Imitation of Life: Joshua Oppenheimer’s the End

What is the color of the lies we tell ourselves? In Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical The End (2024), untruths take on an oceanic blue, like calm waters on a spring day. Elsewhere, the storm blusters on, but here, its trails of death and destruction never appear onscreen. What we see is an unnamed household of six, seemingly content and cozily sequestered within a stylish, secure bunker that protects them from the wrath of nature. When another survivor of the climate catastrophe intrudes upon their idyllic cocoon, their cushy existence begins to tear at the seams. Beneath velvety layers of fabulation, a pin suddenly pricks.

At first glance, Oppenheimer’s fiction debut—his first feature in a decade—might seem like a surprising departure from previous works. But The End reprises many of the thematic motifs found in his Oscar®-nominated documentaries The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), both of which confront the mass murders carried out in Indonesia from 1965 to 1966. Plumbing extraordinary depths of denial, these three films probe the slipperiness of memory, the evasion of guilt, and violence inflicted in the name of public good. The End might be set in a dystopian future, but its foundations are firmly rooted within real-world sociopolitical contexts. Now persona non grata in Indonesia, Oppenheimer subtly weaves the country’s history into the backstory of the American family at the center of his latest film. An oil tycoon, Michael Shannon’s patriarch amasses his colossal fortune from drilling fields in Indonesia and other regions in the Global South. His son, played by George MacKay, retroactively documents the exploits of the older man for a memoir. On paper, they whitewash the building of an energy empire into acts of economic benevolence. Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton’s fragile matriarch takes charge of the housekeeping with the help of her friend (Bronagh Gallagher), the butler (Lennie James), and the family doctor (Tim McInnerny).

When it comes to masking the sordid origins of the family wealth, as well as Father’s complicity in climate collapse, writing is not the only strategy. Interior decor also functions as a form of narrative control. Luminous paintings from renowned masters such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet are hung in every room. As the bunker is windowless, the frames of these priceless artworks serve as apertures to an imagined realm. One can glimpse majestic mountains, fields of flowers, and elegant women at rest—a line of vision flush with deceptive calm. It’s as if the earth never burned. Nevertheless, this tranquility needs perpetual adjustment and reconfiguration. For Mother, a slight crack on the wall can spell impending doom; she is frequently seen rearranging bunches of paper flowers and repositioning the precious canvases. The latent anxiety that underlines her actions hints at the fragility of the family’s picture-perfect image, as projected through these curated interiors. In the same way that the inside of the bunker demands regular beauty treatments, the souls of its inmates require a constant dosage of soothing lies. 

This fetishization of objects in The End recalls the similarly lavish yet eerie interiors found in The Act of Killing (2012). In an unsettling scene from the latter, Rahmat Shah, one of the paramilitary leaders responsible for the mass killings of suspected communists, leads the camera through his luxurious house. An avid collector of expensive crystal figurines, the man gently shows off his treasure trove with the same hands that have committed murderous atrocities. Haji Anif, another perpetrator, furnishes his home with framed signatures of famous stars, acquired for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He even erects a zoo-like quarter, where taxidermied animals of rare breeds pose as if alive, their carcasses flaunted as trophies of conquest. Decorated with antlers and horns of various kinds, Father’s office in The End channels a comparably macabre energy. In this study, under the glassy gaze of a mounted stuffed vulture, he shrugs off photographic records of deaths on his oilfields as mere fake news. Behind lurid displays of wealth lies a sickening carelessness toward human life as well as the environment.

When sealed within hermetic interiors, music becomes a conduit for falsehoods. In classic musicals, sequences that break into song often signal a sense of release. Through singing, characters reveal inner thoughts and emotions that cannot be expressed in standard dialogue. The spectacle of such scenes also works to disrupt the tempo of the central narrative, momentarily making space for fantasy and escape. In the case of The End, however, so-called normal life is already a performance. As such, many of the musical interludes serve not as a reprieve, but as a continuation of make believe. When all of the characters are side by side, their songs reinforce a collective delusion of harmony and bliss. Framed in a group composition, they sing of camaraderie, resilience, and a bright future ahead. The lyrics insist on “we” as a refrain, yet the characters elide the fact that this “we” implies not togetherness but exclusion. How many were left behind for them to harmonize these melodies? This critical oblivion is already present in the very first lines sung in the film. Toiling over his extensive model of notable events in American history, Son softly sings of “A fire, a tree, a horse / And a house, an Indian, of course,” as he adds the finishing touches to the artificial landscape. To him, “an Indian” bears no difference to the other plastic props. The sufferings of Indigenous people are reduced to mere set dressing, a hollowed-out signifier of the American frontier.

Music emerges as spiritual opium for a guilty conscience in The Act of Killing too. In an early scene, Anwar Congo, a notorious henchman in the mass killings, reenacts his method of swift execution with gruesome glee. Then, on the same site where he strangled his victims to death, Congo starts dancing and singing, crediting music with helping him forget his inhuman deeds. It is significant that The Act of Killing, in which perpetrators restage their past crimes through a multitude of genres, chooses musical reenactments as its opening and closing scenes. One segment imagines Congo being forgiven by the dead, who even award him a medal and thank him for sending them to their end. In both The End and The Act of Killing, music—and cinema itself—is implicated in the rewriting of personal and historical truths.

For the household members of The End, moments of genuine expression come only when they find themselves outside of their azure cage. Built underground in a salt mine—another marker of environmental extraction—the bunker leads to deep tunnels that are as white as snow. The rugged surfaces of these caverns provide a stark visual contrast to the manicured living quarters. Geological scars expose the secret turmoil suppressed by some of the characters, whose inner wounds are pried open by the guilt and trauma openly expressed by Girl (Moses Ingram), the newly joined survivor. Compared to indoor group songs of little movement, musical sequences that transition between inside and outside spaces see the characters burst freely into energetic dance. As the melody swells, the characters scale salt mounts, tumble down the slopes, and roll around on the ground. Still, this sense of catharsis is only illusory. There is no longer any real “outside,” thanks to industrialists like Father. The tunnels are but another tomb. 

Keen ears will note that, despite the chain of events that unravels throughout The End, its first and last songs share the same melodic structure. The reverie lingers, a loop of false affirmation and contentment sustained by the sound and vision of domestic comfort. For a family so used to the lullaby of luxury, to rouse themselves from slumber is perhaps an impossible task. For the rest of us, the choice remains whether to be lulled by the music, or to set the record straight.