out from the dark.

They are what?

I do not know.

- Do you believe in that? - No, Lord.

And do you believe in me?

Who are you?

A man.

Hours of lead. Nights of lead.

Lead in the heart. The heartache turned into lead.

Thoughts of lead, of nothing, of lead.

The lead cancer consuming my body, fluid as an amoeba.

An amoeba in my selfishness,

in its right to search out the places of greater delight.

Lord, she is playing the woman you came here to get away from.

What?!

You did leave one, Lord? One you left to escape...

How did you know?!

It is in the scriptures.

Do you not remember?

What?!

The High Priest’s daughter, Lord. She is asking you not to return.

- Where?! - To Earth, Lord.

Fear the signs of fornication, the signs of decay,

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

Do not fear what is, because there is only what you do not feel.

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

Aza!

- And thus I shall be called, Lord. - Ihezal!

Aza!

I want to get out of here and be left alone, without you!

I knew you would come.

If you are an intelligent being, you must be curious.

You think: who is he? Where is he from? I saved your life. I did not denounce you.

They would have beaten you to death and I would have learned nothing.

Maybe you will talk to me instead. Maybe I will comprehend who you are.

I hear.

I am trying to understand.

You are me. I am you.

Everything has one identity.

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

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

You are the gateway, the tunnel, the light of the ultimate threshold.

This is rubbish.

How? How?

What with?

What is this? I do not know this notion. I do not understand.

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

You have changed the line of thought.

You have been only a step away. I have been...

Now I see only flashes...

You say... no... light...

Why do you repeat... God? Why death?

Why resurrection?

Come back!

You are survival, because you are not closed,

because you resolve in your power the time,

the air and the contradiction that we are, the animals.

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

The one who has devoured all is the only one.

Only he endures. Those he has devoured are meagre.

One must bleed them, to relieve them from the nightmare,

and to have a cold return to the realm of cold. Perfectly!

How do you know? Why do you repeat her name? Aza!

What does she hold against me? That she had succumbed to me,

while I have never entirely succumbed to her?

When am I entirely?

I, in whom an eternal battle of darkness fights.

You, come back!

Aviy!

Oh Marta!

People!

The Conqueror!

Keep talking to me...

monster!

- You beast! - Don’t touch!

Chain him. I’ll keep talking to him!

She was alone with a Shern...

She caught him.

Maybe the lesions have already appeared on her!

Enough! I give the orders here!

Lord, the law says that such women...

I am the law here.

I will take her into my care. She is mine.

I did not know what bliss was.

I do not know how it is to be irresponsible to oneself.

Everything here is yours, Lord. You liberate.

How do you feel facing the Conqueror, vermin?

I shall serve him with all I have right up until the bitter end!

The Conqueror is unjust...

You are facing the captive fiend. Allow goodness to stay good,

even if you suffer.

Yes, yes, yes.

I am tired,

- Hush! - Tired...

Listen...

You have taken me. I am yours.

Had you not Arrived, I would remain consecrated to you, regardless.

Then everybody would take me.

I would be a woman of the temple and my children would be killed.

I accept everything you do. I am you.

I am what you are.

- Do you love Yeret? - I love you. Nobody.

I came here out of weakness. I was betrayed by the woman I love.

The only one for whom nothing seemed to matter any more.

Such is the power others have over us.

Aviy... What have I... Who, what am I?

One knife-blow cut loose this dark vessel which now drifts away

and the traveller who has built a cocoon out of clear air,

saw the dark of the night and began to scream:

I am in the prison of my own freedom,

in the hell of those who can only look.

I can bear loving you, and that woman.

Be.

Do not think.

It will not hurt me.

And yet I am alive! Alive!

I forbid you to tell anyone what happened here.

Yes.

- I was mindless. - As you wish, Lord.

- 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, Lord.

You have not finished yet you think of backtracking. You want to talk to...

my father, because he stepped aside, and to Shern Aviy, who defies you.

Do you feel shamed? Cast aside?

I love you, Lord, as no one ever will.

One who has arrived from Over There, from the depth of faith.

