Film “The End” – “The End”: Where would we be without your cakes?

After the musical “Emilia Perez” about a gangster boss that has made a gender adaptation, and the musical psychodrama “Folie à deux” about the toxic relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn, an end-time musical with Tilda Swinton comes into the cinema for a change. It is about a privileged family who lives underground in a luxurious bunker, while the world is on fire above it. What the father, an oil magnate, wears a great complicity. Turned by the two-time Oscar-nominated director Joshua Oppenheimer, who exposed the cruel mindset of former Indonesian death squadron members in 2012 with his stirring documentary “The Act of Killing” and in turn illuminated the perspective of the victims of this mass murder in 2016.

So sounds exciting at first – and the musical with its penchant for artificial, for claim, the ideal genre seems.

Saving as many fellow human beings as possible, the stinky couple, on the other hand, did not occur.

You immediately think of Douglas Rushkoff’s book “Survival of the Richest”, in which he describes how super -rich prefer to build luxury bunkers for the time after the apocalypse instead of looking for solutions to prevent the end of the world.

The film may explain how such ignorants and greedy people actually feel in an emergency in their bunker palaces. Oppenheimer’s answer to this is: On the surface, they are perverse. Like all other family members, nameless father, who is played by Michael Shannon, even has a fake biography made by his naive son. In it, this dad is praised for humanity, which unfortunately will never read this because it is almost extinct. “The climate has changed again and again since time immemorial and it will still change when we no longer exist,” is one of the lies that the son brings on paper to the delight of his father.

The son, played by the star from “1917”, George McKay, was now born in a salt mine around 20 and in this palace -like bunker – and accordingly. For example, he is making a historically incorrect diorama of America with dedication. The son never saw the light of the sun – “I will never see the sky,” he sings melancholy in one of the unfortunately disappointing musical numbers of this film. What is a little surprised because one of the composers, Marius de Vries, who produced the soundtrack of “Moulin Rouge” and “La La Land”, was part of the party, among other things. However, none of the numbers in which the protagonists sing their thoughts and conversations remains. In places, the songs even sound more like ambitious bathtub singing – Tilda Swinton’s strengths in particular are clearly somewhere else.

It may be intentional, you could argue – after all, the life of these super denial is full of false tones. So the mother, embodied by co-producer Swinton, allegedly danced in the Bolschoi ballet and now spends most of her time to recover the walls of her family bunker manically with famous paintings. On the other hand, they could obviously bring them to safety to save as many fellow human beings as possible, but apparently did not occur to the stinky couple. Only a friend who can cook and bake well was gracious to the bleak ark. The crazy family constantly calls for her: “Where would we be without her cakes?” – Not only that saws on the nerves of the audience. In addition, the oil magnate also let its butler (Tim Mcinnerny) and a doctor (Lennie James) in the bunker.

It happens tormently in the first part of the 148 -minute film, you care for your rituals, go swimming in the pool every day and do fire exercises in between. Otherwise you stay optimistic and talk to be a happy and good person.

But then the family discovers a young woman near her refuge, played by Moses Ingram (“Queen’s Gambit”), who obviously survived. The father reluctantly allows you to accept her.

As it has to come, the only fertile people fall in love with each other far and wide. Soon they sing a very passable duet in the oppressive salt mines – although they also have no trained singing voices.

After all, some movement comes into the whole, the arrival of the survivors forces the son to question his parents and their survival for the first time. For decades, suppressed feelings of guilt break. The horrific facade gets cracks – but for these people, any insight comes too late – in contrast to us, which we could still stop the downfall of civilization. Oh, one wished that this ambitious musical would not be as terribly boring and grueling as the lives of these people, who are nothing left than lying to all artificial eternity.

“The End”: Denmark, Germany, Ireland, etc., directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. With: Joshua Oppenheimer, Tilda Swinton, Signe Byrge. 148 minutes. Start: 27.3.