Chatting with the head of a prominent documentary-production company recently, I asked if hybrid filmmaking had reached its natural limit. Could it conceivably be pushed further? He posited these limitations might be behind a recent trend of documentarians pivoting to fiction: Kirsten Johnson is making a Susan Sontag biopic with Kristen Stewart; Frederick Wiseman made his first narrative feature A Couple after half a century spent in non-fiction; Roberto Minervini’s The Damned and Sandhya Suri’s Santosh both premiered at Cannes this past Spring; most recently, RaMell Ross adapted the Pulitzer-winning novel Nickel Boys. Documentarians are realizing that if fiction and non-fiction are both highly constructed, then why not work this construction openly, with the added perks of larger budgets and access to stars?
Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) joins that cohort with The End, a bunker-bound musical set at the end of the world. From the jump, The End embodies a more classical filmmaking mode. Following an establishing shot of an unspeakably beautiful underground salt mine, a lush orchestral score plays over close-ups of oil paintings while opening credits roll. A remarkable level of craft is visible at once and maintained throughout the extended 148-minute runtime. This cohesiveness of vision across all departments with no visible lapses at any moment would be remarkable for a seasoned fiction filmmaker, let alone one making his first foray into narrative-feature storytelling.
The End’s bunker is occupied by an immensely wealthy energy magnate (Michael Shannon), his wife (Tilda Swinton), and their son (George MacKay). Maintaining an allegorical bent, the trio are credited as Father, Mother, and Son. A few lucky others get to join them in waiting out the apocalypse––also nameless, their titles, their vocations: Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Doctor (Lennie James). Bronagh Gallagher has a meatier role as Mother’s best “Friend,” who also functions as the chef. The latter trio help maintain a certain level of upper-class comfort for the family, even when relegated deep underground. I’m reminded of a friend who once led a whitewater rafting trip for Tom Cruise and they relayed the curious detail that Cruise brought his private chef along––allowing for fine dining served with nice cutlery throughout the otherwise-rugged trip.
Whereas life in a bunker typically conjures no-frills images of canned goods and military rations neatly arranged on metal shelving from Home Depot, the subterranean decadence in The End was inspired by Oppenheimer’s visit to a billionaire’s emergency bunker replete with a swimming pool and art gallery (two details he retains). Influential tech giant Peter Thiel is responsible for jump-starting this billionaire-bunker trend, and many have followed him to construct compounds in New Zealand.
A few slice-of-bunker-life excerpts set the scene up top. Son fails an in-house emergency drill, a sequence which directly recalls Chas Tenenbaum emphatically telling sons Ari and Uzi they’re “dead” after a similar drill in The Royal Tenenbaums. Mother hangs a priceless piece of art, dismissing it as “trashy” in the way only one terrified of their hidden working-class roots can do. Son helps Father ghostwrite his memoir, workshopping ways to spin his father’s role in the world’s demise as an energy tycoon with zeal. To whom this memoir will be addressed––since the world is ending (or has already ended)––recalls our innate human desire to leave a legacy, to tell one’s own side of the story even when it’s clear folly.
The stable repetition of routines is disrupted by the arrival of an outsider, Girl (Moses Ingram). It’s a familiar setup that the film wastes little time setting into motion. Born and raised in this bunker, Son is immediately intrigued by interacting with someone his own age for the first time, even if he eagerly takes part in an early plot to remove her.
Despite her tenuous position in the tight-knit community, Girl works delicately––sometimes not so delicately––to challenge Son’s wrong-footed belief systems, reinforced by his parent’s propagandist teachings. Despite an intense naivety and devotion to his parents, Son’s budding affection for Girl allows him to begin to slowly consider her perspective. In this way, Son’s coming-of-age follows a common trajectory concerning that often-devastating moment in adolescence when one realizes their parents aren’t infallible. But to Son in The End, the implications are much more damning. To cope with the realization that his parents might not just be liars, but also directly responsible for the pain and suffering that has destroyed the outside world, nearly breaks him. Yet Son’s indomitable spirit prevails and acts as the catalyst for the soul-searching introspection that begins to slowly infect the rest of the bunker. In another touching moment, Son’s love for Girl seeps into the memoir-writing sessions and inspires Father to try reigniting the romantic spark with Mother.
