Joshua Oppenheimer Breaks Down His Ambitious Post-Apocalyptic Musical ‘The End’: “It’s A Miracle This Got Made” — Thessaloniki

Zac Ntim
·8-min read

Greece’s Thessaloniki Film Festival ends this evening with a screening of The End, the latest feature project from the enigmatic filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.

Best known for his intellectually rich and Oscar-nominated non-fiction works The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), Oppenheimer’s latest is his first fiction project, and for it he has recruited one of the most impressive ensembles of the year. Starring are Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton), Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road), BAFTA-nominee George Mackay (1917), and Emmy-nominee Moses Ingram (The Queen’s Gambit). 

More from Deadline

Styled as a Golden Age Hollywood musical, The End is set in a post-apocalyptic world twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable. A biological family and their companions – part-found-family, part-hired-help – live in harmony in a subterranean bunker. But the arrival of a stranger smashes the synthetic veil of their strictly organized world. The ensuing struggle to maintain their uniform bunker lives uncovers secrets and anxieties that inextricably tethers them to the world they have tried to hard to leave believe.

“The End is really about how important it is to have the most inclusive and widely defined human family and our mutual interconnectedness,” Oppenheimer explained of the pic — which will be released in the U.S. by Neon — from a hotel room in Thessaloniki.

In the conversation below, we further discuss the process of making The End, how the film’s financing was pieced together through public funds in Europe, Oppenheimer’s extensive research for the film which included touring real-life billionaire bunkers, and the context of releasing a post-apocalyptic film with an incoming second Trump presidency.

DEADLINE: I saw your film in San Sebastian, which is a great festival. And it was one of the best screenings I’ve been to in some time. The crowds over there are so engaged and they were really vibing with the film. You could feel the emotion in the room. 

JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER: That’s so nice. I’m glad because I know some people really love the film and for others, it’s really not for them, which is maybe a good thing. I’ve only experienced positive screenings too with this film. But I remember screenings of The Act Of Killing where whole rows would just walk out. It would be like, there goes the third row.

DEADLINE: That’s surprising. I remember watching The Act Of Killing and it was so huge for my generation of film friends. It showed in London at the ICA for like a year. I hadn’t realized it was a polarizing film. Does that reaction weigh on you?

OPPENHEIMER: I don’t think about it very much. I have to think about whatever I need for the project. I came through this editing and post-production process feeling quite clear about the film and I have so much love for it. It’s like a child. If someone loves the child, I’m delighted. But if they don’t, it doesn’t weigh on me.

DEADLINE: Are you based in Copenhagen?

OPPENHEIMER: I’m actually based in Malmö, across the bridge from Copenhagen. But that’s only as of the last couple of years. During much of that period, I was shooting and editing, most of which took place in Copenhagen and Germany.

DEADLINE: Do you consider yourself a European filmmaker? Because this film feels very European. 

OPPENHEIMER: I’m curious what you mean by that. It’s definitely an American story and it’s set somewhere in America. It’s as if the whole American hegemon has imploded and this is the last black hole underground and we hear this music of denial. It’s also American in part because the genre is American. We’re not the only country that has deluded and false forms of hope, but we’re pretty good at it. We do it better or I should say worse than anyone else. But at the same time, I do see myself as a European. I have British and Danish citizenship and I’ve lived my whole adult life outside the U.S. Parts of my family came from Germany and Austria. I would also say The End is really about how important it is to have the most inclusive and widely defined human family and our mutual interconnectedness. When you keep people out, you are also committing an act of self-harm. The End is a plea for the public sphere.

It’s a miracle this got made. This is a musical with live singing shot largely in a salt mine. With the current economics of the film industry, this film only exists because of European financing.

DEADLINE: Yeah, I think what I meant was the vision of this film in a Hollywood context comes with significant aesthetic and narrative concessions. 

