The End (2024)

Joshua Oppenheimer: The End (DK/SE/IE/DE/IT/GB 2024). The world has ended. Mother (Tilda Swinton) and Father (Michael Shannon) mount a masquerade in their underground lair.

AA: Joshua Oppenheimer's The End is about the age of denial. We know that there is no future in the way we live now, yet go on living like before.

Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, United States 2024

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer

Cinematographer: Mikhail Krichman – 2.35:1

Starring: Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher

Costume design: Frauke Firl. Tilda Swinton had access to the entire Chanel archive.

Art credits: The End belongs to films where an extensive list of art is displayed and credited. The credit list flashes by so fast that it is impossible to read. Included are:

– C. W. Eckersberg (1783-1853): Studie af skyer over Øresund / Study of Clouds over the Sound (1826). Oil on canvas. 322 x 441 mm. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

– Vilhelm Hammershøi: Kvinde set fra ryggen / Woman Seen from the Back (1888). Oil on canvas. 635 x 555 mm. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

– American luminist landscape painters Albert Bierstadt and Martin Johnson Heade. "We chose American luminist paintings, to serve as windows onto a lost nature that never really existed. But the key to American luminism is that you don’t see the brushstrokes." (Oppenheimer).

– The French Impressionists Monet, Morisot and Renoir.

Composers: Marius De Vries, Josh Schmidt

Lyrics: Joshua Oppenheimer, turning prose poems into songs in collaboration with the composer Josh Schmidt

148 min

    Languages: English, French

    Distributor: Danish Film Institute, Making Movies, Scandinavian Film Distribution, subtitles: partly English

    World premiere: 31 Aug 2024 Telluride.

    Love & Anarchy 38th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)

    Viewed at Savoy-teatteri, Thu 25.9.2025 at 17.45–20.13 

Telluride Film Festival 2024: Jason Silverman: "In Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic story, a wealthy family, living underground in a palatial bunker, goes through its daily motions. Mother (Tilda Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon) and their 20-year-old son (George MacKay)—who has never seen the outside world—read, redecorate the rooms, swim laps and keep up appearances, even with no one looking. They’ve survived the destruction of the civilized world—a crime in which Father played a key role—and have been able to avoid contemplating the damage they’ve done. And then, a stranger arrives. How can they express their feelings, hidden underground? They sing. What? Oppenheimer (whose films ACT OF KILLING and LOOK OF SILENCE revolutionized the documentary form) has created a Golden Age musical for an unthinkable era, a time not so different from ours. Modest and extravagant, a miniature and a megalith, THE END is a considered masterpiece. –JS (Ireland-Germany-Italy-Sweden-Denmark-UK, 2024, 148m) In person: Joshua Oppenheimer, Signe Byrge Sørensen, George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Michael Shannon"

Otto Kylmälä (HIFF 2025): "Tilda Swinton dazzles in Joshua Oppenheimer’s satirical anti-musical, which follows a family that has fled the post-apocalyptic world into a luxury bunker."

"25 years after the environment collapsed, a mother, father and son are living in isolation in a luxury bunker in the bowels of a salt mine, clinging to hope and the remains of a normal life by repetitive routines. All things run their course until a young woman enters the family’s closed world."

"Instead of feeling claustrophobic, the bunker home is adorned with valuable paintings and elegant decorative objects. The impressionist masterpieces, however, are not windows to the outside world, but distorted snapshots, like the worldview of the people who have been living underground for decades. To stay sane, the inhabitants of the bunker have been recycling the same stories and lies, but the arrival of the woman reveals the tensions simmering beneath the surface, and the family’s seemingly harmonious life gradually begins to unravel."

"Having drawn on genres and styles in his award-winning documentaries The Act of Killing (R&A 2013) and The Look of Silence (R&A 2014), Oppenheimer now uses the musical to create satirical layers to his post-apocalyptic survival story. The escapist genre is an ingenious way to depict people trying to keep up appearances and live on the edge of a devastated world as if nothing has happened. The world burns and “all is well.“" Otto Kylmälä (translated by Moritz Müller)

"Tilda Swinton säväyttää Joshua Oppenheimerin satiirisessa antimusikaalissa, joka seuraa post-apokalyptista maailmaa luksusbunkkeriin karannutta perhettä."

