The Enddirector Joshua Oppenheimer reflects on the dangerous qualities of hope and how his new approach to the musical carries on the themes at the core of his documentaries likeThe Act of Killing. After directing some of the most critically acclaimed documentaries of the 21st century likeThe Act of KillingandThe Look of Silence,The Endproves to be a compelling exploration of what people go through while trying to deny the things they’ve done. Set within a bunker after the end of the world,The Endcenters around survivors dealing with a newfound guest.
This forces the group as a whole to evaluate the choices they made to survive the collapse of the world and the hard decisions they made to ensure their future at the cost of others.The Endis a harrowing and powerful film, that uses musical tropes as a means of delving into the guilts, furies, and hopes of the cast. During an interview withScreenRant, Joshua Oppenheimer discussed the common threads between his films, the unexpected joys of collaboration on his first feature-length narrative film, and the contradictions of hope.
The Lie Of Hope At The Heart Of The End
“That means that the songs are these breakdowns at their most extreme, captured on film…”
Screen Rant: So much of this film is rooted in an almost theatrical presentation.The Endis very much a handful of locations, a small cast of characters, and a very specific story. The fact that it’sa movie musicalin that kind of space is even more telling as a result. Why did you feel that was the right way to approachThe End?
Joshua Oppenheimer: I think that the fact that it’s a musical is what makes it a film about delusion, about denial, about self deception. I think the film deals with a form of despair which goes around in the sheep’s clothing of hope. It’s a false hope. This is a false hope, that somehow, magically, tomorrow will be better than today, and everything will work out for the best. That’s the same hope that propels Wile E. Coyote as he runs off the edge of the cliff and thinks he can just keep going until some higher consciousness makes him realize that maybe he doesn’t feel the ground beneath his feet anymore, at which point, whoosh and crash.
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Joshua Oppenheimer: That false hope is the source, it’s the film’s entire form. The characters sing out of that. When the characters sing, crisis has caused it or what truth has caused it? The character sing when the truth has caused their delusions to unravel and they start desperately looking for new melodies, new ditties, little new anthems to convince themselves that all is well in their world. That means that the songs are these breakdowns at their most extreme, captured on film, that demands intimacy and presence and bearing witness to these characters who are frail.
These characters are vulnerable and human as they reach desperately for bits of flotsam and jetsam following the shipwreck of their illusions. It’s about trying to cobble together illusions. As we’re watching human beings struggling to rebuild their illusions, you can’t obviously do that and go into a musical fantasy sequence at the same time. We’re watching illusions being built, rather than escaping into an illusion.
What The End Shares With The Act Of Killing
“When the narrative fails, when the dramatization fails, when they fall silent and are helpless, that’s when truth breaks through.”
Screen Rant: That idea of self-delusion being presented through an artistic outlet like singing makes me think of your previous documentaryThe Act of Killing, where you gave these people who had committed atrocities the chance to see their actions through the lens of filmmaking. As a creative, what do you find so compelling and interesting about those lies we tell ourselves?
Joshua Oppenheimer: Well, there’s a friction. I think the friction between the stories we tell from our uniquely human ability to model the world in language and the unaccountable mystery and chaos and horror and beauty…. all of these nouns fail, because what I’m describing is beyond language. Somehow, the nothingness slash everythingness of the universe, becoming conscious of itself, the friction between those two things is the location of being. That sounds awfully philosophical, but filmmaking is too hard, too laborious, too extensive, too time consuming to be worth it, unless you’re looking to really feel and understand what the nature of being is.
I think that all these films,The Act of Silence,The Look of Silence, andThe End, are about our meditations on storytelling. It’s how we tell stories to make the world in such a way that we can live with it more easily. But the unintended consequence of that is that we end up lying about it, and the lies have terrible consequences of their own, which then leads us to double down on those lies in a kind of downward vicious cycle.
That connection is there betweenThe EndandThe Act of Killing, which you pointed out, but I think maybe the more salient connection is that the musical numbers are toThe Endwhat the dramatizations are toThe Act of Killing. In the latter, it’s people [like Anwar Congo] dramatizing their memories of genocide. He has this crisis of doubt that comes as he tries to present his version of the events to me. He realizes that how he really sees himself is not at all how he’s presenting himself, and that crack he tries to paper over with another dramatization.
Those dramatizations are never just presented as kind of glorious films. It’s the cracks that we’re really looking for. It’s the same here. I always said, the characters singing are these sort of luminously beautiful lies as they sort of reach for and then momentary find well-being in these soaring melodies. Those melodies contain not the truth, but lies. And it’s only when they hit the wall of truth and stop singing that the truth screams through. That’s in the silence, when they hit a wall and they stop singing and they fall silent. That’s where the truth screams through, and that’s the same as in theAct of Killing. When the narrative fails, when the dramatization fails, when they fall silent and are helpless, that’s when truth breaks through.
The Biggest Surprise Of The End Was The Collaboration Behind The Scenes
“I wouldn’t say the film is not how I imagined it. It is just a deeper version of it.”
Screen Rant: What would you say was the biggest surprise you encountered during production onThe End?
Joshua Oppenheimer: One of the things I loved about this process, which was different from making the documentaries, was the sense of total openness between myself and my collaborators. Not just principal crew, like my cinematographer Mikhail Krichman or my composer Joshua Schmidt. The choreographers, production designer, but also, of course the cast. I could start a rehearsal, and then ultimately we could bring that forward into the shooting by saying, ‘for me, this is what this scene is really about. But they know what it’s like to actually be this character.
What is the truth of that in your experience?’ Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s something deeper or that I can’t even imagine, or that’s adjacent to what I’m thinking is the core of this scene. Watching artists of this kind of impossible brilliance mine their minds, their souls, their experience, their craft, and then surprise me with gifts, with ways of understanding these moments that are deep… even though this is fiction and everything is being created by us, I could therefore lean back and start to relax and invite them to bring me gifts, to let me do the same thing I do when I sit behind that monitor, do the same thing that I do when I make a documentary, which is to look for authenticity.
I got to look for those moments that I instantly recognize as true because they’re not what I expect, and that becomes a means of plumbing the depths of a vision. That was a beautiful discovery that I allowed me to probably move away from the kind of inevitable beginner’s mistake of over-directing. What was beautiful about it was that it got me thinking about vision, because it’s not that the film is different from how I imagined it. It’s that vision at each stage in the process only takes me so far. It gives me the direction to take the next step. Like, I’ll continue in that way. And eventually the whole mountain range and all its detail becomes clear all the way through the editing and even the post-production. I wouldn’t say the film is not how I imagined it. It is just a deeper version of it. It is deeper than anything I could have imagined, but it is absolutely a manifestation of the vision that initiated the journey.
More About The End (2024)
Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, Mother, Father and Son are confined to their palatial bunker, where they struggle to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to the rituals of daily life—until the arrival of a stranger, Girl, upends their happy routine. Son, a naïve twenty-something who has never seen the outside world, is fascinated by the newcomer, and suddenly the delicate bonds of blind optimism that have held this wealthy clan together begin to fray. As tensions rise, their seemingly idyllic existence starts to crumble, with long-repressed feelings of remorse and resentment threatening to destroy the family’s delicate balance. But their reckoning with difficult truths also points to a different way forward, one based on acceptance, love, and a capacity for change.
The End
Cast
A wealthy family lives in isolation within a luxurious bunker, unaware of the world beyond their walls. When a mysterious girl arrives at their doorstep, her presence threatens to unravel the delicate balance of their secluded existence, leading to a tense exploration of trust, survival, and buried secrets.
