Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” revolves around an apocalyptic scenario in which a wealthy family lives in an underground bunker two decades after the apparent end of the world. It is not the only 2024 film that explores a catastrophic global crisis. Guy Maddin and Johnson brothers’ “Rumours” also highlighted the hypocrisy of those with wealth and power misusing it while being complacent about their minor noble deeds. Oppenheimer’s film uses the absence of an exterior world to highlight certain aspects of this family’s interior lives. Instead of calling its characters by their names, the writer refers to them by their roles in the context of their isolated setting. So, in this story, they are just friends, doctors, mothers, or girls – depending on what they represent in their isolated world.
Spoilers Ahead
The End (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
“The End” follows a wealthy family living in an underground luxurious home after the Earth around them appears to have been destroyed. It is directed by Joshua Oppenheimer from a screenplay he co-wrote with Danish screenwriter Rasmus Heisterberg. Oppenheimer is known for his critically acclaimed documentaries, such as “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence.”
What is the story behind Tilda Swinton’s ‘The End’?
“The End” revolves around a wealthy family two decades after the Earth around them has been destroyed due to their actions. They live in a salt mine that was turned into a luxurious underground bunker. The family includes a Mother (Tilda Swinton), a Father (Michael Shannon), and a Son (George MacKay). They live with a Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), their Doctor (Lennie James), and their Butler (Tim McInnerny). Unlike others, the Son has never seen the outside world. He has learned everything about the past from his parents and from the books he is offered to read.
The father provides a one-sided picture of his past trades and how they impacted the outside world. Neither the mother nor others oppose the father’s point of view. They all instill fear of the outside world into the son and expect him to see others as nothing but threats. For the same reason, they often conduct elaborate drill sessions to teach him how to protect the family. Due to this indoctrination, the son has an almost childlike innocence, which peeks its head fairly often through his behavior. He is made to write a book about his father’s past ventures, work on paintings, and build miniature cities, which wouldn’t taint the family’s self-perception. It all changes when a stranger suddenly arrives in the mine.
How does the stranger impact the family dynamic?
The family continues living their daily routine oblivious to the carnage outside, until a stranger arrives in their mine. This stranger is a young woman (Moses Ingram), who survives the fire season (a phenomenon in this apocalyptic world) but her family can’t. Despite all that she has been through, the Mother doesn’t want her to stay with them. She wants to hold on to their pledge, not to allow anyone inside. So, the family tries to get rid of the Girl by any possible means. They tie her and decide to throw her outside. Nonetheless, she fights for her life and evades their attack.
The family finally accepts the girl’s presence in their family and lets her stay in a spare storage room. They also invite her to dine with them. The family recounts Mother’s glorious past as a ballerina, who once performed in Bolshoi. Mother zones out, thinking about the times she experienced art more viscerally. Now, she is left with the crumbs from her past, trying to sustain her creative mind by teaching her son how to paint.
Gradually, things start to change as the Girl makes the Son look at the world differently than what he was told. He learns about the cruelties many people have faced and grows a humanist bone. Overall, Girl makes Son see a different way of leading a life. It doesn’t bode well with Mother, who was used to the structure she made her son adhere to for two decades. So, she suggests to Father that Girl has a hidden agenda. She tries to make her family doubt Girl’s intentions, but it rarely works in her favor. Meanwhile, Son gets infatuated with Girl, who is the only stranger he has encountered in his existence without his parents’ intervention.
The End (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Mother notices Son’s growing inclination toward the Girl and her free-spirited behavior. So, Mother suddenly starts showing her grounded side by gardening. Later, she joins the family as they dress up and put on a small play. After they entertain each other, Girl gets emotional thinking of her mother’s struggle to survive. As she pours her heart out, Mother makes every attempt to stop her. The Girl expects the Mother to acknowledge a sense of shared pain since both their families have suffered in their absence.
The Girl admits to her survivor’s guilt but Mother refuses to do so. Mother curbs Girl’s attempts to be honest and vulnerable and refuses to confront her guilt. So, Son confronts her for her behavior. Upon reflection, Mother gets honest with Father about her unfulfilled desires. She had to leave everyone she loved behind while moving into the bunker. Instead of accepting his fault for her depression, he forces her to hide her true emotions for the ‘greater good of the family.’ So, she is left to grieve on her own and to be a co-conspirator in his charade.
Does the family accept the Girl as a part of them?
The Girl makes Father realize the other side of his work. So, he is forced to confront the true nature of the result of his actions, which puts him in an existential crisis. He romanticizes his pain while others labor to maintain the sanctity of his elaborate ruse. Son starts waking up to the truth of his family’s cruel past and turns against his parents. The parents cannot bear being considered the only ones at fault. So, Mother exposes the truth about Friend to make her fall in Son’s eyes. Unlike what Son was told, Friend had left her addict son to die in the world outside.
The Friend was an addict herself and not an ideal parent. Instead of addressing her fault in her son’s downfall, she left him behind and hid the true nature of her past from Son. Unable to bear the burden of truth, Friend passes away shortly after the confrontation. After her death, Son briefly considers it to be the Girl’s fault since she kept making him consider alternate possibilities of truth. Eventually, they leave these matters behind and become a couple. Son and Girl have a baby of their own and join the family for dinner.
In the film’s final moments, the family sings a song commemorating their togetherness and advocating for their mutual love. While doing so, they also address how they kept their distance from the outside world and trusted no one else. So, the ending reveals the crudeness of their relationship with the world. While their ignorance keeps them in a bubble of blissful safety and security, they continue living with an underlying burden of pain for the ones who suffered outside.
The End (2024) Movie Themes Analysed:
The evident themes in “The End” are of course the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands while the rest keep suffering. The inhuman wealth disparity leads to a sense of monstrous obliviousness among the mighty few. Besides that, the film also examines some crucial themes that are behind the current rise of fascism across the globe.
The Nature of Knowledge
“The End” explores the nature of knowledge mainly through the Son’s character. Whatever he knows is based on what he has been taught or told. He doesn’t even realize he has been carefully indoctrinated until someone else opens him up to the truth. The Girl reveals another side of the world that he wasn’t privy to due to the lack of real-life experiences or concealment of wider resources of knowledge. She also makes him realize how knowledge is not enough without a noble interpretation.
He thinks time management and productivity are just the driving forces for a brighter future. She makes him realize how these things can be weaponized against people. Through her, he realizes the struggle of survival for those who didn’t grow up sheltered and privileged like him. So, knowledge means nothing if it is half-baked or filtered through a biased perspective of those who hold power. Besides, factual knowledge without realizing its real-life implications is immaterial and immoral.
Guilt and Repression
Although the family in “The End” is a bunch of despicable folks, they share a common thread of guilt. For the Girl, the guilt is realized and expressed. The Mother has a similar survivor’s guilt but she represses it for the future of the family and silently suffers. She represents the pressure of a mother in a patriarchal world. The Friend keeps her guilt-ridden past hidden so as not to be overwhelmed by the cruelties of her deeds. While the Son starts waking up to the truth of their existence, the Father refuses to feel guilty. Instead, he remains complacent and overwhelmed by his god complex.