To MacKay’s––and the script’s ––credit, Son is never presented as a caricature of a coddled boy raised in complete isolation. On paper, there are similarities to Yorgos Lanthimos’ work––specifically Dogtooth––but they end there. Whereas Lanthimos is content to push stilted human interaction to an extreme where his characters are no longer recognizably human, Oppenheimer seeks every opportunity to ground his characters, even when the absurdism is ramped-up. Lanthimos’ cynicism is swapped here for an overwhelming earnestness, a persistent hopefulness.
As an actor, Shannon can often dial up the crazy, with mannered expressions that recall Jack Nicholson at his most unwieldy. But Oppenheimer wisely reins him in––though a few trademark Shannon moments do appear. The actor embodies this complicated man who hails from a generation that blindly lionizes titans of industry. To Son and whoever will listen, he explains his company provided critical services and infrastructure to developing nations. He can’t comprehend those who can only see the bad, even if the bad is all that’s left to see.
The End is also a musical, and lovers of the genre can rest easy that Oppenheimer is not trying to remake the musical here. Like the filmmaking itself, these numbers are played straight as traditional songs backed by an orchestral score. That The End’s most daring formal component is largely its most forgettable is a shame. MacKay is an exception, his singing and dancing a natural extension of his exuberant Son. While lacking anything approaching a “Let It Go”-level banger, the musical numbers are tonally in step with what Oppenheimer is doing stylistically and emotionally elsewhere, an achievement in itself––if only they were more memorable in song and verse. There are a few musical highlights outside MacKay: Mother singing in the bathroom mirror, her red robe reflecting endlessly, and other songs make strong use of the stunning salt-mine setting (shot on location in Sicily). Even so, a real showstopper or two could’ve elevated the central narrative; it’s hard not to see this element as a bit of a missed opportunity.
Contrasted with another recent big-swing musical, Annette, in which budgetary constraints were felt throughout (crowd scenes appeared to comprise approximately four extras), The End carries that rare sense of a lack of compromise––a fully realized world from a visionary director. It’s exhilarating to simply exist in this world that Oppenheimer and his team (including co-writer Rasmus Heisterberg) craft. Lengthy runtime be damned; I could’ve stayed inside this bunker with these characters for longer.
Consisting largely of off-whites and indigo blue––with subtle inclusions of some greens and reds––the carefully considered wardrobe recalled the uniform natural tans and olive greens worn in Woody Allen’s Interiors. Red was saved for the garish Pearl in Allen’s film, just as red is worn by Swinton’s Mother here. The lighting and color-grading lend the family’s skin a ghostly, near-translucent blue hue––the result of decades spent underground––a play on how fair skin was once a sign of wealth in Victorian times. I suspect Shannon’s hair might have even been given a hint of blue dye––that’s how considered every aspect of this movie feels. A gleam of Spielberg is sometimes present in the character lighting, and there is an inherent perversity in giving Shannon’s wealthy tycoon this signature wax-figure treatment, lighting reserved by Spielberg to deify uncomplicated men and children who persevere to do the right thing in the face of adversity––characters often hailing from the Greatest Generation.
In last year’s The Zone of Interest, a final-act retching recalled a key moment in Oppenheimer’s 2012 debut The Act of Killing. The Zone of Interest was frequently mislabeled as an examination of the banality of evil, and it would be incorrect to categorize The End as that too. At Telluride this past weekend, Oppenheimer discussed his fascination with the lies we tell ourselves and how dangerous that can be. Humans are uniquely equipped to compartmentalize and keep going––it is perhaps our primary survival skill. With The End, Oppenheimer pushes beyond subconscious involuntary retching, forcing his characters to more squarely come to grips with their actions and their lingering effects. It’s not subtle, but the film’s complete lack of cynicism shines brightest in these direct moments. It is undeniably provocative to present a wealthy white family directly responsible for the world’s end, whose supreme wealth has made it so that they have experienced little-to-no consequences for this destruction––then to say these people deserve love, the chance to reconcile their past and move forward with renewed hope.
It might prove a bitter pill for audiences to swallow. It’s simply much easier to digest over-the-top “Eat the Rich” satires, with their buffoonish characters who ultimately get their just comeuppance. Look at the recent successes of Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, and Don’t Look Up. But while those function as empty calories, a way for audience laughter to act as an absolution of responsibility, The End seeks to probe something deeper: to examine the evil in all man, then offer up hope and a path for redemption.
The End screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.