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.
