Even in an awards season uncommonly full of musicals, The End demands your attention. The first narrative feature from acclaimed documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer, the film is set after an unspecified climate disaster has rendered Earth uninhabitable. It follows a handful of wealthy survivors and the arrestingly catchy tunes they sing after the world has ended.
Michael Shannon plays Father, an energy scion who contributed to the climate apocalypse. He and Tilda Swinton’s Mother have spent the last 25 years riding out the aftermath in an elaborate bunker with their son (George MacKay) and a trio of hired help. Much like his character, Shannon has had a lot of time to think about this terrible predicament…and sing, and dance through it.
When Girl (Moses Ingram) is discovered in the salt mine outside of their bunker, the family at the center of The End slowly begins to unravel, and layers are peeled back in each musical number. For Shannon’s Father, this results in a timely examination of how people at the top of the world are “in some ways the basest of us all.”
Vanity Fair: To my knowledge, this is the first proper musical role you’ve had.
Michael Shannon: In the cinema, yeah. I did a miniseries called George and Tammy, where I played George Jones, and I sing quite a bit in that.
What got you interested in The End as your first movie musical?
Because Josh [Oppenheimer] asked me to do it. I’m not really looking around for anything in particular. The wind tends to blow it to my feet, and then I get up and do it. I wasn’t afraid of it. I love music. I frankly prefer music to film and television. So I was overjoyed that I was gonna get the opportunity to bring something that I am so passionate about into my work.
Were you interested in what Joshua Oppenheimer was cooking for his first narrative film?
Well, frankly, I wasn’t familiar with Josh’s work before I met him. I was one of the few people that hadn’t seen The Act of Killing or The Look of Silence, so when I met him I had a blank slate, really. I just really enjoyed talking to him. But I saw his films after I signed on, and was just flabbergasted by them. I thought they were monumental works. I felt very lucky to be in his company.
Your character in this movie, Father, is actively rewriting his history when we meet him, which kind of made me wonder: Do you think this guy is putting on a performance the whole film? Is he ever genuine?
I think the main thing he’s trying to do is create a world for his son, and a reality for his son. He just wants to make sure that before he dies. And if Son’s able to somehow carry on, that this will be the legend that he carries with him.
I think that was the initial impulse for Father to start writing his story. And then, I think somewhere along the way he started to enjoy revising his own history, in order to absolve his own feelings of guilt. But I think that it is all about Son.
It’s interesting to see through song or dance how each member of the family in this bunker spirals out with the arrival of Moses Ingram’s Girl. We get to learn more about what they haven’t been talking about for all this time.
And who amongst us? We’re not in bunkers underground, but there’s a lot of people that are stuck in their ways and are repeating certain scenarios over and over again, or not seeking to evolve or change. Or they want everything else to change to suit them. But they’re not interested in changing to help anybody else. It’s one of the reasons I think we find ourselves in the predicament that we’re in today.
Which is kind of the tragedy of Father, right? He’s sort of aware of the terrible things he did, and he’s trying to make up for it via George MacKay’s Son. There’s that scene where Father gives Son a watch for Girl—
It’s his language. Objects, goods, giving people things. He says that’s how you let people know you love them: you give them things. And when he was above ground, that was how he operated. There’s no doubt in my mind that there are certain parts of him that are stunted, which is fascinating. ‘Cause he is an authority figure, a powerful figure. He was very successful at what he did.
There are so many people in our society that are hugely successful, but in a lot of ways are very immature or unevolved. It’s unfortunate that is allowed to happen—you would hope that people that reach these posts, the job description would be like, “be evolved.” But oftentimes they’re not. They’re in some ways the basest of us all.
Right. The foibles and shortcomings of characters like Father are so understandable, but because of their position and power, they’re so much more consequential. It can mess with your head a little bit, right?
Well, we’re all interconnected, and we keep trying to avoid that fact or deny that fact or create borders and boundaries. It’s like the little kid that doesn’t want any of the food on their plate to touch any of the other food on their plate. And it’s like, no, you gotta mix the peas in with the mashed potatoes. That’s the only way we’re gonna get by. You can’t just keep putting up walls and hope that whatever’s happening in the world at large doesn’t affect you because you’ve created some little bunker for yourself, you know?
Does the film land differently for you now, after the election?
It certainly lends it an urgency, you know? The prevailing sentiment among people that are not in favor of Donald Trump seems to be, “Well, we’ll give him four years, and he’ll destroy everything. And then people will realize that they made a mistake, and then we’ll move on.” The problem is we don’t really have four years to spare. We don’t even have a year to spare. There’s no more time. [Climate change] has been a problem long before Trump even got elected the first time. This has been a problem since, I think, in the 60s they realized this was happening. The time is now to do something about it. It doesn’t help when you hear, “Drill, baby drill!”
I’ve never in my life seen anything like it. The evidence is so prevalent. It’s so clear. It’s really astonishing. I used to get angry about it, because I’ve been very worried about this subject for a very long time, since I was a teenager. Now I’m 50 and it’s still the same. Now I’m just mystified. I just find it mystifying.
I’ve got a younger brother in his early 20s, and there’s definitely a sense of nihilism there.
Because this younger generation doesn’t feel taken care of. And they don’t feel taken care of on a lot of levels, not just because of climate change. They don’t feel like anybody gives a shit, you know?
I have a younger friend of mine who just turned 30. And they’re worried. They’re like, I don’t even see the point in having a family or getting married. Nobody’s looking out for us. You hear about how the rates of suicide are going up amongst young people—not that I ever think that that’s the answer. And I hope anybody who ever feels that way will please get help, ’cause it’s not the answer. But it’s hard to argue with young people feeling like the older generation just doesn’t give a shit. It’s really hard to argue against that.
It seems like The End is joining several recent movies in addressing this issue, like last year’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
But what I appreciate about The End—and one of the reasons I think it’s a musical—is that it’s not just about climate change. It’s not just a downer, you know? It’s very satisfying on a sensorial level. The music’s exquisitely beautiful, and Moses Ingram just sings like an angel. Tilda is giving what I think is one of the most fascinating, beautiful performances of her career. Everyone, to a person, is giving really rich, detailed performances. It’s stunning to look at.
So it’s not like just, you know, going to the theater and getting pounded over the head with a sledgehammer for a couple of hours. There’s other things in it.
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