December 20, 2024

By Marriska Fernandes

Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical The End, which he directed and co-wrote, took many by surprise with its unlikely approach to genre. After his groundbreaking documentary The Act of Killing, in which mass murderers re-enacted their crimes through dramatic sequences and musical numbers,  he makes his fiction debut with this sombre musical about a family in denial at the end of the world. It stars Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, George MacKay, and Moses Ingram.

Music is used as a way to ward off the horror of these characters’ pasts while perpetuating the denial they continue to live in. For Oppenheimer, it was a tool he’s often employed in his work. “Singing inherently wards off horror, and I think in this case, in The End, the songs are the hope that gets these characters out of bed in the morning,” he said in an interview. “They’re the melodies that allow them to live with themselves, and they’re luminous.”

The End marks the director’s narrative fiction debut and he admits that this felt like a new career for him. “It was like going back to school, starting a whole new career from the other films, and it’s amazing to now have all of these options available to me. I loved making a musical,” Oppenheimer said.

Below, Oppenheimer talks tool, technique, and theory as he dissects bringing to life his dramatic debut.

The apocalypse and a musical are certainly an unlikely combination. Why the desire to explore this through this medium?

The scenario and the scenario of a family surviving alone in a luxurious bunker came to me through a documentary I was researching. But the idea that I would explore that in a musical, and, indeed, that the musical would be called The End, came as a sudden epiphany. The fact that the musical is central to the film’s conception in that, because it’s a musical, it’s about storytelling. Through the songs, the family struggles to convince themselves that they’ve made the right choices in life. They struggle to justify their actions to ease their regrets, they obscure their past from themselves and, in that sense, they obscure themselves from themselves. That, of course, is the through line that connects this film with my earlier work about  guilt, shame, denial, and silence, but also about storytelling and how we make the world and ourselves through the stories we tell. In this case, the labour of storytelling comes through the desperate act of singing, of making up and clinging to excuses through song and somehow being able to convince oneself of those excuses if the music is beautiful and convincing enough.

Like your previous work, music is used here as a way to ward off the horror – why is that a tool you feel important to tell this story?

That’s right. I’m happy you say that, because it’s sort of obviously that way in The Act of Killing, but in The Look of Silence there are a couple moments where characters sing. Funny enough, when we were editing this film, we were singing the songs all the time. And after we finished editing, there’s a piano in the office, and one of the editors sat down to play one of the songs. He’s a gifted pianist, and we were all singing the songs. Nils, the editor and one of my dearest friends, said, “We don’t sing enough together, Josh,” and I said, “Oh, that’s a lovely thing to say. Let’s sing more.” And he said, “but why?” Because you can’t sing if you’re not happy. Of course, the characters sing out of desperation.

What’s beautiful about making a musical, is that the cast, even if it’s terrifying, even if they’re stepping way out of their comfort zone and making themselves radiantly vulnerable by singing, they can’t be unhappy when they sing, so there’s a beautiful vibe on set when there’s singing going on, but singing inherently wards off horror.  In The End, the songs are the hope that gets these characters out of bed in the morning. They’re the melodies that allow them to live with themselves, and they’re luminous.

I think Joshua Schmidt has composed one of the most beautiful scores for a musical ever written. The songs are luminous, and the melodies and harmonies are infectious, and they are lies, for the most part. They are the stories and the lies they tell themselves so they can live with themselves, and while they are deeply held, the truth breaks through in the silences between the verses, between the first bridge and chorus when they run. Towards the end when a melody starts to feel like a lie and they hit a wall of silence, they’re hitting a wall of truth. So, unlike in a golden age musical where the characters just sing their deepest truths, there’s a truth beyond thought, beyond words, the indigestible meaninglessness.

I didn’t realize it was live singing until I was reading about it, and so I was wondering about that decision to do that.

I was opposed to it at first because I had seen some live-song musicals, where I felt that you’re sort of watching a concert rather than a dramatic performance. Because, of course, the voice is an instrument and when someone is singing live, they’re playing that instrument and I had doubts about live singing, also because one of the key inspirations was Umbrellas of Cherbourg, where none of the singing is live. I think the live singing became an inevitability that emerged from the writing of the musical, as Joshua Schmidt and I worked on songs.

As Joshua Schmidt worked with me to write the songs, it helped me think about lyric writing, because this was my first foray into writing lyrics. He insisted that I always find the moment where doubt became impossible to cover up with words and then what would they think? Then they’re propelled in the song. The only way they could hold their world together is by singing. So what would they sing in that moment? And I would write these little prose poems, inner monologues for the characters, or dialogs where there were two characters singing together. That would inspire the music.

That process was so rigorous, insisting that every lyric was dramatically acted. Add the fact that the songs emerged from moments of crisis for the characters, and it became evident that we couldn’t re-record these songs. The way I work with actors is to encourage them to give me these gifts of authentic moments. I recognize instantly [that the actors had to sing live] because [the songs] are not what I pre-visualized, not what I expected. That line with the fact that the song emerged from these moments of crisis, made me realize, “Oh, you can’t have Tilda pre-record, right?” The song at the mirror, the one she sings in the back end. It has to emerge freely and unfettered from her inner life. Everything is live.

What was the biggest learning curve when it came to doing a narrative?

I think actually, one thing that’s really different between fiction and non-fiction filmmaking is blocking in fiction: where you know the turning point of the scene, more or less, is going to be, and you have to stage the scene with the photographer and the actors to emphasize that. And in documentary, you don’t know where the turning point is going to be. So that was a completely new skill. And then learning to let go once you have something that’s been so careful. A musical in particular, has to be so carefully pre-visualized, because unlike with a stage musical, where you can open it out of town and move the songs around and cut songs and rewrite songs, you can’t do that once you’ve shot a film. So therefore, having something so exquisitely pre-visualized, but then trusting the actors to take the leap into free fall and let them surprise me, that took me a couple weeks of shooting to start to understand that. I’m sure I was quite frustrated for the first two weeks.

I’ve never seen Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon like this – what did you want from them and in what ways did they surprise you?

Tilda’s choices are always surprising. Michael Shannon offers this range of interpretations and I remember sometimes he would look at me pleading for guidance: “Which one do you want?” And I would say, “All of these are valid, and you know they are, and I will discover in the editing. So just keep exploring.” So while he would sometimes ask for more direction, he gave me this exquisite range. They all were amazing. I think I had the most luminously brilliant artists on the planet.

Tell me about the salt mines – your research took you to the survival bunkers in Kansas?

Yes, that’s right, and then I had the idea that it would become overly claustrophobic if we shot in a real bunker, or in a set that was designed to look like a real bunker. The windowless rooms would feel claustrophobic if there was nothing else. I really wanted the film to have exteriors, so I came to the idea of kind of a termite colony as a model for the space where there’s a large subterranean structure, where some of the caverns have been finished into rooms or into a home but they open on the tunnels and other caverns that haven’t been finished. Then we thought, “What could serve as that?” We realized it would be some kind of a mine. And of course, coal mines are dangerous and cramped, but salt mines are stable. Then I went on a hunt for the world’s most beautiful salt mine and the guiding aesthetic principle was American Romanticism. The Romantic paintings opening the film [by artists of the] Hudson Valley School led us to find some 15 salt mines. But then I found this one under Petralia Soprana in Sicily, and we shot for weeks.

Did any part of this experience set new goals for you as a filmmaker?

This was like a new career for me. It was like going back to school starting a whole new career from the other films. It’s amazing to now have all of these options available to me. I loved making a musical. I would love to make another musical. I would love to work to explore improvisation in the writing process, but I have so many ideas now. I just need a moment.

The End is now playing in theatres