From beyond life, from beyond death and resurrection: The Old Man.

From today the absence of this faith will be punished with all severity...

Worthless are those who do not believe... Hear, you faithful!

Now either a retaliation by the Sherns, or our fire across the sea...

For the white Shern hands are never to take our women away.

To arms, you faithful! Join the ranks of Yeret’s army!

I am certain that you understand me...

Yesterday was night, the heat of battle. Today is different. I have to come to ask.

They are about to cross the sea.

However cruel and inhuman you are,

There must be truth in you, your truth...

I’d like to come to terms with you... They keep recounting your crimes.

I do not know...

Well, tell me...

So we incarnate the transformation of the invisible into the visible?

I thought that any extremes of faith and illusion were unjustified,

and that at the core of everybody, there is goodness.

Everything is truth. There is a shred of truth in every Being...

I am allowed to act how I please, as is anyone. You say it with scorn.

I feel such hatred in you, such indifference, why?

Across the sea, there is a city so beautiful, full of riches...

This is not what I ask you about! I am asking...

You were talking about the hidden Name of everything... What is it?

Where is the space where everything merges and becomes one?

Does it exist?

I am lost, keep on talking. This is beautiful!

I understand nothing. I feel fear. Chaos. Darkness.

I hear. It is the flow of water.

No, of night, no, it is the motion of the motion, the motion of the will.

Me!? What do you want to say?

Irrationalism. Slavery.

Certain types of ritual human sacrifices, power as a goal?

Cruelty as a virtue? Inertia of the whole totality.

Then why do you spit on me?

You give me nothing but contempt

and contempt can lead you nowhere!

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

Whose power? Whose?!

You are an animal!

You are both an animal and yourself.

So you can talk?!

No, it is you who is hearing.

- So why are you talking? - Because you are feeding.

Then you want to live?

Do not know. Do you think I am alive?

You are an animal, so you are alive!

Is it only the animal in you that is alive?

What about that being which lives through the animal?

I... I do not understand.

You are an animal and so am I.

I am at one with myself. You are not.

I am a reflection of what is in you.

You are not a reflection of what is in me.

There is only one thing that makes me curious...

Earth, the planet from whence you came.

What is it?

A star, do you see? A star.

I forgot.

Their vanity, 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 do not love. Loving is inward.

Not a person, not things, not myself.

By loving everything, you are everything and you indifferent.

You touch the name of the truth,

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

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 inhuman transparency. Total cool...

I am a nobody.

I have always been a nobody. I hated and despised the reconciled ones.

Now I, I am the most despicable, for I have come to terms with myself.

This illusion will not change anything in this world.

My illusion is not even a ripple on the world’s cool, metallic surface.

I can see... it is an ocean.

You are showing me its splendour.

Speak... slower! Speak slower!

It is opening.

Slower. I am in the doorway.

Slower, it hurts. So much beauty, it hurts.

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

to conquer... I have no feelings!

Who? How? What am I to do?

Unchain you. These irons break your wings...

Worms burrow into 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 is God!

You are hearing something not there!

He says nothing you do not know already.

I can hear him!

God is in you, you God!

How? How do you know this, woman?

I am acting it out. I know it.

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

She lied to me and was unfaithful for months.

You are only beginning to learn about others.

You are only beginning to perceive... to foresee.

The only important things are what you demand from yourself.

You are too wise for me.

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

I feel the anxiety inside me.

He is mocking you... saying that you have had me and you never will

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

because you are just a thing created by things,

and you do not know the name or the meaning...

Neither do you know anything about yourself...

A blind man, a weakling!

No, no!

Take him away!

I am learning.

For many years, Conqueror,

I was constrained by my duties,

on sleepless and doubt-ridden nights.

But I thought that... when I will fade away...

I would learn from it,

turning my whole life inside out like a glove.

Look!

I always thought that there were two ways.

But acting is the one that is real life.

It never brought satisfaction. Now I have it.

Tell me how? What am I to do?

You know what to do. You know for sure,

as you took my daughter, and made a woman of her.

