The End (Dinamarca, Irlanda, Alemanha, Itália, Reino Unido, EUA e Suécia, 2024)
Original title: The End
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Writer/Screenplay: Rasmus Heisterberg e Joshua Oppenheimer
Main cast: Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Bronagh Gallagher, Moses Ingram, Lennie James, Tim McInnerny and Danielle Ryan
Runtime: 148 minutes (2°28’)
It’s hard to imagine what a musical set at the end of the world would be like, but if there’s anyone qualified to do it, it’s Joshua Oppenheimer, who gained worldwide notoriety with his documentaries The Act of Killing (2012) e The Look of Silence (2014) about the mass killings in Indonesia. With the disturbing quality of creating poetic images from horrific scenarios, here he manages to create funny songs from the end of the world.
The musical uses a very classic format to tell the story of Mother (Tilda Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon) and Son (George MacKay) as they survive the end of the world in a remote and self-sufficient bunker, with only a few employees for company. But when the Girl (Moses Ingram) arrives at the place, all family relationships undergo transformations from the perspective that there’s still some life outside their home.
In a way, the theme even sounds biblical at first: the person who comes from outside like the serpent, bringing forbidden knowledge that can expel those who live in the paradise they believe they live in. For the Son, especially, this is truly the feeling of lost innocence. For the other occupants of the place, it’s the beginning of a game of reflections on their guilt before the end of the world and what they gave up in order to live there.
The musical part of the film is performed in a very classic and correct way, with melodic songs that deal almost with feelings and speeches simply placed in a good arrangement. The dance, also completely artificial, comes in as an element that shows the control and knowledge of the genre by the director and actors, with jazz hands and pirouettes by the couple. This artificiality is an essential element to make the surreal narrative deeper, which doesn’t even try to give the explanations that the audience may want. It’s a necessary mannerism to understand the key to how the movie works.
And it works to a certain extent, when we start to see all the pieces of the house of cards built up until that point starting to fall. Between the claustrophobic photography that may remind viewers too much of the still recent COVID pandemic and the same compulsive behaviors of the characters, the lack of development of more complex arcs is what leads to a feeling of frustration at the end of the extensive film. Obviously, the performances are as good as one can imagine, the space created for the bunker is intricate and complex. But the characters end up being excessively simple, with actions that are too methodical and don’t create a greater reflection on this apocalyptic universe in which they live.
Thus, perhaps it’s a work that deserves a second viewing to assimilate all of its narrative capacity, but which initially creates a universe that is much more interesting than the story it tries to tell in its duration.
Translation by: Renata Torres
