Where do I even begin with Joshua Oppenheimer’s film The Act of Killing? I would like to classify it as an utter massacre. Oppenheimer went straight to the heart of the Indonesian killers from the mass murders of 1965 and 1966, and with the help of Christine Cynin and an undisclosed local filmmaker, narrated not only their views but also the events as ‘movies’. In fact, the genocidal men had the privilege of employing a variety of genres and film movements, from gangster to musical number styles of the golden era. Going back to the second instance, that takes us to Oppenheimer’s first narrative feature film, The End. However, let us not rush it, instead I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this is why the experience worked in The Act of Killing–this documentary gave us the photos of hatred, which was always cut and occasionally guilt in a foreign film. Evil never knows that it is evil. They think they are helping. This is how the normal architecture of the world’s monsters works, not how it’s a high-score pursuit of evil the stories try to sell.
After witnessing all that happens towards the end of The Act of Killing, it remains a great surprise that things can still get any worse, or that there exists a person’s point of view who dares to touch the issue of these horrifying actions and goes as far as to feel sick about them.
After this project he went on to make The Look of Silence, a documentary addressing the same events as The Act of Killing: Indonesian mass murders. He decided to take a hiatus from directing as, in his own words, ‘his niche was not commercially viable’ and turned to fiction (which The End definitely is not, but it is inspired by multiple problems that our society is facing). This is supposed to be a musical drama that depicts its anticipated consequences but focuses on an unknown family (unknown because Ross wants us to envision any wealthy family through them) that lives in an arid atomic shelter that they constructed for themselves. The rest of the people of the world have, for the most part, succumbed to the effects of climate changes and gasoline-induced flames. That an oil industry mogul’s family was sheltered in the first place can hardly be a matter of pure coincidence but allotment of social status and dominance.
This family is rich despite the fact that they are the main reason for the extinction of almost all human life on planet earth. as for those whom they chose to save to maintain in their shelter/cave life bunner: Doctor Lennie James, butler Tim Mcinnerny and a personal cook stripper agree1 (when she is claimed to be a friend) aka Bronagh Gallagher who literally is no better than a servant. Here, the wife also experiments with a total (Tilda Swinton) of a ‘tycoon’ and their already grown child with a man-child son(gorge MacKay),the other family members are known to have died in past years. The son simmers wilts behaving as if he has been trapped deep underground for ages and has pathetic memories which can be simply termed inacceptable thinking. Not the issue of the weak ins just that everyone is a family of dreaming ‘yes men’, and pretty obvious that every single one of them in some time has been lying to himself and thus creating so many lies in his life that are difficult to remember but what is the matter when literally everyone else is gone, various witnesses have a very different view of events. Handa is able to dream big dreams,especially in a brief period of global anarchy when there is an utopia. For the first time in quite possibly forever, a strangiswe looks up from the duvet and catches a fleeting glimpse of the bunker. The family was unsure of her presence and about what her reasons would be but then started acting with caution.
She develops an affection towards one of the sons of the family who develops feelings towards her as well which adds a twist to the family.
This movie has a particular theme that stands out even more, which is a demonstration of perpetual abandonment and the continuous attempt to run away from one’s mistakes and sin, unfortunately, we do not see that in The End. There is a lot of hope at the beginning, especially with a shot of the son’s toy train set which takes us to the first song of the film. First of all, the song is nice and the reason behind it is brilliant (characters speak in strange, jerky manner because they don’t really want to sound normal–this family is a wreck but when they sing its because they need to be heard and are calm in their own heads). The artwork has the ambition of wishing for a better world yet, because of the son’s confusion of the facts regarding history–the facts that were fed to him by his deceitful parents–it kind of ruins the whole art.
As the film moves forward, we get some reasons to understand the family’s survival underground for so many years but not every piece of information is ever given to us which allows us to fill in the blanks where needed. About an hour in, it seems to get going at last the bit about there being a stranger who is now fitted properly into the family, and everybody is starting to be made to come to terms with the history of mankind and the history of themselves.
