THE STORY – A Golden Age-style musical about the last human family.
THE CAST – Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Michael Shannon, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny & Lennie James
THE TEAM – Joshua Oppenheimer (Director/Writer) & Rasmus Heisterberg (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 148 Minutes
Amidst the harsh wintry landscapes of what remains of our planet, there is a bunker. In that bunker lives a family: Father (Michael Shannon), a former energy tycoon; Mother (Tilda Swinton), a former dancer; and their son (George MacKay), who has spent his entire life in the bunker. With them are a Doctor (Lennie James), a butler (Tim McInnerny), and a friend (Bronagh Gallagher), who all contribute something to keeping each other alive and happy. As happy as they can be, anyway, given they’re living in a postapocalyptic world with only their steadily depleting stores of food and art to feed their bodies and souls. Into their idyllic lives one day comes an intruder, a young woman (Moses Ingram) who braved the elements to leave her family in search of other survivors who could help them. The appearance of someone else upsets the dynamic inside the bunker, bringing ugly truths about the past to the surface as everyone must reckon with the actions that led them to this place.
Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” is one of the most unique cinematic experiences you’re ever likely to have. A melancholic postapocalyptic story about survivor’s guilt and the lies we tell ourselves to survive, it looks and feels like nothing else, and that’s before we get to the little fact that it’s a musical. It must be said that a musical is filled with actors who don’t have classically trained voices, but it’s a musical nonetheless. As with many such musicals, each audience member’s mileage will vary, but the thing that sets the cast members of “The End” apart is that they all act their songs so well that their singing ability doesn’t matter as much. Then, why have them sing at all?
Oppenheimer, co-screenwriter Rasmus Heisenberg, and composers Marius de Vries and Josh Schmidt have constructed the film so that music is a key element; as in all musicals, characters sing when they become too emotional to speak, but here, they sing everything that they are unable to say, leading to moments of unique power as the characters reveal so much of themselves to us, but find themselves unable to speak their deepest, darkest truths out loud to each other, creating a unique form of dramatic irony that permeates every frame. Watching it as you yearn for the characters to get over themselves and be honest with each other can be frustrating, but Oppenheimer isn’t going for something dramatically satisfying. With “The End,” he wants to make the audience think about not just the impact of surviving an apocalypse but the impact of the choices survivors make leading up to and immediately following an apocalypse, interrogating its characters’ privilege in ways that feel fresh and compelling.
Despite singing about how lovely their life is, it’s evident that things aren’t exactly copacetic inside the bunker. Mother and Father are very protective of their son and treat the other adult inhabitants with varying levels of contempt. The son is writing his father’s memoirs, although he seems to be putting words in his father’s mouth about things he did and why he did them, and his father doesn’t protest the idealized vision his son is creating. When the young woman shows up, Mother and Father show their true colors, immediately afraid she’ll take away everything they’ve built and willing to protect themselves by any means necessary. Their son, however, protests, as they have always taught him that they should share what they have as long as they are able, and she likely has nothing to go back to anyway. But when she starts asking questions about their lives before the apocalypse and challenging certain beliefs that they have of themselves and the outside world, their carefully constructed artificial world begins to crumble, revealing the cracks that were always present just beneath the surface. This leads to powerful moments of revelation while we slowly realize that all of the adults in the bunker were in some way complicit in either the apocalypse itself or in refusing spots in the bunker to others, thus all but ensuring their deaths.
The slow-dawning horror eventually turns the characters into grotesque versions of themselves, sniping at each other with cruelty that would have seemed impossible initially. That is, until the film’s note-perfect finale, which beautifully underlines hope for the future with uncertainty and ambivalence about whether this world should continue. Even outside the environmentalist message that comes with many apocalypses, the film’s themes feel eerily reminiscent of the fears that dominate our lives in the present day, standing as a stark warning about how we should behave if we want to build a better world.
The performers have a tall order to communicate so many things subtextually, but they all make beautiful music out of it. Swinton and Shannon have the trickiest roles, and their inability to commit anything less than 110% of themselves to a role serves them well here. Swinton believably wears Mother’s matronly qualities – she’s always cleaning and rearranging the famous artwork that adorns the walls of the bunker and expresses great sympathy for anyone and everyone – like a protective shield, hiding behind the only part of herself she doesn’t hate. Shannon initially presents as a gregarious, thoughtful gentleman, but his mask slips around his butler, whom he derides for his more obviously homosexual traits. By the time the stranger has infiltrated the bunker, he takes it off completely, showing much more clearly how decades of equivocation and lying have taken their toll on his soul. It’s almost as though he’s playing both Dorian Gray and his portrait at different points.
MacKay, whose boyish looks allow him to appear far younger than he is, also excels at playing a young man who has never interacted with anyone his age. The quirky demeanor and overly adult cadence to his speaking make the character feel completely singular, and the complete abandon with which he dances after meeting the young woman completes this unique portrait of arrested development. While all the performers acquit themselves well as singers, Ingram has by far the best singing voice, with a rich, velvety texture that perfectly contrasts with the thinner voices of her co-stars, almost as though living out in the inhospitable postapocalyptic world has given her more grit than the family who has spent their days in the lap of luxury. As the interloper who can never be fully sure of her place in her new home, Ingram walks a fine line between lashing out and showing empathy, getting the audience on her side with ease. Of the more minor roles, Gallagher is the easy standout, delivering a deeply felt performance of the character most in touch with their emotions (although that’s not saying much, given this crew).
Oppenheimer makes his presence felt most during the musical numbers, which are filmed in exquisite long takes and make striking use of the harsh fluorescent lights in the abandoned tunnels surrounding the bunker. The songs are quite pleasant to listen to, washing over the audience as the actors’ sweet-sounding voices wind their way around the gentle melodies. Though, none of the songs leave much of an impression since they all share extremely similar melodies and somewhat flat dynamics. The songs combine the storytelling sensibility of latter-day Sondheim – where the melodies do as much storytelling as the lyrics – the plainspoken lyrics of Jacques Demy’s movie musicals, and the less complex, more hummable tunes of Golden Age musicals from Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Lowe. The effect works, even if it doesn’t produce any songs you’ll be singing on your way out of the theater, let alone days later. Witness Swinton’s big number late in the film, when we finally learn the truth of Mother’s internal life. Swinton’s reedy voice suddenly soars as she lets go of everything she’s been holding inside, at least for the moment, as Oppenheimer traps the audience in that pain right alongside her, confronting her head-on. The joyous duet between Ingram and MacKay is another highlight, as the two leap around the postapocalyptic landscape without a care in the world until the weight of their position suddenly comes crashing down on them.
“The End” is full of strong filmmaking and narrative choices that elevate the material. Every time you think you have the film pegged, it introduces something else that complicates things in unexpected ways. Because of this, the viewing experience remains compelling from the first frame to the last. Thanks to intriguing characters with unique arcs played by actors who are never less than fascinating to watch on screen, Oppenheimer has created one of the most singular films of the year. It’s a big swing – original musicals are rare enough, but a musical about surviving the apocalypse populated with morally questionable characters is a first and undoubtedly won’t work for many due to its singular qualities. It’s better to have a filmmaker who takes a big swing and hits, even if it doesn’t fully connect, than a filmmaker who only hits sure things. “The End” is a risky proposition, but it’s one of the most beautiful, profound films of the year, and you don’t get something this powerful by playing it safe.
