"The End" is just weird enough to work for radicalized cinephiles like me. Your mileage may vary.
- Marquis Chester
- Dec 21, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 21
A review of Joshua Oppenheimer's apocalyptic musical and why it may have the right message for you.
Climate change, capitalism, guilt, and the value of human life are all under analysis in this odd little arrangement of not-so-lucky survivors hiding somewhere underground in what I can only theorize to be a dusty salt mine. The world ended decades ago. Oil wells are burning furiously all over the globe and will continue to blot out the sun for centuries to come. The last vestige of humanity (that we can prove exists) hides away in a bunker-turned-subterranean compound, complete with a garden, swimming pool, and even private living quarters. It would be the most comfortable way to live out the End of Days if it weren't so damn uncomfortable.
Loitering about just behind the insincere pleasantries of this well-to-do village lie the anxieties of a people too afraid to accept they may be the only ones left of our species; all that we have ever done - our triumphs, our tragedies, and the trivialities in between - all gone; complete histories washed away from the world by the indifferent and unrelenting force of the consequences of our actions. All we leave behind is the scar we burned into the Earth, a wound none of us will live to see heal.
And then a stranger appears. It has been at least twenty years since they last saw anyone but themselves. A young woman falls down the shaft to their hideout, and now they have a decision to make.
What follows is a SPOILER-FILLED set of notes I drew up while watching The End. As always, I encourage readers to watch the titles themselves before continuing, but I encourage doing as you please even more. You can skip to the bottom here.
Enjoy!
It is a movie about climate change, capitalism, and privilege
It's a musical??
Awkward boy meets girl for the first time in his life.
You can tell Father is the villain.
Father worked in "energy" (fossil fuels)
Writes a book with his son about his life; he claims he and his colleagues are not responsible for climate change.
Help put down a violent uprising.
Referred to revolutionaries as "terrorists."
Boy talks about productivity and keeping time in a world that has already ended.
heavily influenced by oil exec father
Walls adorned with paintings and fine art
The wealthy maintain their culture even in the apocalypse.
Characters often talk about hope as a means to fool themselves into thinking they aren't the final generation.
Mother is a fraud who never actually performed.
The appeal to power when underlings convey dissent
Mother's a Karen who is willing to kill a black woman for a painting.
The privileged protagonist believes his "I've never seen nature" story is equivalent to actual suffering from the underclass.
Fart scene
It's giving first love.
also Stockholm Syndrome
MacKay
The sweater and cardigan game is on point.
The difference in experience between generations is indicative of how different people experience the world at different ages.
The older men are unfamiliar with romance, while the boy is just now discovering it for himself.
The mother is deeply concerned with art and beauty, concerned that she's no longer beautiful; the father worries about products and legacy.
They are the same people in the cave as they were outside.
The oil will burn for hundreds of years, rendering the planet unlivable.
They keep eating the cake in denial of the demise of their species.
This movie is about white guilt for capitalism and climate change.
White Fragility
Father gaslights Mother, trying to convince him that what happened to her family is actually her fault.
Father is such a fraud; his son writes all of his work.
Father tries mightily to put a positive spin on his complicity in the environmental collapse.
Exposes the farce of "greenwashing" in media
Father has offices completely adorned with the victims of his exploits: paintings, taxidermy, artifacts, etc.
Really weird, quite funny
Hopelessness is the greatest defeat.
The Friend dies of despair; there is no funeral, just an emotionless cremation.
The protagonist has never known the outside world, yet judges adults for the impossible choices he's never had to make
Everyone feels the pain of being left behind and of leaving someone behind, except the protagonist.
The world in the cave is all he's ever known and likely all he will ever know.
The ends justify the means??
The newborn child represents hope, but does he represent joy?
Like climate change, ignore the negativity and just enjoy what you have around you (while it's still there); think not of those who suffer outside or those who will suffer after you.
"Drowning in Love"
White balance changes from cold to warm during songs to signify joy and love returning to the world
IMMEDIATELY slips back to frigidity when singing pauses
Only happens when we pretend to be
Salt flakes look like falling snow to symbolize how they are frozen in time.
Also looks like stars to remind us of the heavens we've lost our ability to see
Turns into microbes at the end, one final ray of hope for life's relentless march forward
Ultimately, this was my kind of movie, even with the singing.