It is roughly at the two hour mark when it starts to dawn on me that The End is beginning to eat itself, so to speak. It seems to be recycling the same ideas over and over again. A few people undergo change throughout the course of the narrative but only the son and the stranger seem to undergo that. That wouldn’t be a problem if the The End headed itself in a different direction but as it is, that is not the case. Instead, it chooses to settle for a common truth that was clear to us since the first act: being hardheaded is going to result in our demise and the hardheaded are the ones that never learn from their mistakes (which subsequently means they are most likely the harbinger of doom for the rest of us). As the movie approaches the last thirty minutes, the movie seriously starts to disintegrate as a narrative, with plot holes and sequences that merely serve the purpose of climax without having any impact on the overall story and a closing scene that presents an interesting concept (this family survives due to sheer determination but will never forgive themselves for the wrongs they did so are they alive in a sense or not) but one that fails to deliver in the end (though it has a beautiful symbolic shot: a suggestion that the beginning is the end which is the beginning again).
What is really funny is that, in the end, The End turns out to be a complete disaster, which is ironic because the very thing that was destroyed was the reason for the harmony that existed.
The filmmakers could have trimmed two and a half hours off their movie given that they were repeating the same thing over and over; a short could have sufficed. This is painful to come to terms with, since The End has such a compelling premise. Most of the song numbers are fantastic including Swinton’s character wishing she could talk to her deceased mother in one of the songs, or Shannon’s character almost accepting the blame before running away and going back to being what he has always been. Using the bunker as a sound stage is also smart, and the desolation of a post apocalypse setting is vintage Bob Fosse (raw and exposed). Even the awful dancing and singing is believable as it was done by the downright stupid rich who are so full of themselves they think they can do anything (so that you never analyze how they dance because it is logical in this universe). Every actor seemed to do a great job with their characters, and to even try to focus on who did the best would be inappropriate given how much talent there is in this production.
Although I appreciate sequences and concepts, The End doesn’t work as a whole much better than the separate elements because the overall vision is lost. There are even basic continuity faults, where the final lines of a sequence scene fail to lead anywhere, or cuts and transitions drop the ball of sequence linkage from one part to the next. Initially, I assumed this was deliberate to portray the other characters’ clumsiness, but by the third act it was quite obvious that the plot was not constructed well enough to be re assembled seamlessly, and that this was the best edit possible, given the footage that was available. Great scenes however ‘ certain scenes are fantastic, I even dare to claim there are a few, great scenes, ‘ the film doesn’t prepare the viewer often enough for The End that it becomes irritating. Most of all, I admire how the film looks like, sounds like, and feels like.
There are several issues that I must address, such as Oppenheimer’s inability to stay focused (not only does he stick with a single thought longer than he should, but he hammers it to death) and the film’s incompleteness itself (the fact that this is a musical, perhaps the worst genre to make editing gaffes into such is timing, dance and other things that are very technical).
What Oppenheimer may have failed to appreciate with The Act of Killing is that we are being given fresh perspectives through the musical numbers choreographed by the perpetrators.
The End attempts to inject some warmth and empathy into its characters, and as much as this is made with good intentions, there is no point in doing this if these people never really open up to us fully, nor if there is no drama that leads to something more convincing than “look, I told you bad people can never change”. I feel heartbroken because there was a lot that was promising right here, from the interesting premise and amazing cast to the promotion which suggested something far more intricate than what we get (the film even pushes us to appreciate nuances, as it compels you to go deeper); a film made by a director who has been able to narrate the truths of history through the mouths of some of the most dishonest, barbaric elements to have ever lived (mass murderers) lacks that much in depth. In the end, Oppenheimer and his characters regrettably have little to say, as though the orientation of their story was already sealed before the narrative began (which I guess, supports the premise of the movie). The End is not that bad considering what does work but then again it is a great shame because this was not even that good (or anywhere close to that) considering what could have been achieved with the project.
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