Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is Unintentionally About Hollywood and a Collapsing Empire

I was most looking forward to Oppenheimer’s The End because I was hoping it would take the broader, not the one-sided, view of humanity’s end. But to do that, and to create any worthwhile art now, it has to be free from dogmatic ideology.

The End might be the perfect movie for the insulated world of the cultural elites only it doesn’t know it. It perfectly reflects what happened to our once-great culture. Closed off from the chaotic, unpredictable world outside of it, it reaches creative stagnation and personal frustration. It is a place where all free expression, truth, and innovation go to die.

Oppenheimer was almost there. This would have been a brilliant work of satire on par with The Crucible or episodes of the Twilight Zone, but he isn’t there because he is very much in it. The blame must be laid at the feet of the Republicans who drilled for oil, created fossil fuels, and took us and the planet to the brink of extinction. On the Right, they call it “the climate hoax,” but on the Left, it is the biggest and most important crisis they face.

They don’t seem to draw the connection that every tweet warms the planet. Private jets warm the planet. Their new iPhone, their expensive clothes, and even their hybrid cars must suck energy from somewhere. Corporations merely virtue signal to them to make it easier for them to spend money. But the footprint is the footprint. The world population is nearly 9 billion.

No amount of hybrid cars or plastic straws is going to turn things around.  Even if America continues to be a utopia of renewables and a lower carbon footprint, we can’t do much about the rest of the world who have practical problems and would kill for access for the kind of energy on demand we have here.

In The End, a family has been locked away in a survival bunker. They’re extremely wealthy, have all of the great works of art, the best chef, and their son but all the money in the world can’t buy the best things in life: the natural world, freedom, our wonderful human experience. That message comes through but the film is hard to sit through because it makes its point early on but then fills the rest of it with singing that doesn’t work. I would have put up with all of it if Oppenheimer had made a satirical metaphor movie like Dr. Strangelove. But he didn’t. It is very much a message movie — a message we already know because that’s all we get across all cultural and political institutions.

Oppenheimer’s heart is in the right place. He intended to make this film as a warning. But all I could think while watching it was that this is what we did when we built our utopia prior to 2016. We really did believe we had solved all of the problems of humanity and as long as we all complied – paper straws, hybrid cars, recycling, proper language, inclusivity, psych meds for anxiety we could have a perfect world.

But in walling ourselves off like that, we weren’t prepared when a faction of this country decided they wanted representation, too. Once we were threatened, I believe, we became The End. Paranoid, lifeless, isolated, insulated.

When I saw the ad for this film, 2073, I thought, great! A film about our apocalyptic future. Maybe it will be good and not a one-sided screed that fails to see the bigger picture, but alas, I was wrong:

Inside the bunker, everyone is drooling for yet another movie about their eternal obsession – the one guy who stands between them and maintaining their utopia.  The Apprentice is all of their phantasmagoria in one movie.  Because life is so lifeless inside the fear bunker, Trump seems to offer them their only excitement, their release valve. Anyone who supports Trump can be called “fat” and “ugly.” They can slut-shame them. Nothing is off-limits because if anyone supports their supervillain, they deserve what they get.

They believe one more movie that screams at audiences about how BAD Trump is will change the minds of the millions who are supporting him or are desperate enough for representation to stand by a guy the government can’t stop indicting, suing, and ultimately jailing.

They somehow believe that one more bad piece of information about Trump is going to change minds. They believe if everyone watches this movie they’ll think, “they were SO right!”

When utopias become threatened, they must find ways to purge the threats. If they can only put Trump in jail, maybe they can feel safe. If only they can convert all Trump supporters maybe they’ll have their utopia back.

But they miss the point. It’s never been about Trump. It’s always been about them: the fear bunker, the family in The End. That’s what being on the Left is like now: suffocating, miserable, fearful, and full of anxiety.

Artists once spoke truth to power, but how do they do that when they are not only aligned with power but passionately support it? We don’t have rebellious, challenging writers who do very well in Hollywood now. Every so often, one manages to somehow squeeze through, like BJ Novak’s Vengeance, Mike White’s White Lotus, or Safdie and Fielder’s The Curse.  But they really just flirt with the line. They can’t cross it completely. And so we must build culture outside of the fear bunker accidentally depicted in Oppenheimer’s film.

Art and government fused as one hasn’t happened since the 1950s. The madness as depicted in the film Oppenheimer. Back then, what the government feared (Communism) had to be reflected in movies. The same is true now. But if Jack Smith and Hillary Clinton attended the Telluride Film Festival, and if the Obamas have a deal with Netflix and Netflix sponsoring the Telluride Film Festival, it is all one big organism no one dares defy.  What just happened to me could happen to anyone and so here we are: inside Oppenheimer’s fear bunker. A different Oppenheimer for a different age.