This is turning into a bumper year for wildly ambitious, critically divisive big-screen musicals, from Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez to Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux. Now acclaimed documentary director Joshua Oppenheimer has put his own singular twist on the song-and-dance genre with The End, his first fictional feature, a post-apocalyptic family psychodrama featuring Broadway-style showtunes and an eclectic international cast headed by Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon. Almost a decade in gestation, it plays like some WTF mash-up of Ibsen and Chekhov, Jacques Demy and Lars Von Trier. World premiered to polarising reviews in Telluride and Toronto, this flawed but boldly original experiment makes its European debut this week, screening in competition at San Sebastián International Film Festival.
Oppenheimer is best known for his formally daring, Oscar-nominated documentaries about state-sponsored mass murder in Suharto’s Indonesia, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). He describes The End as a companion piece to these earlier works, even though it is a fictional fable, since it grew from his research into a wealthy Indonesian dynasty’s plans to build themselves a palatial doomsday bunker. Despite differences in style, all three films are scathing attacks on the assumed impunity, denialism and moral blindness of the super-rich.
The End takes place in a luxurious bunker deep inside a salt mine, a high-security shelter from the fiery ecological catastrophe which has wiped humankind from the surface of the Earth. For decades this subterranean haven has housed a small community of survivors headed by the unnamed Mother (Swinton), a neurotic ex-ballerina, and Father (Shannon), a former petrochemical executive whose work almost certainly hastened human extinction. In an inspired visual touch, the house is crammed with famous paintings salvaged from the fires above: iconic works by Renoir, Monet, Morisot and more, presumably looted, which Mother uses to mask the symbolically crumbling walls.
Around them this regal pair have assembled a tight-knit family including a butler (Tim McInnerny), a doctor (Lennie James) and one of Mother’s oldest friends (Bronagh Gallagher). But their doting attention is mostly focussed on their only child, Son (George MacKay), a twentysomething innocent who was born in the bunker and has never seen daylight. Shielded from outside influences, Son is currently writing a revisionist biography of his father that paints him as a passionate humanitarian whose oil-business work brought nothing but prosperity and peace to poor nations. The satirical tone here is heavy-handed at times, and would have benefited from some actual jokes.
Historically hostile to outsiders, the community is suddenly rocked by the shock arrival of a stranger, Girl (Moses Ingram), the first new face they have seen in years. Although their initial impulse is to violently expel this potentially dangerous infiltrator, opinion slowly softens and Girl is cautiously welcomed into the community. But when she takes a flirtatious interest in Son, and shares her wrenching sense of survivor’s guilt after abandoning her family on the surface, she starts to look like an existential threat to Mother and Father, with their carefully scripted back stories of blameless entitlement.
The musical numbers are old-school, Sondheim-lite confections that the cast appear to perform live to camera, often in one free-flowing, elegantly staged take. Oppenheimer penned the lyrics while the music is a joint effort between stage composer Joshua Schmidt and Marius de Vries, the British studio veteran whose work spans stellar collaborations with Madonna, Bowie and U2 alongside Grammy-winning scores for Moulin Rouge! (2001) and La La Land (2016). Most of the songs are pleasantly engaging, full of corny messages of love, hope and family bonding. This is Oppenheimer’s lightly satirical spin on what he calls “the unearned optimism of the classic American musical.” The stand-out tunes are mostly those featuring the strongest voices, Ingram and Gallagher especially. Shannon and McKay are less confident vocally but make a respectable effort, while Swinton sounds a little too plastic and Auto-Tuned.
Energised by its outlandish premise, The End sweeps along on formal novelty and stylistic audacity for its first hour, but it starts to falter around the midway point. Oppenheimer sets up Girl’s arrival as a potentially explosive plot development, but her disruptive impact ultimately proves modest. While each of the community members is forced to face their repressed guilt and comforting self-delusions, these revelations carry little serious consequence. Not even a clumsy homophobic incident, a suicide, a pregnancy and a gloriously bizarre tap-dancing interlude are enough to raise the dramatic temperature much.
Oppenheimer’s inexperience with fictional narrative is a blind spot here, letting the momentum dissipate and the suspense deflate. His overlong two-and-a-half-hour sprawl lacks focus, and begins to repeat itself in its latter half. There is plenty to enjoy along the way but, given the feast of serious talents and heavyweight themes involved, The End hits far too many dud notes as it slouches towards its muddled conclusion. It begins like Ibsen with a socially engaged, politically conscious, slightly didactic state-of-the-world morality play. But it ends like Chekhov, with a cluster of impotent characters consumed by intangible ennui as the old regime that once indulged them implodes off-stage.
As a technical exercise, at least, The End is a consistent pleasure. It features generally strong performances, terrific production design and superbly choreographed camerawork by Mikhail Krichman, especially during the kinetic musical sequences. Located in Ireland, the visually stunning salt-mine backdrop is a powerful presence, almost a character in its own right. Oppenheimer and Krichman makes gorgeous painterly compositions from its ribbed walls, vaulted interiors and eerie sci-fi beauty. Their film may ultimately be less than the sum of its parts, but some of its parts are still amazing.
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Screenwriters: Rasmus Heisterberg, Joshua Oppenheimer
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny, Lennie James
Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman
Editing: Niels Pagh Andersen
Music: Joshua Schmidt, Marius de Vries
Production designer: Jette Lehmann
Producers: Signe Byrge Sorensen, Joshua Oppenheimer, Tilda Swinton
Production companies: Neon (US), Final Cut for Real (Denmark), The End MFP (Germany), Wild Atlantic Pictures (Ireland), Moonspun Films (UK), Anagram (Sweden), Dorje Film (Italy)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: San Sebastián International Film Festival (Official Selection)
In English
148 minutes
