Apocalyptic Musical The End Is Compellingly Out of Tune
It’s not entirely surprising that The End, the narrative debut from documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer, is couched in visual and sonic theatricality. While it’s certainly a far cry from his previous doc features about the mass-killings of communists in Indonesia circa 1965, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, The End similarly investigates performance as self-affirming delusion. Instead of watching the perpetrators of genocide reenact their brutal murders, The End evokes Golden Age musicals as it follows a family far too wealthy to have personally bloodied their own hands, but who nonetheless orchestrated the demise of countless innocents through their involvement in the fossil fuel industry. As the rest of society smolders in the wake of an environmental apocalypse, these privileged few reside in a lavish underground bunker, where the walls are crowded with priceless artworks and the filtered air carries stifled resentment.
“The houses are all gone under the sea,” begins the T.S. Eliot quote that opens The End. “The dancers are all gone under the hill.” Mother (Tilda Swinton) was once a ballerina herself, who Father (Michael Shannon) and Son (standout George MacKay) routinely praise for having performed at the famed Bolshoi Theater many years ago. It’s been 25 years since they retreated underground; in fact, 20-year-old Son has only ever known the painstakingly-decorated bunker, filled with Impressionist paintings and a gorgeous piano that no one ever plays.
Mackay plays an ignorant savant, someone who has studied pivotal moments in American history through a lens of naïve idealism. He commemorates major historical moments through their inclusion in a sprawling diorama, one which bafflingly employs the Hollywood sign as the backdrop for a Civil War battleground. Even the expressions of the figures that populate the landscape are enveloped in revisionist denial, as the Chinese laborers who died building the transcontinental railroad are painted with eerie smiling faces. Hot off of playing another entitled manchild in Bertrand Bonello’s transcendent The Beast, MacKay carries the bulk of the film on his back. Swinton, in turn, emits a checked-out aura that goes beyond her character’s evasive attitude, her commitment to the bit on par with the lackluster mousy brown wig halfheartedly slapped on her head.
The lack of character names goes beyond the immediate family; all of the characters are identified by their singular roles in the household. There’s Doctor (Lennie James), whose main medical task seems to be prescribing sleeping aids for everyone’s incessant nightmares; agreeable Butler (Tim McInnerny), who oft tends to Father’s demands; and Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), who’s specified to be Mother’s closest companion and the only loved one who was allowed in the bunker when the end times first unfolded (she has since taken on the duties of a glorified maid, helping hang infinite portraits and provide a well of emotional support for the stunted and sheltered Son). Interestingly, the only names ever uttered are those of relatives who were abandoned outside of the desolate salt mine that houses the underground shelter. Son gently speaks the name of his mother’s sister—which he only discovered by snooping through an old tablet—and Friend continues to profess love for her child who supposedly died before the apocalypse.
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