‘The End’: The Most Bizarre Musical of the Year Is A-song-calypse Now
A work of profound optimism, an ambitious mishegas staring into the abyss, an experimental theater piece trapped on film, the most bizarre musical of the year in an annum filled with strong contenders for that title — this is only the beginning of possible descriptions for The End, Joshua Oppenheimer’s wild swing for the fences. A Sondheim-esque tale that’s tuneful and atonal in equal measures, this tale of a collective living in extravagance as the world gasps its last ecological breath is the kind of movie you want adventurous cineastes to make, even if you find yourself cringing and only occasionally clapping in awe at the effort. The gap between conception and execution is more a chasm here. There are still moments of intense beauty and sorrow, however, that make you want to stick it out to the very you-know-what.
Oppenheimer made his name as a meta-documentarian who earned the adjective “visionary,” courtesy of his groundbreaking look at genocide and genre roleplaying in The Act of Killing (2012) and its unofficial companion piece, The Look of Silence (2014). And while his first foray into full-length fictional features doesn’t require an explanation per se, its unique origin story and connection to those previous works is indeed telling. Originally, Oppenheimer had planned to make a third nonfiction film in line with his explorations of wealth, power, violence, and guilt, centered around the gaggle of oligarchs who were making their presence known in Indonesia.
When it became unsafe for him to be in the country, however, he began researching how these new power players operated around the world. The filmmaker then came across the story of an oil magnate who was building a bunker for his family in case of a catastrophe. Oppenheimer wanted to make a vérité portrait of what their life would be like in this home away from home a quarter-century from now. Knowing this would be an impossibility — and having just rewatched the 1964 classic The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a personal favorite of his — the director pivoted to making a musical.
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Whether this was the “right” decision — kindly note the scare quotes — is debatable. What we can tell you with utmost certainty is that The End makes good on its promise to tell this story via musical numbers that range from Off-Broadway earworms to bordering-on-awful camp (in the original sense of the term). The focus is on a family who’ve sequestered themselves away, each of them referred to by generic assignations: The Father (Michael Shannon) once held a high-ranking executive job at in the energy industry, which may or may not have contributed to government-sanctioned violence and definitely helped hasten the demise of the planet. The Mother (Tilda Swinton) was a ballerina who, once upon a time, danced with the Bolshoi. Her Friend (Bronagh Gallagher) used to be a renowned chef, and helps prep the meals. The Doctor (Lennie James) doles out meds when not dourly moping. The Butler (Tim McInnery, as always a clutch supporting player) lives to serve and pines for lost loves.
In the middle of this is the Son (George MacKay), who’s as naive as he is strapping. Having grown up never knowing of a world outside of their opulent bunker — Mother has quite the art collection, from Renoir to Turner; a makeshift gun range is just a stone’s throw away from an indoor swimming pool — he’s relied on anecdotes and faded photos to get a better sense of the before times. Dad has asked him to pen his memoirs, literally rewriting his history as someone who tried to make a difference instead of destroying things. He also spends his days working on a vast model train set that doubles as a capsule history of human endeavors, be it the American Civil War or the moon landing. The prominence of the Hollywood sign in its miniature landscape is, quite likely, not coincidental.
For the first few years of this group’s self-administered internment, they fought off potential new members of their selective survivalist club; the Butler shows off an old bullet wound he got supposedly defending the Son from an unidentified menace when he was a child. “It always ended the same way,” the Father tells him, gravely. “They tried to kill us, every time.” So when the Girl (The Lady in the Lake‘s Moses Ingram) suddenly shows up cold and lost on the doorstep, the initial instinct is to murder their first “visitor” in almost 20 years. Only the Son makes the case that they take her in, nurse her back to health, and let her stay. Soon, the two fall in love. The presence of this latest addition to the family, however, also serves to disrupt the carefully constructed facades and illusions these people have clung to for decades.
It will all come crashing down, not with a bang or a whimper but a belted-out song straight from their bruised hearts, and The End‘s musical numbers, each composed by Josh Schmidt with lyrics written by Oppenheimer, lean toward the confessional and the cacophonous. Mostly, they serve the time-honored tradition of expressing those inner thoughts, feelings, and desires that can’t merely be spoken so they must be crooned — though a colleague wisely noted to pay attention less to what they’re singing than when they choose to sing. It’s a soundtrack of compartmentalizing and harboring delusions, happening at moments that are less random then you might think. Not every singer is created equal here, naturally, but it’s clear that Oppenheimer didn’t cast his ensemble according to vocal chops. In fact, though several have extraordinary voices, notably Ingram, the movie seems to be banking more on the poignancy of someone trying to push past their range.
While it’s great that Oppenheimer & Co. are liberating the musical from the tyranny of virtuosity — no one is defying gravity here — the notion that a parable of truth and reconciliation benefits more from this particular format is not a rock-solid one. Yes, hearing Michael Shannon warble about existential crises is indeed a novelty; seeing him backlit on top of an ice cave’s crag while wondering if he should end it all as his voice breaks makes for one of a handful of moments in this experiment that feel transcendent. And a reprise of a ballad about happy days, first played as a falsehood only to be refashioned as a genuine statement of rebirth, suggests inspiration momentarily winning over perspiration. Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing.