#TIFF24 Review: The End (Special Presentations)

By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

Joshua Oppenheimer is a filmmaker who has explored the dark side of human capabilities in his staggering documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, a pair of films about how people use storytelling, filmmaking and performance to process the horrible things they have done. So it’s fitting that his narrative feature debut is the wildest of swings; a movie musical set after the apocalypse, following an affluent, unnamed family that has survived by holing themselves up in an underground bunker for over two decades.

The family’s son (played by George MacKay) has spent his entire life being raised by his father (Michael Shannon) and mother (Tilda Swinton) in a lavish bunker built in a salt mine. The son works on building an idealized model of the America that he has learned about through history books, while his mother keeps rearranging the rare works of art she has collected. But their balance is upended when a young woman (Moses Ingram) arrives from the outside world.

The film is also a musical, with characters breaking into song. Recalling the performances at the centre of Oppenheimer’s documentary works, the musical numbers themselves are incorporated into The End as a way for the characters to express themselves, and process the grief and trauma stemming from the situation they are in. These aren’t trained singers, but the performances have a raw quality to them, and the often moving musical numbers deepen the emotional experience.

The set itself provides a sparse but striking backdrop, and watching it sort of feels like witnessing an Off-Broadway production waiting to be discovered. The film already feels like a stage musical with its limited locations, as the characters dance through the corridors of the bunker and against the barren backdrops of the salt mine. It’s all artificial, there is no sunlight, but this artificiality is also the point; their world is a stage and they are telling themselves a story. The conceit also allows Oppenheimer to pay tribute to the Old Hollywood musicals that were filmed on soundstages.

It’s a challenging work, and one that never settles into being a simple crowdpleaser. Still, there are moments of deep catharsis, as Oppenheimer grapples with the stories at the centre of every family, and the narratives people tell themselves in order to survive. The most absorbing quality of Oppenheimer’s film is how he lets us live with this family for two-and-a-half-hours. It’s a long running time, to be sure, but builds to a devastating final act.

MacKay guides us through, delivering an engaging performance as the wide-eyed young man trying to learn about the world through his obviously limited perspective and experience. Shannon embraces the eccentricities of the somewhat broken father, while Swinton adds a compelling neuroses to her portrayal of a mother still desperate to keep up appearances despite the world having ended. The film itself is a unique vision that surely won’t work for everyone, but I was moved by it throughout.

Film Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)