Has there been a greater lure for filmmakers than the post-apocalypse over the last decade? Perhaps there's a certain freedom in imagining a future yet to be determined and that's put to brilliant use in Joshua Oppenheimer's remarkable musical The End. The Act of Killing / The Look of Silence director shifts his focus from the very real atrocities of Indonesia in the 1960s to a future environmental collapse where, in an opulent bunker dug out from underground salt mines, a family resides. Here, Mother (Tilda Swinton) and Father (Michael Shannon) have raised their son (George MacKay) on a diet of half-truths, safety drills, exercise and outright lies. But when they find an unconscious Girl (Moses Ingram – perhaps the only true ‘singer' in the cast), their safe and very comfortable life is threatened by her arrival.
Initially attempting to send her back from whence she came, Son persuades his family and their Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Doctor (Lennie James) to let her stay. Fascinated by an outside world he's never seen, Son is understandably drawn to Girl but her scepticism slowly chips away at him. Why, in his carefully constructed model replica world, has he painted the immigrant workers of the Central Pacific Railroad with smiling faces? It's a troubling naïveté that infects the insulated, and resident man-child Son might just be the future of the human race. But his kindness also emerges, fostered in the main by Friend, who uses Son as a surrogate stand-in for her own deceased child. Combined with his more *ahem* base instincts, Son and Girl's relationship blossoms as best it can, expressed in a charming number delightfully choreographed by Mikhail Krichman and lolloping-ly performed by George MacKay and Moses Ingram amidst the salt dunes.
And yet there's no cause for celebration. The arrival of Girl does not signify the dawn of a new era but rather the burst of a bubble. Old lies and painful recollections begin to surface, rising up through the beautiful music – composed by Joshua Schmidt and Marius de Vries – and softly sung by a cast of actors tasked with seeming both introspective and guilt-ridden, yet inherently selfish. No mean feat. Closer to a modern-day Opera, The End isn't filled with hit songs or meme-able baby puppets, rather its numbers are wistful and melancholic, as eerily detached as the shelter's inhabitants. Much has been made of the ‘banality of evil'. Here's it's back… in Song Form! And whether it be through the careful clipping of favourable newspaper stories, curated memoirs or a balletic half-truth spun into something grand, the truth is and always has been written by the victors.
But what Oppenheimer and fellow writer Rasmus Heisterberg envision here is the bleakest of victories. The landscapes in Villeneuve's Dune may be arid, but at least there are lives, souls and spice to be fought for. In The End, even the worms are just filtration pipes, wheezing only occasionally to bring enough air into the bunker for survival. Far beneath the surface, those complicit in the destruction of the world enjoy their spoils. The End won't be for everyone, but neither is survival.
The End is released in cinemas from 28 March
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