Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical The End, starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon, unveils a teaser poster
Almost three years have gone by since Joshua Oppenheimer, the director behind the documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, announced that he was teaming up with NEON to make his narrative feature debut with The End, “a golden-age musical about the last human family.” That film went into production last year, with a cast that includes Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water), George MacKay (1917), Moses Ingram (The Tragedy of Macbeth), Bronagh Gallagher (Pulp Fiction), Tim McInnerny (Notting Hill), Lennie James (The Walking Dead), and Danielle Ryan (The Silencing). Now it’s making the festival rounds, with the Telluride Film Festival unveiling the image that can be seen above, and a teaser poster arriving online just ahead of the film’s screenings at both Telluride and the Toronto International Film Festival. The poster can be seen at the bottom of this article.
During an interview with Prospect, Oppenheimer revealed what inspired him to make the movie: “I was researching very wealthy families, and one of them was buying a doomsday bunker that was more of a palace than a bunker. I decided to make a film about a family in a bunker 20 years after the world has ended—and to make it a musical. This family has enriched itself through fossil fuels. It’s now 20 years after the world has ended and they have a son who was born in the bunker. It’s a study in impunity. They tell themselves that this vast tomb is now the pinnacle of civilization, because they are the last family, a Noah’s Ark for a flood that will never subside. The themes grow out of what I explored in The Act of Killing—guilt and denial, the imposition of a narrative by the powerful, the performance of impunity. And remember: Impunity is always performed. It’s not something you can take for granted. You have to assert it with shows of force.” He went on to say the movie is “an exploration of whether we as human beings can come to a place where our guilt is too much to recover from. We are our pasts. And we’re all perpetrators in one way or another.“
The End has the following synopsis: A post-apocalyptic story about a rich family, surviving two decades after the world ended, living in a salt mine converted into a luxurious home. The earth around them has apparently been destroyed, but their 13-year-old son, born in the bunker, has never seen the outside world. There is a maid, with whom the son has his only honest relationship. There is also a doctor, and a butler. Unspoken blame over leaving loved ones behind looms over this family, hollowing out whatever intimacy they once shared. Suddenly, a young girl appears at the entrance of the bunker, the balance of the family is threatened.
Or, here’s an expanded synopsis: A wealthy family survives in a palatial bunker, two decades after the world has ended. There is a mother, father, and their twenty-year-old son – he was born in the bunker and has never seen the outside world. There is a maid, with whom the son has his only honest relationship. There is also a doctor, a butler – and finally a young woman who, having barely survived, manages to find her way in. The film is a musical, and the title is THE END. Before the young woman arrives, the family celebrates their survival as confirmation of their success and righteousness, but unspoken blame over leaving loved ones behind has come between the parents, hollowing out whatever intimacy they once shared. They struggle to repress the guilt they feel for this – as well as a more diffuse regret for contributing to the world’s end. (The Father was an oil tycoon.)
The music is inspired by Broadway’s Golden Age – the unearned optimism of the classic American musical embodies the bunker’s desperate delusions. In THE END, it is an optimism born of fear. They are afraid to face their guilt, and it is this fear, more than the inhospitable conditions outside, that prevents them from leaving. Were they to leave, they’d be confronted by the truth of what they did to the world – and the fate to which they abandoned their families. There will be no Golden Age theatricality to the performances. Instead, the unvarnished realism invites the audience to identify with the characters in this intimate tragedy about guilt, denial, and unfulfilled longing. As in the director’s THE ACT OF KILLING, there is also absurdity and dark humor – and, as the son and young woman fall in love, a fragile hope.
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