In the 21st century, prisoners aboard penitentiary space ships explore unknown worlds. Scope, one of the prisoners is sent on a planet though to be lifeless, until he found “Humans” on it.

Despite the fact that this film never approaches the aesthetic sublimity found in certain scenes of Szulkin’s Golem, nor does it successfully create the despair-filled world of O-bi O-ba, this stands, in many ways, as Szulkin’s most nihilistic film. There is perhaps more straight up ironic-humor here (which War of the Worlds: The Next Century moves directly toward), but where O-bi O-ba espouses its nihilism by being humour-free and entirely enclosed, Ga-ga’s nihilism comes out of a total insistence that literally nothing matters. The film’s ephebophile protagonist can only be rooted for because he’s entirely jaded (and always tries to choose the “middle path”), all of the antagonists are so cartoonishly bad they are basically villains, anyone who is supposed to garner sympathy loses it by the end in a way that resounds like a “fuck you.” In fact, the entire film is a fuck you to society, and shockingly is perhaps the most genuinely misanthropic film ever made. Which of course is totally fascinating, in so far as it’s still very entertaining.

The film was digitally reconstructed.

directed by: Piotr Szulkin
s-f / Poland / 1985
duration: 1 godz. 24 min