So, what did I not like about The End? I did not care for the musical numbers, though they did not offend me. The movie was too long and did not have much going on, which is precisely how I feel about the songs. My chief complaint is too much space and not a whole lot to fill it with. Ironically, this is a significant motif of the film: a group of people spending the remainder of their lives in a massive cave full of nothing but salt and what they brought with them 20 years ago. It gets stale.
That said, my favorite element is the subtle world-building. I appreciate the off-hand comments about the world outside, the society they left behind, and the past lives they're clinging to. Most interesting was a conversation between the mother and father, in which they alluded to some sinister goings-on decades prior involving the mother's estranged family. Hidden away in the crevasses of their cave are harrowing tales of abandoned loved ones, justified atrocities, and questionable morals, hinted at in every awkward pause, shushed away with an even more uncomfortable smile. I wish we had seen that movie.
But the interesting parts are interesting. Albeit entirely on the nose, I enjoy the introspective dialogue the father engages in with the son, desperate to forgive himself for the role he knows he played in the collapse of civilization. Michael Shannon offers a convincing portrayal of a former oil executive who has long since tried to absolve himself of the guilt he feels he deserves. Even when the world is at its end, he must tell his side of the story, if not to convince what remains of humanity, to convince himself in his final days.
Moreover, I found tremendous value in the mother's tireless, unyielding commitment to optimism. It is the most toxic brand but the only thing left on the shelf since society collapsed. Tilda Swinton is equally endearing and inhumane in her interpretation of a mother and wife who are defiant in the face of oblivion. Home is what you make of it, not where you are; neither regret, guilt, nor fear of finality will stop her from adorning the living room walls with her favorite impressionist classics.
I did not find a poor performance in this project. Everyone was just awkward enough to have plausibly been living in a cave for a couple of decades (with billionaire resources). The protagonist, Son (George MacKay), is socially underdeveloped, curious, and desperate to please, just like a boy born in a cave he's never stepped outside of. Friend of Mother (Bronagh Gallagher) was as honest and helpful as someone who wanted to show appreciation for having her life rescued by her bestie and rich husband. Doctor (Lennie James) was indignant and proud, while Butler (Tim McInnerny) was astute and inquisitive. They bicker and play together and share uncomfortably tender moments. They celebrate every holiday in careful caricature and honor traditions from cultures that have long since been lost to time. They are a family because they are a family in all the ways that matter in an apocalypse.
And when that family grows, with the addition of the Girl (Moses Ingram), the first they've seen in 20 years, I believe every moment of tension, every contest of wills that dares to alter the fabric of the only community any of them know.
Which is ultimately what this movie is about. It's about community, hope, love, climate change, capitalism, and all of those other particularly (though not exclusively) human phenomena. However, I claim The End is more concerned with examining the value of human life itself. And I do NOT mean the war epic version of this question, the "Is it worth saving one person at the cost of many," Trolley Problem, or resources exchange-style query. Instead, this film asks whether or not living is worth the trouble of surviving.
This film's narrative encompasses a circumstance wherein bad times mean a gruesome, painful demise on a burning planet, while good times equate to decades of monotony and dishonest joy hidden away underground in the couch cushions of Earth. And yet, our heroes persist toward an uncertain future filled with almost certain doom. They create a new life without any reasonable prospect of a return to the surface in this century or the next.
Why? Because life goes on, with meaning or without. Human consciousness mythologizes and turns the mundane into narrative. For all things, there is a value assessment. Nature does not care for meaning or purpose. It is because it is. The natural world needs no reason, but we are drawn to it. It is essential to our condition that we make meaning where none may otherwise exist. A world that makes no sense is one we can never hope to understand, which terrifies us.
For our heroes, beauty is that reason. Joy is their purpose. They create community and joy because there is no other way to continue living. The Mother (Swinton) has been shuffling the same paintings around her living room walls for the last 20 years, arranging and rearranging the same marble busts, ionic columns, stolen artifacts, etc., because The End of the world is not enough to stop a homemaker from making her home. There is no greatest depth to human sorrow. But there is also no limit to love, hope, and joy. There are merely obstacles to reaching them.
"The End" is just weird enough to work for radicalized cinephiles like me. Your mileage may vary. 7/10
All images sourced from IMDB
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