Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer | Written by Oppenheimer and Rasmus Heisterberg | 148 min | ▲▲△△△
Sometimes you can congratulate a filmmaker for their ambition, the ideas baked into the work or the way they tell a story, even if the end result is flawed. Documentarian Oppenheimer — who gave us the shockingly good non-fiction The Act Of Killing — has swung big on this project and, sure, he’s to be credited for that, but The End is frustrating in the ways it doesn’t work. Its negatives heavily overshadows its positives.
It’s an apocalypse musical. We’re in a lavish, comfortable bunker built in a salt mine. A wealthy family found sanctuary here after an environmental catastrophe ended the world — they’ve lived here for more than 20 years. This family earned its fortune in the energy business, so are directly responsible for the world ending.
Father (Michael Shannon) is getting Son (George MacKay) to write the history of their times, including denying climate change. This underground lair is all the Son knows. Mother (Tilda Swinton) lies about her past as a dancer with the Bolshoi and has covered the walls of their home with renaissance paintings, adding to the sense that they live in a gallery or museum — the diffuse lighting doesn’t help. Also on board is a Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), a callous Doctor (Lennie James), and a Butler (Tim McInnerny) who disappears for whole chunks of the film to the point where you forget he’s in it. And yes, this is how everyone is credited, sans individuality and with maximum pretension.
They all have secrets and regrets they carry from the old world while they continue to live in sunless comfort. How they feed themselves is explained, though the issue of fresh water and power is a little more mysterious. Into this fractured, difficult family comes the Girl (Moses Ingram) who arrives with plenty of her own baggage. She and the Son find a spark between them, even though Mother isn’t sure that’s a good idea.
The undercurrent of ideas, especially on the science fiction front, is solid — this has echoes of the great eco-informed scifi of the 1970s, from Silent Running to THX 1138, and like those films it’s commenting on the day it was made, the way so many — especially those with the means — are ignoring the climate crisis in order to build their own little oasis with their own loved ones. Anyone with the right amount of resources will be fine, after all, it’s the millions of others who will suffer. How the guilt bubbles up in the characters makes for some compelling drama, with Shannon, Swinton, and Mackay all especially good channeling this anxiety around their entitlement and/or survival. Oppenheimer’s interest in how people wallow in denial, a holdover from his documentary work, is entirely evident here.
Unfortunately, The End is also a musical, and it’s been awhile since I’ve seen one that does so little to justify itself. I wasn’t a huge fan of Wicked: Part 1, but the songs there are memorable and give us insight into the characters and the story’s themes. Here the songs actually take away from the piece, where the character notes would’ve been better served with scripted drama. If you removed all the musical elements from this picture, the filmmakers could’ve had a lean, grim, but affecting 101 minute post-apocalyptic thriller. Instead it’s overstuffed and tedious, doing an active disservice to the quality portions of the material.
