There have been many reports over the years that billionaires have been quietly building survival bunkers around the world—sprawling and well-appointed hideaways where the ruling class plan to spend Armageddon. There they will remain in comfort while the rest of us go to war over resources, contend with the worsening elements, and die off. But won’t they, too, suffer in some way, haunted by who and what they left behind, daunted by a hopeless future, growing sick of one another? That is maybe the argument being made in Joshua Oppenheimer’s peculiar and intermittently affecting The End, a musical drama that, in its strange empathy, condemns the oligarchs of our world in a way that could almost be called satiric.
Michael Shannon plays a former oil baron who has fled environmental catastrophe and taken his family and a few attendants to a facility built deep inside a cavernous salt mine. Their living quarters are lovely and ornate, filled with priceless art and elegant furniture. He and his wife, played by Tilda Swinton, are devoted to the raising of their twentysomething son, a naive and childlike man played by George MacKay. He was born in the bunker and only knows of the outside world in theory—he’s about as home-schooled as any kid could be.
The family and their doctor (Lennie James), butler (Tim McInnerny), and friend/nanny (Bronagh Gallagher) live in a kind of rigorous harmony, going about their chores and safety drills with little mention of what ruin lives above them, nor of the sorry fact that theirs is an inevitably fading ecosystem, too. But they do sing about it, remarking on how surreal it is that MacKay’s character is most likely the end of the line. The film’s musical interludes—spare, lilting compositions by Joshua Schmidt and Marius de Vries—mostly function as poetic internal monologue, representative of the turmoil of feeling lying under all the tightly managed order.
But disorder does eventually arrive, as it tends to do. A stranger, played by Moses Ingram, somehow finds her way down to the cave, barely having survived the ravages of the land above. The bunker dwellers are wary at first—they reference a past incident in which the butler was shot by invaders; it’s why the father insists that his son practice with firearms—and seem poised to expel this untrustworthy outsider. Then again, she is young and a woman, and thus maybe there could be a lineage-extending benefit to keeping her around. MacKay’s interest certainly seems piqued.
The matter of sex and procreation is not stated plainly in the film, but we feel its heavy implication. Some primal part of us sees that outcome as the only right one; life must carry on. But Oppenheimer also allows room for questioning that instinct. What point would there be in bringing another doomed child into this place? It may in fact be nothing but a cruelty. Perhaps this one rich family’s vanity—the notion that they, over all others, must endure—is the vanity of a whole planet, rapacious with personal need at the cost of everything.
Oppenheimer’s film is firmly an environmentalist one, a soft-spoken excoriation of industries and their leaders who hasten the destruction of our climate. We consumers are at fault, too, though those of us without the resources to build underground arks will feel the consequences sooner. The End perhaps most pities the blameless children: those like MacKay’s character, who are taught all the wrong things, and those like Ingram’s, who can do nothing but struggle and scramble to stay breathing through no fault of her own.
The stranger has her own guilt, though. As do most of the characters in this long and elusive film. Perhaps that is Oppenheimer’s ultimate message: you can flee the havoc, but something will always chase after you. There is no true escape from humanity’s reckless failings. Oppenheimer’s documentary The Act of Killing had Indonesian mass murderers confront their misdeeds through re-enactment; maybe The End is meant to be a precautionary tale for any billionaires who happen to be watching it: your selfishness will not save you.
That said, it is difficult to affix any distinct meaning on the film. Captivating as it often is, it is also ponderous and withholding. Patience is tried as The End slowly, solemnly glides across two and a half hours. Loud, bonk-over-the-head Issues Movies are not necessarily preferable—it’s fascinating to encounter such elliptical art about a big, pertinent topic. But The End’s difficult construction risks alienating viewers from its worthy concerns.
What remains engaging throughout are the carefully textured performances—MacKay’s study of repressed energy and Ingram’s mix of wariness and gratitude are particular highlights—and the film’s myriad aesthetic graces. While probably not made on a huge budget, The End looks like it cost a zillion dollars. The landscape of the film is richly realized, captured in chillingly elegant chiaroscuro by cinematographer Mikhail Krichman. Humanity’s final residence is a lovely one, and all the more frightening and contemptible for it.