The Sherns, what do you know about them?

You cannot beat the Shern in you, Conqueror.

Surely you have experienced this inside your own flesh?

If you could not beat one of them,

how will you beat thousands?

Can you not see I am performing...

and making room for you.

Because you must act.

Hope will return only when you are Gone.

What is hope?

Hope lies...

In our belief that we ourselves can fill the Forms.

Groping in the dark.

I am yearning.

Everything persists. I persist.

I think about shutting my eyes and taking no part in anything.

I, a eunuch in a landscape of despair.

Lord, we will cross the sea.

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

But Lord, it is you whom they worship, believe, for whom they are waiting.

I will give her back to you.

You need a woman, Lord.

Why does the Shern possess the enigma of chaotic behaviour?

Why does evil act selectively and why are its methods absurd?

Is the truth in only the most absurd,

the most cruel things I am able to think,

understand, and utter?

What about courage?

We come to inquire about your plans, Lord.

The plans are laid down in the scriptures.

It is ancient wisdom. Why do you ask?

Lord, you must appear before the people in all Your Majesty.

Stories are spreading that when you Appeared, the sea did not part...

It is necessary to levy taxes.

We need metal,

saltpetre,

manpower.

You have decided, Lord.

People of low faith. Can it be otherwise?

Am I not right, heretic?

You have all knowledge, Lord.

World.

What have I done to not understand you?

- Are you satisfied? - Lord, we are assimilating you.

You are now in us like bone marrow...

- What did you say? - Like the cause in existence.

Nothing, nothing, Lord. Let us rejoice.

They are performing...

That in the beginning, the Shern, out of vanity,

created a world that seemed ideal to him.

But when he looked up, he saw the light which he did not create.

Then he returned to his homeland, and his masculine creative power

turned into feminine willingness.

Oh, Lord, how hard I am trying!

Malahuda the Heretic, her father,

is seen loitering about at night. He derides you, undermining the faith.

What does he say?

Peace will return only when you are gone.

I did not arrive to bring peace, only war.

- The Heretic Rhoda... - Who?

A scholar, Lord. He improved the loom,

invented fuel for flame, measured the width of the sea...

What about him?

He claims there is no Earth, there has never been an Old Man,

that everything is empty and still.

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

So where do I come from, according to him?

He says you are like a worm, that you emerged from under the surface...

- So why did I come? - You did not come.

You were expelled.

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

The captured Mortes will be killed in your honour, Lord.

You did not tell me that you took prisoners.

- Not prisoners, Lord, things. - Do not lecture me, fool.

- Nobody will be killed without my orders. - Right, yours is all knowledge, Lord.

Indeed you are a man. I recognise 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 the thoughts in motion,

the only fidelity which gives form to the chaos of churning biology,

is fidelity to the chosen goal.

Only then you feel that this meaningless void can be shaped.

Of course, but is not everything of my own making,

even the knowledge that this everything

is a bottomless well without an echo?

Do you like my acting?

Lord, tread on her, give back her dignity.

Oh, they will kill me!

I want to be alone!

What?!

Mortes,

I do not trust that you only take after your fathers.

Something human must remain in you from your mothers.

Me, I am appealing to your humanity.

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

if you go with us!

Mortes!

Mother... mother...

chains...

child... mother.

Kill nothing... you - nothing.

Oh Shern. Everything - pain. Sleep - pain.

Day - pain. Fear.

Quiet, Shern. I - Shern.

When Shern sings. I - animal.

You - less. You - death. I - the bow. Trees. Grass.

I - see - Mortes. You - fear. I - the run. Alone. I go.

I far. You near. You fear - pain.

Weight. You - voice. I - silence.

We - go away, perish, drift.

You - Shern. Let him sing.

I see the earth, grass, forest.

I feel warm air over the path...

The flight of two grey birds

which I associate with death... It means... I feel fear?

Unchain Aviya!

Ihezal has just ordered that he be brought here.

What?

He who has known the world has found a corpse.

And he who has found a corpse, the world is not worthy of him.

The priests want these women to be burned on pyres.

