‘The End’ Movie Review: Another Musical Afraid of Being a Musical
In an era where musicals are afraid to promote themselves as a musical because, apparently, the moviegoing public doesn’t like them (not true), we’ve now come to the stage where the musicals (that don’t get promoted as such) are even afraid to be musicals in their movies! This year, we weren’t just treated to one such “musical that’s afraid of being a musical,” but three! First, we had Joker: Folie à Deux, which didn’t sit well with the few audience members who saw it and was flat-out rejected by even the most ardent comic book fans. Then, Jacques Audiard gave us Emilia Pérez, which has admittedly struck a chord with awards voters (and Cannes festival goers) but hasn’t received the smoothest reception from critics and audiences upon its wide release. Now, we have Neon’s The End, the long-anticipated fiction feature film debut by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.
The End is a post-apocalyptic musical
Promoted as a post-apocalyptic musical fantasy set two decades after the world’s end, the movie follows a wealthy family living in a doomsday bunker deep inside a salt mine. Of course, in the tradition of many new releases, for some reason (i.e., Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch and Hans Petter Moland’s Absolution), none of the film’s protagonists have a name.
For two hours and twenty-eight excruciating minutes, we are subjected to the tribulations of Father (Michael Shannon), Mother (Tilda Swinton), Son (George MacKay), Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), Doctor (Lennie James), and Butler (Tim McInnerny) who delude themselves into staying inside their bunker while the world (which we don’t see) continues to go down in flames. Their wealth and privilege have allowed them to set up a routine, semi-stable life underground: fire drills, swimming lessons, dinner table conversations, and the writing of a yet-to-be-titled book on Father’s life experiences working in the energy sector (which we realize, contributed to the end of the world).
Oppenheimer and cinematographer Mikhail Krichman depict these acts of repetition through a compelling visual language that makes these relatively mundane scenes orderly and precise. It creates a style that feels decidedly unique, especially when showcasing life in a secluded doomsday bunker. Their days look the same because they are stuck in a perpetual cycle of boredom and routine. They cannot escape this fate, since they have resigned themselves to living underground until they will (eventually) pass away.
And, credit where credit is due, the underground set itself is one of the most strikingly realized and artful displays of production design I’ve seen all year. The camera careens around its “core” kitchen, bedrooms, and dining areas while also exploring several parts of the salt mine progressively to plunge the viewer inside the environment.
And it does work. The environment feels lived in, though one has the impression that Oppenheimer isn’t exploring it to its fullest potential but only staying with the characters, which could make it feel much smaller than it is. But The End is a gorgeous-looking movie. We’re always compelled to watch.
Well, for a while, at least. Because as much as its songs seem disconnected from the “meat” of its story, the promise of exploring a privileged family voluntarily wanting to avoid what’s happening on the surface and singing songs reaffirming their belief in doing absolutely nothing sounds intriguing enough on paper. This voluntary avoidance plagues many of society’s problems in reacting to major historical events and looking the other way at atrocities that happen in different parts of the world as if they don’t exist. Such a subject deserves to be explored and refined, which Jonathan Glazer and Julie Delpy have both brilliantly (recently) done in films like The Zone of Interest and Meet the Barbarians. Yet, when the family’s lives are upended by the arrival of Girl (Moses Ingram) in the bunker, The End begins to lose its footing – and fast.
Oppenheimer’s film that meanders in endless platitudes
As good as the film continues to look, Oppenheimer begins to lose interest in its nameless characters and the burgeoning predicament they were introduced in. As soon as this happens, the movie no longer has any idea what it wants to be. Should it stay as a slow-moving, minimally choreographed, lethargically paced musical? Or should it suddenly become a dark romantic comedy where Son begins to experience a romantic connection with Girl? How about a meditation on society by way of Father writing his book? And a familial drama involving a fractured relationship between Mother and Friend that goes absolutely nowhere? That’s how Oppenheimer moves from point A to point Z, and back to point B in 148 minutes, never knowing exactly what to tell in the context that the film is set in.
