At two and a half very staid hours, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a punishing picture.
Photo: Felix Dickinson/Neon/Everett Collection
The central concept of The End is so outlandish that one wants to embrace the movie sight unseen. The film, directed by the award-winning documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer, is a post-apocalyptic musical about the comfortable life of an absurdly wealthy family, as they chill in their well-stocked climate bunker after their own actions have wiped out humanity. The father and the mother are played by two of modern cinema’s most supremely talented eccentrics, Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton. Their grown son is played by 1917’s George MacKay, a 32-year-old actor whose pale, boyish looks still…