OPPENHEIMER: Yeah, what you’re alluding to is important. I remember Michael Shannon said to me at one point during the production when we were struggling to get something ‘I know we’re gonna get it because you’re as stubborn as a mule.’ And it’s true. I would sooner chew off my arm than compromise on something aesthetically, ethically, and narratively meaningful. Therefore, I don’t think I would work very well in a system where I don’t have the final cut and that’s the beauty of the European system, particularly in Denmark where it’s enshrined in the Danish film law that the director has the final cut on all Danish Film Institute supported projects. And Neon really could not have been a more supportive and passionate partner.

DEADLINE: When I’m watching a film that I find engaging I rarely think about craft. But when I finished The End I couldn’t help but be struck by how difficult it must have been to execute many things we see on screen. How did you work in those spaces?

OPPENHEIMER: We were all outside of our comfort zones. This is my first narrative film. Excluding Michael who is in a band and Bronagh who is a rockstar in Ireland, this is not a cast of singers. Those long single takes of large ensemble songs just required the stars to align and it would sometimes require many takes before we got there. It was so nourishing and energizing. There was immense pressure on everyone in those long takes and in those ensemble songs but that created a sense of family and solidarity that was profound at the same time.

DEADLINE: I read that you did a lot of research on billionaire bunkers. What did you find? And where did you look?

OPPENHEIMER: This story grew out of research because I wanted to make a third film in Indonesia with the oligarchs who came to power through the genocide and enriched themselves by exploiting a public who remained terrified of them. But after The Act of Killing came out, I could not return to Indonesia. So I started researching oligarchs who had made economically analogous situations. There was an oil tycoon from elsewhere in Asia who’d been involved with significant political violence to secure his investments. He had this obsession with wanting to live forever. So he was investing his money in all these life-extending cures and research and part of his immortality project was to buy a bunker for his family. We went and visited this bunker. It wasn’t finished yet. It was a former Soviet command bunker in Eastern Europe. But they were planning many of the same features you see in The End like an old wine cellar and art vault. I found myself wanting to ask questions that I knew given my relationship with this family would be too provocative.

I left thinking the film I’d really love to make with this family would be in this bunker 25 years after they moved in. I realized I wasn’t going to do that. So on the flight home to get some distance from this experience, I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of my favorite films, on my laptop. After that, I knew what I was going to do. I would make a narrative film and it would be a musical. I visited Kansas where these early nuclear missile storage silos underground have been transformed to create subterranean skyscrapers. They were selling out whole silos to the Saudi Royal family and their entourage, but they were also selling out individual floors and then building a kind of condominium community.

DEADLINE: This film will be released during a new Trump presidency. I guess the film almost predicts much of the isolationism he touts. Do you feel nihilistic about the future?

OPPENHEIMER: I never feel nihilistic. I’m a little anxious to be releasing any film because my films will always be the political and ethical reflections on what it means to be human and to release anything right now in a moment where I’m terrified of what will replace the age of bourgeois democracy — and I say bourgeois democracy because it’s been far from perfect and especially American democracy, which I’m not even sure is democracy. It’s really oligarchy. But what Trump will try and replace it with is not at all hopeful. Most of the writing on The End happened when Trump was president and then Biden came and there was a great deal of refinement and rewriting. Now we’re releasing the film during another Trump term. The film feels at home in a way I hadn’t thought of.

I was desperately hoping and working to prevent this electoral outcome, phone banking from Europe. You said do I feel nihilistic. This film is about two forms of hope. There’s the false hope that prevails in the story and that the family carries about how everything will be fine and we can therefore bury our heads in the sand and not look at our past and not look at the disastrous course we’re on and just hope for the best. That’s not really hope at all. That’s despair. That’s actually nihilism. But the real hope is the idea that if we come together and find our deepest humanity through solidarity and collaboration we can discover the power of our voices through collective action and resistance where necessary. If we do that with a clear-sightedness about the problems we’re trying to overcome and with the widest possible love for our fellow human beings and for this planet that sustains life, we can change things for the better. It may be too late for the family in The End, but it’s not too late for us.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Latest stories