Even assimilating The End metaphorically won’t improve the viewing experience. The movie is punishingly slow, which builds up to a dramatic climax with little impact on the protagonists and the overall situation they are in. It feels far more in line with an experimental affair than a post-apocalyptic musical that boldly asserts itself as such and always delivers on the promise of that inextricable fact. Yet, when Girl appears, the musical aspect begins to peter out. And as soon as Oppenheimer forgets that this movie is supposed to be a musical, here’s a song to interminably stretch the runtime and constantly repeat the characters’ most insufferable traits ad nauseam, but without any choreographies or memorable tunes to sing along to (as much as they only serve to delude the characters into doing nothing).
Making it a flashy musical could’ve helped hammer home how truly screwed this post-apocalyptic community is, but Oppenheimer never seems interested in doing so. As a result, the movie lacks a real pulse, no matter how talented its performers are. The experimental factor also seems to guide its actors, who appear to improvise their lines and modulate tones and patterns of acting that differ from scene to scene. It worked in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. It doesn’t work here because it seems so deathly afraid to challenge audiences to their perception of “normal” cinema (the aesthetic is too rigid and conventional to truly experiment). On the other hand, Coppola’s movie is on an entirely different wavelength than most mainstream studio productions, making it such a bold affair when released on (empty) IMAX screens.
Oppenheimer bathes his post-apocalyptic world with such astute precision that it’s hard to detach ourselves from the bountiful visuals and look at what its performers are doing. Sure, it’s unconventional, but is it worth spending 148 minutes of your time with them? It’s hard to say because we’re constantly disconnected by their fragmented narrative arcs that are often comedic, often dramatic, and often musical but are never about anything concrete. Perhaps that’s the point because our world is such a dreary place destined to die that we, as a society, will amount to nothing. Still, there’s a way to represent this stark fact compellingly, but Oppenheimer does so.
The End wastes a talented cast
And none of the actors are good here, too. Yet, most of them are perfect for the roles they are cast in. For instance, Tilda Swinton has always been one for idiosyncratic performances, especially when collaborating with Bong Joon-ho and Wes Anderson. Her more dramatic roles (including in Sally Potter‘s Orlando and Luca Guadagnino‘s A Bigger Splash) also show impeccable range, and the Mom she is tasked to play contains the best of both worlds. However, she has very little to work with, which makes her character beats feel inconsistent at best, and profoundly misguided at worst.
The same thing can be said for Shannon, who’s usually great in everything he’s in. In this film, he’s completely lost, never knowing which emotion to convey in front of the camera, and interiorize for the audience to get a glimpse of how truly terrible of a person this Dad is. To get a bad performance out of Michael Shannon is one hell of a Herculean feat (his phoned-in Zod in Andy Muschietti‘s The Flash was far more riveting than this), but Oppenheimer seems to accomplish that.
It’s even more disappointing to see two great up-and-comers in George MacKay (who delivered quite the impression in Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast earlier this year) and Moses Ingram (who also delivered an impassioned turn in Raven Jackson’s criminally underseen All Dirt Roads Lead to Salt, and was the best part of Obi-Wan Kenobi) stoop so low in fart competitions, or bathing themselves with pastry cream while speaking French for no discernible reason.
The End tries to be funny when it brings these characters to the most primal parts of human life, but it never is. Worse yet, Son and Girl have no tangible connection with themselves, as much as Oppenheimer paints a blossoming romance between the two. Their relationship feels more forced than natural, which never allows the audience to emotionally connect with them, even if their songs are probably the film’s strongest.
This results in a painfully tedious affair that attempts so hard to enthrall with its minimalist musical numbers that are sumptuously shot and impassionately sung. But there is little to no impact in how the narrative throughline of The End fizzles out relatively close to its introductory song.
The only thing you’ll wish out of this movie is for it to end as soon as possible and for Oppenheimer to find his voice as a filmmaker again, especially after the essential works of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. That doesn’t mean going back into documentary filmmaking (as an example, Pedro Kos has successfully made the jump to feature filmmaking this year with the thrilling In Our Blood, which this critic saw at Fantasia), but knowing what he wants out of making fiction films. That way, the audience will also have a far more stimulating experience than having to sit through something as punishingly rote like The End ever again.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a Meandering Musical That Wastes Lady Gaga
