Tag: George MacKay

What Happened During The Beginning To Justify The End? Only Joshua Oppenheimer’s Strange Musical Knows.

The end is nigh in an art house style film about a family who survived the apocalypse who think singing out their feelings is the best way to keep on going. But some fantasies are just that, and could this movie be a parable?

The End (2024) Movie PosterJoshua Oppenheimer is better known for The Act of Killing, an extremely difficult film to view, and with his latest, The End, it’s just as hard. What I offer is more of a commentary with light review elements. I was curious about this musical because of the post-apocalyptic setting. Also, I always want to look at the next movie Tilda Swinton appears in. She’s well known for playing unusual characters, and I loved her performance in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise. 

This movie has the feel of being set in an art history museum. That is because the paintings Swinton’s character paints encompass a wide range of artistic movements and like those masters before her, they are to express her feelings of anger, pain and happiness. I noticed, and this attention to detail is great because it’s her role I want to decipher the most. If I ever get a chance, I’ll have to ask this director and cinematographer Mikhail Krichmanis if that character design was their intention.

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You’re Not Gonna Trip the Light, Captain Fantastic

captain_fantastic_ver3By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

People who have followed the Canadian Court case of David and Collet Stephans, an Alberta couple accused of not giving their 19 month-old son the necessary medical treatment before his death as a result of bacterial meningitis, will know The couple believed in alternative medicine. Viewers may find an eerie semblance to what the story Captain Fantastic offers.

The real life case made the news early this year when the sentence was finally passed and fortunately, the fictional take travels down a different route. Ben (excellently played by Viggo Mortensen) and Leslie Cash (Trin Miller) are believers of a different social norm. They want their children to know how to work with the natural world like the First Nations people (or Druids in Europe) than be slaves to an order. Whether that be by nationality or spiritual point of view, the narrative is thought-provoking.

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