It’s been 25 years since the world ended. Some sort of climate catastrophe is what did it, and the only survivors we know of are Father (Michael Shannon), Mother (Tilda Swinton), Son (George MacKay), their Doctor (Lennie James), Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Friend (Bronagh Gallagher). They survive by living in an expansive bunker below the surface — Father was a successful oil and gas man — where they while away the days recreating and revising the past through art, memoir and dioramas. They also sing.
Yes, this post-apocalyptic narrative of regret and hidden truths is a full-blown musical shot in anamorphic widescreen. The End wouldn’t have looked too out of place had it come out in the mid-1960s from one of the major Hollywood studios — save for the whole end-of-the-world business. But considering that it’s directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, whose two previous documentaries were intimate and bleak explorations of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66, The End might be one of the most curious movies of 2024.
That’s not to say The End is a good movie, though it has its charms. It is fascinating in ways. Take the instance that disrupts the survivor’s monotonous day-to-day: the arrival of Girl (Moses Ingram). Twenty-five years ago, Father and Mother had to make some tough decisions about who could and who couldn’t live in the bunker while the rest of the world burned. Now a total stranger has wandered into their midst, and they roll out the red carpet. That dredges up a lot of painful memories, which the characters continue to repress, even in the throes of song.
I don’t know what to make of The End, but I do know that at least a half-dozen times a year, this paper covers the restoration and re-release of an overlooked or forgotten gem from cinema’s past. For a variety of reasons, those movies were dismissed at the time but have now been reclaimed as a singular work. Maybe even a masterpiece. Will that fate behoove The End and the oddball approach to its subject matter in 20-50 years? Anything is possible. Though, with a runtime of two and a half hours and only a couple of strong singing voices to stand on, I suspect that The End will be beloved more for its ambition than its success.
ON SCREEN: The End opens in limited release on Dec. 13.