Peter Charney’s review published on Letterboxd:
The End exemplifies the audacious spirit necessary for original movie musicals to be recognized as serious art, while also offering depth and intentionality in its relationship to the musical form, beyond mere spectacle. While Joshua Oppenheimer’s somewhat abstract vision of apocalyptic complicity often feels more like a piece of fine art than a traditional narrative film, his underground salt mine bunker of delusion brims with thought-provoking philosophical ideas, which ultimately distill into a poignant exploration of repressed guilt disguised as the survival of art, history, and family.
What truly distinguishes The End is its rare approach to the "song world." In this film, songs are not merely an organic, heightened expression of the characters' emotions; instead, they function as an external force imposed upon them—inescapable yet oddly desirable, as they help maintain the characters' carefully curated facade of bliss afforded by their wealth and power. There is no need for additional manufactured artifice—a key ingredient to make a musical "sing"—because the concept is already built on that very artifice. While the songs are performed with sincerity, many carry a subtle undercurrent of irony or an unspoken awareness of their absurdity. Some lean into the fantastical idealism often associated with the genre (as in "A Wonderful Gift" and "Our Future is Bright"), while others intentionally undermine it, leaving song sequences in which a character appears emotionally trapped within the illusion (as in Girl's "Forever"). This tension is especially pronounced in the film's second half, as cracks in a character's moral armor lead to confessions that can only emerge through the vulnerability of entering the "song world" (such as Mother’s "The Mirror" and Father’s "The Big Blue Sky"). At times, these unplanned expressions of truth escalate into the physical catharsis of dance, even blurring the line between the chamber musical set in a salt mine and the movie musicals soundstage.
On a technical level, The End is a sonic marvel that stands out among this year’s movie musicals for its auditory clarity. Its lush, symphonic orchestrations pair beautifully with idiosyncratic lyrics and simple yet evocative melodies that develop into recurring musical motifs—a technique in musicals composition that is too often forgotten. The result is a unique blend of musical, visual, and thematic elements that mostly sustains engagement, despite the film’s deliberately eccentric tone, ambiguous world-building, and the challenge it may pose for viewers to remain invested across its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. While The End occasionally dips into moments of tedium, its ideas and melodies linger long after the credits roll, embedding its—albeit cryptic—hooks into our subconscious in a way that only a musical dares to attempt and is ever capable of achieving.
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