Challenging as a moral experience Joshua Oppenheimer’s two documentaries “The Act of Killing” (2012) and “The Look of Silence” (2014) for Indonesia’s communist genocide perpetrators as he asks them to imagine themselves in the headspace of a person who killed during the 1960’s communist purge in Indonesia. Oppenheimer provokes them to relish and re-image the moments of the brutal killings, which in turn, these men rather enjoy to an absurd level. The outcomes of the act surpass the imaginary word.” For all the arrogance escalating to the inverse extent of stupidity, the ‘perpetrators-die’ team’s readiness to dummy up for the Harley Martinez-directed clops was different for all these reasons. What conflicted them with several men was overwhelming sense of power combined with woman like teenage psychology but I suppose common sense failed to participate in their presentations. Such attempts do not negate what has been witnessed before or cleanse this man or this intimate man’s feelings. The range of feelings exhibited by such men in succeeding preceding sense cannot be effective enough to hide the feelings or emotions carried out in the memoir dug up before. These representational issues were admittedly essential, but most people were intrigued about Oppenheimer’s radical idea.
His most recent movie called ‘The End‘ also has a similar radical idea. The End is a narrative feature about a family huddled in a luxurious bomb shelter because climate change has left a scorched earth that is practically uninhabitable. It is 20 years since they went inside that bunker. The huge disturbing underground caverns and tunnels that had been constructed and the whorls and grooves with the passage of time creating disturbing echoes are, in a way, I suppose, uncanny to some of the ‘reenactments’ in the Act of Killing. It is shocking how these are visions of the apocalypse. But the cast does not set foot outside, so they never catch a glimpse of the world outside. Till now it is a bit normal. But Oppenheimer has decided that The End is going to be a straightforward opera. “The End” has music by Schmidt and lyrics by Oppenheimer, and it starts and stops a lot and is somewhat redundant, the narration interspersed with various songs, including some self-talk, some which are duets, some of them a collective experience.
Some of the songs are even somewhat hearable due to differing proportions of chord progressions and rhythm intervals. One number may be termed ‘toe tapping’ Without a doubt the cast as a unit is not a singing troupe and the music overstretches their skills. Making ugly sounds is rather what Oppenheimer is aiming at. How well this works depends on how much risk can you accept (especially risk that has a poor success rate). There’s a movie called “Hundreds of Beavers”, which is on my Top 10 this year list, which feels like it is out of the ordinary, it’s a mix of silent and slapstick films where people can be seen dressed as animals running around in the snow. Sounds weird right? That’s because it is weird. But it’s a weirdness that overshadows so many other movies because it comes from a place that is deeply intimate. “Megalopolis” is an experiment. The results may not be good, but in a world where everyone is so afraid of trying anything different and thinks of the revenues first, “The End” is refreshing, to put it mildly.
In the constrained room, the nameless characters group together. Even respect comes to the fore here with formality. Anything less than ideal and the person would not have made it in this environment for twenty years. No one ever challenges other people’s fantasies. Father (Michael Shannon) used to be in the oil industry or such “before”, now he is focused on writing an autobiography (which no one would ever read) that seeks to glorify a person who was part of an industry which contributed towards the destruction of civilization. He had the resources to dig a hole and with his family get there.It was Dad who fortified the family space. Mother (Tilda Swinton) is a ballerina and still has dreams of dancing at the Bolshoi. Mother’s Friend (Bronagh Gallagher) worked as a chef so she does have some useful skills. The Doctor (Lennie James) takes care of safety measures (each of them being well trained), while also giving them some meds. And a butler (Tim McInnery) on standby with a tray of all sorts of refreshments. Father and Mother had a son (George MacKay) who was born within the confines of the bunker. He knew no past.
The set up is strikingly similar to that of “Blast from the Past”, the stern, formal father, the flighty snippety mother and the man boy arrested development of the son. The son occupies himself with building a model train set that includes the bits and pieces of America (goes as far as Hollywood sign) and aids his father in writing his autobiography (making up events to smoothen a few of his father’s past behaviors).
This is not exactly very homey, these people are odd. But at least they, are for the time being, in a kind of status quo of agreement, until one day they find a Girl (Moses Ingram) lying passed out on the ground near their doorway. This girl appears to have been through a lot while in the outside world. The family thinks about what to do with her. It’s been two decades without a pen name being used. (What happened to the “visitors” stub twenty years ago?) Son develops liking towards the Girl. Friends persuade to have her settled there. Mother is not as easy as the father. The Girl shifts her attention elsewhere and wonders how these odd people look at her. She tries her best to follow them because she knows that in case she is push out, she is going to die.
The Girl’s arrival on the scene immediately begins the process of peeling away the self-mythologizing of every particular member of the closed-up group. Everyone makes a home in their stories, even if they differ – but the riddles are strikingly similar and identical: retreating to the bunker required people to make unfulfilled decisions. It is an expedition that is even more monotonous because at the end one is not provided with much insight. It is to be anticipated. It is a bit odd to hear Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton sing such difficult internal tunes, but considering how devoted they were and how much faith they had in the experiment, their exhibition was indeed quite moving.
Remember, Asa Butterfield as “Jolene” was her first role in the serial “The Queen’s Gambit.” The first episode featured her well and she became prominent in that climactic episode as well. That was entirely because of what Ingram offers; a humor filled weary abrogation of the world but also she offers her pain her regrets and even her satisfaction of her biased perspective. She is in fact the heart and the conscience of the End.
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