"25 vuotta ympäristön romahtamisen jälkeen äiti (Tilda Swinton), isä (Michael Shannon) ja poika (George MacKay) elävät eristyksissä ylellisessä bunkkerissa suolakaivoksen uumenissa pitäen kiinni toivosta ja normaalin elämän rippeistä toistuvien rutiinien avulla. Kaikki rullaa omalla painollaan, kunnes heidän suljettuun maailmaansa saapuu nuori nainen (Moses Ingram)."

"Seurueen bunkkeri ei tunnu klaustrofobiselta, vaan tyylikkäästi sisustetun kodin seiniä koristavat arvotaulut ja elegantit koriste-esineet. Impressionismin mestariteokset eivät kuitenkaan ole ikkunoita ulkomaailmaan, vaan vääristyneitä kuvajaisia, kuten vuosikymmeniä maan alla asuneiden ihmisten maailmankuvakin. Pysyäkseen järjissään bunkkerin asukkaat ovat kierrättäneet samoja tarinoita ja valheita, mutta naisen saapuminen paljastaa pinnan alla kytevät jännitteet, ja perheen näennäisen harmoninen elämä alkaa vähitellen hajota."

"Palkituissa dokumenttielokuvissaan The Act of Killing (R&A 2013) ja The Look of Silence (R&A 2014) tyylittelyä ja genre-elementtejä hyödyntänyt Joshua Oppenheimer käyttää musikaalia luomaan satiirisia tasoja post-apokalyptiseen selviytymistarinaansa. Eskapistinen lajityyppi on nerokas tapa kuvata ihmisiä, jotka yrittävät ylläpitää kulisseja ja elää tuhoutuneen maailman reunalla kuin mitään ei olisi tapahtunut. Maailma palaa ja ”kaikki on hyvin”." Otto Kylmälä

IMDb: "Joshua Oppenheimer described the film as an exploration of whether we as human beings can come to a place where our guilt is too much to recover from our pasts."

Wikipedia definition: "an apocalyptic musical film". 

Wikipedia lists 16 films sharing the title The End.

Opening motto:

The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.

– from T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets (1943) [East Coker, 1940]

AA: Joshua Oppenheimer has compared his movie with Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (Der Untergang, DE/AT/IT 2004) about the last days of Hitler. He has also said that we already live in the bunker.

It's the story of the last family on Earth, 25 years after the end of the world. They live in a luxury hideaway in an abandoned saltmine. It resembles a James Bond villain's lair. The walls are lined with the greatest art. They have a cook (Bronagh Gallagher), a butler (Tim McInnerny) and a doctor (Lennie James) who keeps them medicated with sleeping pills and antidepressants. 

There is a swimming pool, a greenhouse and an aquarium. The 20 year old son (George MacKay) was born here and has never been elsewhere. He builds a diorama about the Western Civilization under the Hollywood sign. He has all the time in the world. Guided by the doctor they conduct emergency rehearsals.

We don't know their names, but the mother (Tilda Swinton) is a former Bolshoi ballerina and the father (Michael Shannon) used to be one of the greatest oil tycoons. The grand piano should be tuned. The vintage wine has lost its flavour. The son is ghostwriting his father's memoirs in which he explains away his responsibility in the apocalypse. 

They carry Magnum firearms and do target practice in case an intruder appears. Exactly that happens, when a young Black girl (Moses Ingram) is found lying exhausted in the tunnel. According to the family protocol, she should be expelled, but she does not give up, and is invited to join.

In her presence everything needs an explanation, and repressed traumata come to the fore. They are too much for the cook, who requests a little pill from the doctor and is found dead in the morning. On the other hand, the Son, who has never seen a woman of his own age before, develops tender feelings with the Girl. In the finale there is a celebration. The Mother and the Father are now proud grandparents.

Like Emilia Pérez and Armand, The End belongs to the peculiar "back to the musical" trend in contemporary cinema. It belongs also to an appealing tradition of film directors as songwriters. 

It is stimulating to view The End and even more stimulating to read Oppenheimer's interviews. Immediately after the film I do not know what to think about it. The vision is powerful and Oppenheimer's mission is the greatest. Musical eccentricity does not save it from being boring. It is more stimulating afterwards. Like medicine: not good, but good for us.

In all his films Oppenheimer wants to expose our inherent tendency to lie. Like on the eve of the First World War we are sleepwalkers just when we should wake up. Our tendency to lie now leads to final destruction. Our greatest hope is in children and the young people. But nobody can remain complacent. Unless we fight, we are complicit. This is no time to be divisive. Everybody must be welcome.