They are right, Lord.

These women are already nothing. Sherns burn holes through their sex.

If they can still speak, it is of an ecstasy so supreme that it is hideous.

The Sherns drill into their core,

crack open the darkness,

rendering it full of light.

You sound as if you yourself...

I know nothing, nothing.

What do you want?

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

I did not know that there could be a love so great.

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 where there is living.

No.

What do you feel?

Joy and power from fulfilment.

You teach me something which I did not know.

I feel love.

But now only my body is suffering.

The pain that I feel is only physical.

I can touch it. I can also...

Oh, new art, I tell myself; turn my thoughts away from her.

May she not be present so that I do not suffer.

Thus, through my pain-swollen body,

the soul is shaping up smoothly, soothingly, and non-materially.

The soul does not suffer.

I recognise the indifference, like a gentle river.

My soul and I become one.

Was she beautiful and famous?

Yes.

You never loved her.

What is this for?

For your Going tomorrow.

To pay homage to what is and to reject anything that is not.

The presence of evil around us.

The submission to the narrow labyrinth of one’s own lust.

Faith in the significance of those who rule over us,

those who implement evil, calling it out of the dark...

becoming a killing gland that makes us take everything for granted.

Why are you bothering with a woman, Lord?

Because holiness enters the heart of a man

along with the hysteric purity of God’s Visitation.

- Visitation of what? - Lord...

The Shern.

What if the Shern is evil, while I am God to you.

What is greater and more serene than God?

It is time to go.

There will be great heat, Conqueror,

after this long night.

Guard her, remember, preserve.

You feel it?

Feel it?

Those who have not proved their faith...

treacherous women...

Those who have hidden their sons from the expedition

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

- What is your name? - Sevim, Lord.

- What were you? - A priest.

Will you serve?

Against whom... my Lord?

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

Before they reach the shore, they pass a floating tree trunk,

on which are drifting, expelled for their lack of faith,

The actor and the scholar Rhoda.

The scholar looks at Marek with disdain.

“You do not exist at all!”, he yells.

“You have not come at all.”

Marek replies:

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

Climb inside, seal the hatch, and press one button: the red one.”

Then the actor exclaims: “Count on me, Lord. I will play you.”

“My oxygen helmet is in the monastery of the Brothers of Waiting

at the foot of the mountains”, Marek says.

“You are cunning”, Rhoda replies.

“You are leaving me in the middle of the sea, while you talk of mountains.”

“Yes”, Marek answers. “Our odds are the same.”

Marek!

Marek, do you hear me? Marek!

Nothing.

Aza!

Is the next step, the next threshold that I will have to cross,

death?

Speak.

Still nothing.

What if that is not what I wanted to ask you about?

When she speaks the truth, her darkness speaks.

But only what you articulate against yourself is clear.

- Speak. - Still nothing.

What if that is not what I wanted to ask you about?

There.

I must know.

There, there...

Here,

not there. Here.

There. I must see.

In the end, every reduction to physiology is a fascism of the soul.

She is shrinking instead of growing,

just as if everything came down to the judgement...

that while living, one makes nothing,

and only as a cripple or a dead man...

he creates.

“Master Jacek”, the porter says, standing to attention.

In a huge dilapidated concert hall,

the audience members are dressed in space suits like him.

They are listening, their eyes riveted upon Aza.

The acoustics are perfect.

At the far end of the hall Aza is singing.

She is singing of the way the actors are performing:

about themselves, about their divine self-love...

I, I, I.

Jacek shuts his eyes in a spasm, turns back, stumbles and runs out.

What is it with you?

I was duped. That charlatan gave me something nasty.

No news from Marek?

We got rid of him so we could screw more easily.

- Yes, yes. - Now.

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

In a few months, your girlishness, beauty and youth have all disappeared.

You have grown old and your face scares me.

Reaching rock bottom drives reality to self-destruction,

as if beyond the last dam there is only deathly slime.

Now you are just anyone.

You are back on the market-stalls.

You exist through your love affairs.

But it is not you who sets the prices for what is on offer.

