‘The End’ review: Tilda Swinton sings of delusion in apocalypse musical

Among the many most polarizing of the flicks proven on the 2024 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant was The Finish, a two-and-a-half-hour musical about humanity’s final days on Earth. 

Removed from the show-stopping spectacle of apocalyptic motion motion pictures like The Day After Tomorrow and even the razzmatazz of recent American film musicals like The Best Showman, director Joshua Oppenheimer embeds his viewers in a weird bunker a half-mile underground. There lives a rich industrialist household who has turned a blind eye to the dying world above them. That’s, till a survivor finds her approach to their doorstep. Will her sudden arrival upset their delicate psychological equilibrium? You guess.

What follows is actually not for everybody. Some critics I spoke with at TIFF complained that Oppenheimer’s musical is indulgent in its runtime, ugly in its relentless blue-gray palette, and even infuriating in its plotting. Others see the size, the dismal colours, and that irritating plot to be exactly the purpose, and embrace it as such. I’m within the latter camp, discovering this mournful and fanciful musical totally charming, jarringly humorous, and savagely profound. 

The Finish is doomsday prepping by the use of Downton Abbey.

Overlook what you assume you already know about bunkers. Deep, deep underground this household — whose names are by no means uttered — has constructed one thing not metallic and chilly however very old-money. Housed inside a cavernous salt mine with spiraling partitions and noisy air flow methods lies their dwelling away from apocalypse. It comprises crown molding, traditional artistic endeavors in gilded frames, a wood-paneled library, a grand eating room, an advanced mannequin practice set-up, an inexplicably infinite meals provide, and above all, pristine order right down to the paper-flower bouquets organized in delicate vases.

Right here, a 25-year-old man born within the bunker (George MacKay) has solely ever recognized his doting mom (Tilda Swinton), his chummy father (Michael Shanon), their devoted butler (Tim McInnerny), a cheeky chef (Bronagh Gallagher), and a dour physician (Lennie James). And regardless of presumably being the final individuals on Earth, they appear pleased sufficient, singing songs of gratitude for his or her circumstances. Properly, once they’re not conducting dramatic emergency drills, that’s. (You possibly can by no means be too cautious.)

The absurdity of their profound privilege is made all of the clearer when an above-ground survivor (Moses Ingram) stumbles upon them. Understandably, she is totally bewildered by all they possess whereas individuals on the floor scrape and starve. The political commentary solely will get extra overt as this younger Black lady hears the selective historical past the white son’s been taught, like how the oil business that made its fortune positively did not contribute to the local weather disaster that compelled the household underground as they left everybody else to burn! With a cocked eyebrow and a affected person tone, she not solely pushes again on this propaganda but in addition brings a dry humor to the family. 

The Finish provides a bleak view with winsome track and dance.

Whereas the son is in awe of the stranger, who speaks brazenly about her personal regrets and urges the others to do the identical, a uncooked pressure emerges between her and the mom, who would relatively the household’s skeletons keep neatly tucked away within the closet, thanks very a lot. Anxieties rise as a romance blooms between the son and the stranger. Fortunately for us, this results in a captivating duet and a dance quantity the place salt is kicked concerning the mines, which sit chilly and unimpressed by the pair’s ardour. Such power surrounded by the towering, uncaring setting echoes West Aspect Story. However with nowhere to flee however a dying world above, the place can this story go? 

Oppenheimer and co-writer Rasmus Heisterberg mire the viewers within the push-and-pull between the mom’s strategic repression and the stranger’s emotional outbursts. Reflecting her character’s emotional pressure, Swinton sings in a shrill falsetto, as if her mom may crack at any second. MacKay has a Broadway-bright efficiency type, whereas Ingram delivers soulful ballads of loss and hope. Shannon and McInnerny take part with vaguely vaudevillian numbers of faucet and banter, however the jocularity of this bit is undercut by the daddy cruelly reminding his butler buddy of his rank.

‘The Finish’ traps us in a ruthless loop, the place its core household dangers change or development, solely to disclaim it.

Trapped on this stunning bunker beneath unblinking blue gentle, they’re all specimens trapped beneath glass. Listed below are the final individuals on Earth, preserved however with out goal, objects in a museum of their very own making. Nonetheless, there are moments the place it appears these characters may simply get away — not of the bunker however from the gorgeous molds they’ve constructed to outlive within the guise of civility. A brutal verbal battle within the dad and mom’ rest room provides Shannon’s signature depth a spot to blow up. Swinton’s eyes, vivid and getting ready to tears, present the deep damage hiding behind this mom’s practiced smile. MacKay, with a frantic enthusiasm that trembles into nerve-rattling, appears typically getting ready to breaking this cycle of deranged self-mythologizing. However then Oppenheimer will quick-cut to a while later, when the drama has handed and routine has reasserted itself. The stress is bled out, and we bleed with it.

The Finish traps us in a ruthless loop, the place its core household dangers change or development, solely to disclaim it. Each those that favored and loathed the movie agree this cycle makes for a really irritating viewing expertise. However this feels intentional. As he did in his two Oscar–nominated documentaries, The Look of Silence and The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer is itching his means beneath our pores and skin with unimaginable artistry to reveal the revolting actuality of human capabilities — not simply what horrors we will do to one another, but in addition what we will ignore to keep up even a fragile sense of civility. 

In The Finish, even because the director presents us with individuals who have finished horrible issues, Oppenheimer does not lose empathy for them. Whereas their lies are ample, this unimaginable forged makes their ache really feel actual, so even despite our vexations or political beliefs, you may effectively ache for the mom who fears she’s shedding her son. And but — as absurd as this sounds — essentially the most devastating line in the entire film is about cake. Literal cake. 

Defying expectations of style, each musical and apocalypse narrative, The Finish is a problem thrown right down to audiences. The songs and dances should not glistening perfection, however often clunky or tinny. However this works as a result of every occasion is a mirrored image of that character, and the place they fall in need of their projection of perfection and happiness. The suffocatingly boring colours bleach the rosiness out of flushed cheeks, making all the things really feel vaguely lifeless, or possibly even embalmed. The movie’s plot results in a spot that’s effectively earned and but exhausting to bear. But it is thrilling to see a musical take so many dangers, particularly when film studios appear afraid to even promote {that a} film is a musical. (See trailers for Imply Ladies, Wonka, and Depraved, all of which disguise the precise singing.) Frankly, it was refreshing to be this stunned and emotionally wrecked by a brand new musical. 

All in all, The Finish is a gutsy movie that’s thrillingly unnerving, uncooked, and authentic. 

The Finish was reviewed out of its Canadian premiere on the 2024 Toronto Worldwide Movie Pageant. It opens in restricted launch Dec. 6.