The End
A post-apocalyptic musical with Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon about an ultra-rich family who, after an environmental disaster, try to build as normal a life as possible in a luxurious bunker. The arrival of a stranger disrupts their routine.
Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, Mother, Father and Son are confined to their palace-like 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.
Best known for his groundbreaking documentary, The Act Of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer makes his fiction feature debut with this sombre, cautionary musical. The End is markedly different from other end-of-days stories. Not only does it offer characters who are haunted by the guilt of their role in it, but it also shows how easy it is to become part of a cloistered family if we’re too afraid to confront the real world.