The hand that turns you inside out... so cruelly...

is the hand that dictates the law of the meat market.

The murderous paw of a creature that finds pleasure in watching,

lustful like dogs, tails wagging, actors being wasted.

In the aisle of the church,

Marek sees rows of ceiling-high cabinets.

In their drawers, there are hundreds of identical electronic lamps

like old radio-set valves.

They are the Sherns’ third eyes. Amazed, Marek examines them.

The Sherns pounce on him. Marek fires his weapon.

Out of the brow of a dead Shern slips a still-flickering eye onto the floor.

Its final flashes make Marek unconsciously repeat:

“That is all.”

Thousands of Shern eyes, Shern brains, are lying in the drawers, waiting.

On the temple walls Marek sees frescoes.

They are faded and crumbling, but still readable.

They depict Sherns on thrones, posing, pompous,

holy Sherns, conquering Sherns, staring in rapture at the Highest,

the Supreme Shern, who is staring higher still,

up into the clouds, adoringly.

Marek’s lips silently mouth:

“To home. Home.”

Aza,

are you mad?!

I am mad! I am mad!

See,

one can arrive at a state of admission, submission,

of spilling one’s guts,

as if in recognition that you never had anything else inside,

that the sheer sight of your entrails exposes the secret,

by dispensing with your ego...

without remains.

You,

and if not you, then who?

I?

We are overjoyed with your Return, Lord,

but you left with so many and Returned with so few!

War, disease.

Yeret, whom you sent in advance,

told us that you have done all that is humanly possible...

humanly, but nothing beyond it.

- Where is Yeret? - But he is at your side.

We sent him back with reinforcements, as you demanded.

Do you not remember?

- I was sick. - So we heard.

What is this for?

For lacking faith, of course.

Faith does not ask for the gift of grace,

- but life does. - Why did we pull back, Lord?

We should have held out to the end, for the Humans!

It is said:

He who grows to know himself, grows to know God.

I learned who I am.

And you, brother?

Since you left, Lord, mysterious killings have been rife.

People are in panic. You have retreated.

Their anger will be terrible.

Where is Ihezal?

Get up!

You are the only human I know who has no mystery.

You talk about it, but you do not believe in what you are saying.

You are like an animal, following a scent.

Always the same.

You are an actress playing the cost of feelings,

their fleetingness.

You are biology,

speculating about mysteries with your innards,

which you stuff with your heat

as you take them for the mystery of yourself.

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

Let us crawl up to the grace of your resurrection,

melt in your goodness,

and attain our resurrection,

together with you.

A mystery, because we are small and lifeless.

Ihezal!

Ihezal,

why are you hiding?

I missed you so much!

Me without you... - I waited.

I knew that nothing counts apart from me being faithful, chaste,

and us surrendering to each other.

Why do you not let me touch you? Your words are so unclear.

Maybe we are ill, Lord. Ill from evil and from lack of will.

Our lives are like those of sores. And you want to give us destiny.

I was turning to what is healthy and fresh like any disease would do,

- unfamiliar freshness. - I do not understand you!

Sweet are my embraces, remember, Lord?

They are nothing compared with the delights the whole body can feel.

If only it wants it, if only it accepts itself as being a mere body.

I am a body, Lord!

Dividing...

The concept of division. Self-consciousness in the divided.

This adventure of mine was about my division,

and this division was to live as a God.

This being divided merged with my nature.

It is the opposition of form and desire...

Between the answer and the voice of darkness.

Hence I am God!

I am God!

Come, Lord.

Lord!

Lord,

your spacecraft, Lord!

The Brothers of Waiting saw it rise on a column of fire...

I do not 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 repeal their cruel laws, cast out the priests,

distribute the wealth amongst the people, destroy this false hope.

They will not agree.

Then we will do it alone.

The guns.

Against whom?

The city.

The city.

Oh, they are right, Lord.

Blessed be Him who was before He became.

And you must become those who are passing by.

Above Marek’s head, the Shern Aviy swoops down to perch.

Watchful, curious, ironic: “Hail, brother.”

