The End

Where to start? More than two decades after the environmental collapse, an eccentric family flies the flag for the human race from deep within their salt mine bunker. A former industrialist (Michael Shannon) busies himself collaborating on a memoir with his son (George MacKay), a young man who knows no world beyond the bunker, and who may be the last of our kind… Meanwhile, the boy’s mother (Tilda Swinton) devotes herself to the preservation of the priceless art on their walls. But when a young Black woman (Moses Ingram) turns up out of the blue, the family’s carefully manicured secrets and lies crack open.

Director Joshua Oppenheimer made one of the most ambitious and acclaimed nonfiction films, The Act of Killing (2012), an account of the genocide in Indonesia in which he famously persuaded the killers to reenact their crimes on camera in gaudy cinematic vignettes. So it makes a certain sense that his first dramatic feature should be an apocalyptic drama that is also a melancholy musical (music by Josh Schmidt and Marius de Vries). It’s a big swing and initial reviews have been all over the map. Influenced by Jacques Demy’s work, it’s an unironic comedy about human fallibility, a kind of requiem for mankind, with moments of piercing beauty and sadness. It’s something of a miracle a movie like this can exist.

A mixture of domestic drama, apocalyptic fable and old-fashioned (and unironic) Hollywood musical, The End is an audacious and frequently enrapturing experience, with superb performances at its emotional heart.

Tim Grierson, Screen International

This film burrows into your head like it’s digging a doomsday behind your eyes.

David Ehrlich, Indiewire

A one-of-a-kind triumph… [Joshua Oppenheimer] continues to prove himself one of modern cinema’s true greats.

Nich Schager, Daily Beast