Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Writers: Joshua Oppenheimer, Rasmus Heisterberg
Stars: Michael Shannon, Tilda Swinton, George MacKay
Synopsis: A Golden Age-style musical about the last human family.
In a future where the world on the surface has ended thanks to global warming, a wealthy family lives in a salt mine well below and survives on their self-reliance to make their own food. The unnamed Father (Michael Shannon), a former energy corporate man, Mother (Tilda Swinton), and Son (George MacKay) have spent the last twenty-five years in their apartment adorned with expensive art, a piano hardly used, and a model of what the world used to look like based on photos; the son was born in the bunker, not in the actual world. With them is a doctor (Lennie James), the butler (Tim McInnery), and a family friend (Bronaugh Gallagher) to complete their life underground as what it was before above it.
Suddenly, an intruder has arrived at their bunker with the unnamed Girl (Moses Ingram) having somehow found her way in. It’s the first time they’ve had someone from the outside come in; the group decides to get rid of her per protocol, but later accept her as part of the family. But the girl’s interest in how they arrived and survived and trying to talk about the emotional feelings of being survivors threatens them, except for the son, who is more interested in her life back on the surface. The family has seemed to build a barrier around those emotions, denying the fact that Father is partially guilty and everyone has avoided the fact they allowed everyone else to die, having no remorse or guilt for choosing that path except for the girl.
Instead of a traditional dialogue, we get singing when it comes to their thoughts and feelings, almost like a sung-through musical. Some songs hit well, others are a drag; the choreography is very expressive and a bit dumbfounding at times. Singing performance-wise, I don’t think it’s bad as Ingram, MacKay, and Swinton hold their own note, but Shannon and the rest have to not raise their voices and creak a bad note. The score from first-time film composer Joshua Schmidt and veteran Marius de Vries (CODA, Navalny) is a whimsical mix of melancholy and happiness that accompanies the family’s lifestyle, mentality, and conundrum.
Script-wise, it could have been more tightened, shortened (runtime of 148 minutes), and filled with more conflict with the Girl Vs. Family battle. The scenes between MacKay and Ingram are the most emphatic as it becomes apparent the two develop feelings for each other, something Son has obviously never felt. He starts to learn things once shielded by his parents who have put up a wall to not let their emotions of the past come out. The cracks of this facade and the hypocrisy of a family that is ultra-rich and ignorant of their actions (think of Elon Musk) begin to show but nothing bursts out, keeping constructed what could have been a compelling tale of what the future may be.
Moving from documentaries to feature films, director Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing) takes a growingly common theme of post eco-disasters and throws an odd mix in the blender. The End is a rocky ride of song, dance, and disconnect with some hits and plenty of misses which shows Oppenheimer’s weakness in moving to narrative features. It’s one for art-house fans rather than traditional musical lovers. While it can be respected for taking a bold style to the ominously realistic subject, it doesn’t quite get the full force it tries to produce from its mix of music and the apocalypse to fully impress.
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