“Without that eye which somebody had programmed for you,

which perhaps you yourselves programmed,

when you could still think”, says Marek.

The Shern answers: “And who programmed you?”

“Who am I?” asks Marek.

The Shern smears some dirt in his claws onto the wooden cross...

and replies: “You are this.”

“Will I ever escape from darkness?” asks Marek.

“It does hurt, brother, does it not?” answers Aviy.

Jacek fires at him. The Shern drops falls down to on the sand,

spinning progressively slower, like a dying toy,

He keeps repeating:

“Love, love, love...”

Force, my force, you have left me!

Who?!

What?!

Why?!

Hail...

Grace.

Oh yes...

How much does one permit oneself to accept?

How much mercy does one have to feel?

In order not to turn into a Shern?

In the casino, astronauts are playing roulette and baccarat.

Jacek is passing through, listening to snatches of conversations:

“He was not to blame. He was an animal among animals, a wolf in the forest.”

Somebody else reacts: “Soul has its abode not in the brain, but in the Form.”

A third voice: “The Angel symbolises the transfiguration from the visible

into the invisible which we are accomplishing.”

Television screens along one side of the hall flicker to life,

revealing pictures from the shield of Marek’s rocket.

The camera is activated by action or human body heat;

the scholar Rhoda and the actor are crawling towards the rocket

passing the oxygen helmet between them.

Jacek shouts at the screens, but they cannot hear.

Scurrying past Jerzy’s dead body, the actor and Rhoda enter the rocket.

The casino manager grabs Jacek by the arm, whispering:

“Master, they are looking for you. Strikes, demonstrations.

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

At one end of the baccarat table, Ihezal is seated, wearing Aza’s dress.

She is laughing provocatively, staring at Jacek.

She is surrounded by admirers.

The face of Jacek’s assistant appears on the screens.

Master, we have a signal.

Talk to us.

Where is Marek?

Who sent you?

We can see you.

There is a round white lamp above you.

Underneath is the eye that can see you.

Speak into it!

We are going to the Earth’s core

where the truth and happiness of man reside

and the explanation of all mysteries.

Because we have had the Right ever since... ever since...

Right. Right. Right...

- He has gone mad. - No, he is acting.

Master, we can bring them over.

They are close enough,

Master.

Let them go.

Where to, master?

To Old Earth.

Jacek turns his back to the screen.

Very slowly he sinks to his knees and bends down to the ground.

A heart attack. Jacek is dying.

The astronauts rush to help.

They are pounding on his chest. Nothing helps.

From a corner of the casino, Jacek is watching his own death.

The astronauts flounder about his body

and nobody is paying attention when he walks out of the casino.

It is dark outside.

There are bonfires out in the steppe.

By the bonfires, the tribe is sitting. The same tribe.

The Rider is among them

and a girl with eyes painted on her palms, like Ihezal’s.

Jacek walks towards her. She rises and opens her arms.

The camera closes on the shadows of her body.

We can hear the steady beating of her heart.

A moment later, the hoof-beats of a horse riding away.

The final shot of this film as written in the screenplay is as follows:

“428. Long shot. 3 metres.

In dawning light, a riderless horse gallops across the steppe.”

By order of the Deputy Minister of Culture and Arts.

Undersecretary of State for Polish Cinema,

the shooting of “ON THE SILVER GLOBE” was halted in the spring of 1977.

The film crew was on the Baltic Coast.

All the sets and costumes needed to complete the production,

which began two years previously, were ready and waiting in Wroclaw,

Lower Silesia, the Masurian Lakes, and the Caucasus Mountains.

All of these sets, costumes and props were destroyed.

For many years, the film technicians, wardrobe-dressers and set-builders,

stashed whatever they could,

in studio recesses and their own homes.

I am thinking about them as I finish this film,

believing that the small drama of this film

and the larger and more noble drama of our lives

will continue to interweave

into a web of triumphs and failures.

My name is Andrzej Zulawski, I directed “ON THE SILVER GLOBE.”

STARRING:

English subtitles by Daniel Bird and Andrzej Zulawski