FILM
LIFE IN A HOLE ‘The End’ might be the most perplexing movie of 2024 BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
I
t’s been 25 years since the world ended. Some sort of climate catastrophe is what did it, and the only survivors we know of are Father (Michael Shannon), Mother (Tilda Swinton), Son (George MacKay), their Doctor (Lennie James), Butler (Tim McInnerny) and Friend (Bronagh Gallagher). They survive by living in an expansive bunker below the surface — Father was a successful oil and gas man — where they while away the days recreating and revising the past through art, memoir and dioramas. They also sing. Yes, this post-apocalyptic narrative of regret and hidden truths is a full-blown musical shot in anamorphic widescreen. The End wouldn’t have looked too out of place had it come out in the mid1960s from one of the major Hollywood studios — save for the whole end-ofthe-world business. But considering that it’s directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, whose two previous documentaries were intimate and bleak explorations of the Indonesian mass killings of 196566, The End might be one of the most curious movies of 2024.
They all go on singing in The End. Courtesy: Neon
BOULDER WEEKLY
That’s not to say The End is a good movie, though it has its charms. It is fascinating in ways. Take the instance that disrupts the survivor’s monotonous day-to-day: the arrival of Girl (Moses Ingram). Twenty-five years ago, Father and Mother had to make some tough decisions about who could and who couldn’t live in the bunker while the rest of the world burned. Now a total stranger has wandered into their midst, and they roll out the red carpet. That dredges up a lot of painful memories, which the characters continue to repress, even in the throes of song. I don’t know what to make of The End, but I do know that at least a halfdozen times a year, this paper covers the restoration and re-release of an overlooked or forgotten gem from cinema’s past. For a variety of reasons, those movies were dismissed at the time but have now been reclaimed as a singular work. Maybe even a masterpiece. Will that fate behoove The End’s oddball approach to its subject matter in 20-50 years? Anything is possible. Though, with a runtime of two and a half hours and only a couple of strong singing voices to stand on, I suspect that The End will be beloved more for its ambition than its success.
ON SCREEN: The End opens in limited release Dec. 13.
FORGONE CONCLUSION Paul Schrader is in fine form in ‘Oh, Canada’ BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
Richard Gere in Oh, Canada. Courtesy: Kino Lorber
L
eo Fife, an acclaimed Canadian documentarian, is rapidly withering away from cancer. With his few remaining breaths, he would like to tell his story. It’s a story no one else fully knows — maybe not even Leo himself. “You can’t do this,” his wife and artistic partner, Emma (Uma Thurman), pleads with the filmmakers capturing Leo’s final testament. “The drugs are confusing him.” “It’s what he wants,” Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) implores. He is a student of Leo’s and will stop at nothing to get his movie, even if that means exploiting his subject in his most vulnerable moments. But what neither Malcolm nor Emma realizes is that Leo wants to be as vulnerable as his mind will allow. Maybe it’s the drugs; maybe it’s the cancer. Hell, maybe it’s the lifetime of mistruths confusing him. To complicate matters, Leo is moving unstuck through his past — sometimes as the younger Leo, played by Jacob Elordi, sometimes as the older Leo, played by Richard Gere — and not getting any closer to the truth. What is Leo’s grand original sin? The one thing he must atone for before he passes? That’s between him and filmmaker Paul Schrader. The things Leo wants to expose seem to already be exposed. Maybe he told everyone already and forgot. Maybe others suspected it. Maybe, as we see in one of the movie’s
final scenes, Leo is a terrible liar and harbors no real secrets. Can you demythologize if the myth never formed in the first place? Schrader is similar. The movies he makes and the stories he tells are as warts-and-all as you can get. He leaves no stone unturned and offers no real excuses for his behaviors and opinions. That might make some wonder what dirty truths Schrader is still hiding. For those familiar with his films, you get the sense there is nothing left to hide, only the fixation of confession. Oh, Canada, adapted from Russell Banks’ novel Foregone, fits beautifully within Schrader’s oeuvre. As both a screenwriter and a director, Schrader has always explored the seedy underbelly of artistic compulsion and the horrors the man in the room must bury to move forward. Everyone either is or can be corrupted. And here, the corruption happens with such banality you might wonder what all the fuss is about in the first place. That there’s even a fuss at all is what makes Oh, Canada one of the year’s best.
ON SCREEN: Oh, Canada opens in limited release Dec. 13. DECEMBER 12, 2024
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