The day starts off like any other for the Family: they wake up, fuss over the placement of the carefully curated classic art decorating their walls, work on their dioramas, revise their memoirs, and practice survival drills for the inevitable spread of toxic air. Of course, they do all this while singing grand, sweeping songs (that are sometimes accompanied by choreography). The curious combination of apocalyptic chamber piece with movie musical makes Joshua Oppenheimer’s new feature film The End an intriguing experiment — and an even more disappointing failure.
The End is the first scripted feature from Oppenheimer, who was twice Oscar-nominated for his documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. When it was announced that Oppenheimer would make his narrative feature directorial debut with a post-apocalyptic musical starring Tilda Swinton, it certainly piqued the interest of the arthouse movie world. But while The End and its highly stylized, bleak vision of post-global warming future may still appeal to arthouse critics, The End still mostly fails as a narrative feature and as a musical.
