‘The End’ Review: Tilda Swinton And Michael Shannon Sing Away The Apocalypse And The Songs Are Pretty Good – Telluride Film Festival

Pete Hammond
·5-min read

Musicals are really in vogue at the fall film festivals this year. At Venice the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux will have stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga singing and dancing to the standards. At Telluride, Emilia Pérez has the bug, as does the country-tinged The Easy Kind. Plus there is the Robbie Williams creation Better Man, from The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey; and Pharrell Williams’ LEGO biopic Piece By Piece that are keeping us coming out of the theatre humming the tunes. And now, world premiering today at Telluride is The End, perhaps the most unlikely storyline for a musical of all (well at least until Joker starts warbling “That’s Entertainment”). It is set after the world has ended due to a cataclysmic environmental disaster and the only people left on earth are a very wealthy family –partially responsible for it — living in a plush underground bunker. Bring on the songs!

If I had to describe it (and I do) The End is like La La Land meets On the Beach. The latter film was about a bunch of Australians waiting for the nuclear cloud to reach their shores and wipe them out.

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In The End, Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon are the extremely wealthy mother and father (no one has formal names that we know of) of a family who have been living in this extravagant underground ice palace of a bunker for 25 years after our failure to do something about Earth’s climate change and environment finally did in all of humanity.

Their living quarters are elaborate, generate food, plants, fish, and what looks like half the world’s great paintings including Monet’s Lady With A Parasol among many more dot the walls. The others in this palatial home include Son (George MacKay), who has never experienced the outside of this bunker; Friend (Bronagh Gallagher); Butler (TIm McInnerny); and Doctor (Lennie James). Into this “world” one day wanders a mysterious Girl (Moses Ingram), which becomes a major problem as no one ever has penetrated this fortress from the outside, and somehow this young person survived. They want to get rid of her instantly but after a struggle and her pleas that she would be destroyed if going back out there, she is allowed to stay. This leads to a romantic subplot as Son becomes smitten with her, and before long they might as well be Tony and Maria from West Side Story. They get a beautifully choreographed and shot love song to prove it.

Well, everyone gets songs, and I have to confess the score is quite melodic, if sometimes veering too close to Joshua Hurwitz’s La La Land themes. Credit Joshua Schmidt with the music and the film’s director Joshua Oppenheimer with the lyrics. Oppenheimer (who wrote the screenplay with Rasmus Heisterberg) dreamed up this inventive concept, partially inspired by his love for the 1964 all-sung French classic The Umbrellas of Cherbourgh (also “coincidentally”? an inspiration for Damien Chazelle and La La Land). But he had serious issues on his mind including the way humans seem to be destroying themselves inch by inch with careless care of the world. So what could be the perfect counterpoint to demonstrate these last remaining survivors are in complete denial? They sing about it.

Oppenheimer is a documentarian of such heavy deadly serious movies as Act of Killing and Look of Silence but is also an admirer of Hollywood’s golden musical age and directors like Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly. Though this musical is an homage in weird ways, the fates of this group are getting increasingly darker. Shannon sings of regret for his contributions to the world’s end as a corporate executive who simply ignored the warnings out of pure greed. Swinton’s mother is finally coming out of her daze and love for material things and great art to realize they are living a lie. Son is finding independence, but it is the Girl who is proving the impetus for change, even at this point in these lives. Ingram (The Queen’s Gambit) clearly has the singing chops and is the best vocalist in the cast, but all of them get through their big numbers with some style, especially as conflicts with the Friend and warnings from the Doctor begin to take hold.

Acting-wise you can’t beat Swinton who is among the most adventurous of stars, as is Shannon and they are well matched. MacKay has the perfect blend of naivete and curiosity, and all the others, particularly Gallagher as the longtime Friend deliver. Ingram steals the show and I would hope she gets future musical opportunities. The talent is there.

There are 13 original songs like “Big Blue Sky” and “The Mirror,” and it is probably no accident that La La Land’s Marius De Vries is the executive producer for music here, as well as credited with scoring with Schmidt. Jette Lehmann’s production design is a key player here, existing in a world all its own.

In some ways Oppenheimer’s seemingly bonkers idea of putting the plight of a family at the end of the world spilling their guts in increasingly depressing song makes creative sense. And yet still there is hope in this dire concept of a musical, and that is what we end up hanging on to, hope for humanity. And of course some pretty good songs still to be written.

Producers are Signe Borge Sorensen, Oppenheimer and Swinton.

Title: The End
Festival: Telluride
Distributor: Neon
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Screenwriters: Joshua Oppenheimer and Rasmus Heisterberg
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny, Lennie James
Running time: 2 hr 36 mins

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