The End Joshua Oppenheimer (USA; 1924) Tilda Swinton, Signe Byrge Sorensen.
Viewed at Losing the Plot 7 June 2025-06-09
ok by me in America
everything fine in America
Joshua Oppenheimer’s ‘The End’ falls into a group of films that one way or another depict ‘typical American life’. Two films that come readily to mind are: Sam Woods’ ‘Our Town (1940), Lars von Trier’s ‘Dogville’ (2004).
These two movies are located in small American towns and examine socio- moral underbelly of their respective communities. ‘Our Town’ deploys the Thornton Wilder script to present a setting of wondrous harmony where the people dwell in neat tidy houses, on neat tidy streets, living in a manner in which they are good, kind and helpful towards each other. When a bad and cruel thing does happen, it turns out to have been just a nightmare, from which the dreamer awakens, and is able to continue her life in the actual dream world of small town USA. Von Trier’s movie, feels like retort to ‘Our Town’. Von Trier dispenses with sets representing neat frame houses in favour of chalked out areas marking out the streets places and homes of his small town. The machinations of the script involve the female protagonist Grace fleeing to the town, claiming to be escaping a vengeful criminal gang that’s after her. The citizens are initially helpful and agree to give Grace the refuge she seeks. But as Grace’s vulnerability increases, the plot thickens, the mask slips the knives come out: the true nature of the townsfolk is revealed. They are two faced, violent exploitative and amoral, out for themselves whatever the cost to others. Von Trier ends his movie with a violent spasm of revenge in which Grace settles her scores with the town, with everyone deservedly annihilated and only the dog spared.
Both ‘Our Town’ and ‘Dogville’ are productions in which the communities exist within hermetically sealed spaces. The scripts are both about the moral dynamics of living within the American dream which is also the characteristic feature of Oppenheimer’s ‘The End’.
The action take place at some point in the future after an environmental catastrophe. The setting is the prepared bolt hole of the McKays, an upper middle class American family. Bolt hole suggests a rough and ready survivalist structure. But the McKay’s residence looks like any expensively furnished well proportioned large upper West Side apartment, replete with art works, mainly paintings, and period furniture. It is a comfortable re-assuring statement of entitlement and wealth.
Shortly after opening shots of the master bedroom and the location of the apartment as existing inside some sort of salt mine, the movie reveals itself as a sort of musical or perhaps operetta. Cutting to the main living area, son McKay is building a finely detailed model of a pre-catastrophe townscape. Unexpectedly he breaks into song, soon mother McKay joins in, making the number a duet. The banality of lyrics and tune made me wonder if I could see out the film’s two hours plus advertised length.
Along with the family McKay, there are some other bodies: mum’s best friend and dad’s friend, a woman fugitive plus a butler and a doctor. The latter two’s presence is never explained; you have to presume that a wealthy upper middle class family such as the McKay’s don’t go anywhere without a butler and a personal physician. As scene follows scene each with its own model of normality and musical number, each with its own costumes and haircuts: it’s clear that ‘The End’ is a parody. Even after the climate catastrophe the American dream goes on.
There are up’s and down’s a death a birth but the McKays simply live in an endless Lerner and Low musical with a song to mark every moment of life’s rich tapestry Post catastrophe everything’s fine. Everything normal. Life’s a beach. There’s water in the taps (enough for the swimming pool) no rationing – endless food for the table, clothing medicines tobacco, whatever one needs, it’s on stream. The cup of plenty runneth over for these people. Post catastrophe? It’s just like our way of life today. We ride on the hog’s back, enjoying the unending wealth of the privileged Western World. We have everything. Like the McKay’s most of us don’t know where our food comes from – we eat; we don’t know where our water comes from – we wash and drink; we don’t know where our power comes from – we run our computers and appliances. We consume without understanding either where the stuff comes from or what it costs. I sit here tapping the keyboard of my computer with no idea how it works how it’s made or the cost of the earth’s finite resources expressed in its manufacture. The McKay’s are just like us – The McKay household in their putative post catastrophe scenario: we in our current planet-wide climate crisis situation.
But there is something lacking in Oppenheimer’s two hour parody. His characters are good representations of their upper middle class privileged types; mother neurotic and controlling, father calm directing, son insecure the black fugitive assimilated, they cruise through the songs and the drama, but are untouched. Oppenheimer’s script doesn’t go anywhere, it stays within the comfort of the parody. It shies off any sort of moral reckoning. Oppenheimer seems to have reached a level of self satisfaction with his script. There are two the final shots of ‘The End’. First, mother McKay and new mother McKay, stare out of their apartment at the salt mine in which their retreat is lodged; second, we see an image of what looks like it might be bacteria (or something?) squiggling across the frame. Representing ‘life’? Then cut to credits. ‘The End’s’ sign off feels incomplete amorphous and smug.
Oppenheimer lacks an ultimate cinematic vision for ‘The End’. He’s content to rock along in the comfort zone, parodying the contemporary spectacle of ‘life that goes on as usual’ which is characteristic of the West’s current sleep walk into the fire and water trial of global warming. Without a cinematic moral questioning from within the hermetically sealed unit, Oppenheimer’s film amounts to little more than a shaggy dog story for the initiated.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk
