Joshua Oppen­heimer: ​‘The End is an arte­fact of barbarism’

Sig­nalling his first for­ay into fic­tion film, Joshua Oppen­heimer dis­cuss­es the moral trans­fer­ence of doc­u­men­taries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence into the vibrant, lyri­cal dystopia of The End – with a claus­tro­pho­bic fam­i­ly por­trait that is far from a vision of harmony.

LWLies: In your pre­vi­ous doc­u­men­tary films, you chal­lenge accept­ed his­to­ries with sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence. To what extent does The End draw from these conclusions?

Oppen­heimer: I think that all three films are med­i­ta­tions on sto­ry­telling, on how we cre­ate our real­i­ty, and know our­selves through the sto­ries we tell…. Name­ly, the unique­ly human abil­i­ty to lie to our­selves, even if we know that we’re lying. Which is an aston­ish­ing feat real­ly, and I think the trag­ic flaw that will lead to our downfall.

The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence both empha­size a kind of con­ti­nu­ity with an apoc­a­lypse. A geno­cide takes place, and we are left with the lies and fan­tasies imposed by the per­pe­tra­tors. And I think The End is demand­ing an inter­ven­tion root­ed in self-reflec­tion and hon­esty. Apoc­a­lypse is not just the end of the world, it’s equal­ly a dis­til­la­tion of our destruc­tive behav­iour in the present because we’re already after the end – we’re already liv­ing in the bunker. And what is that bunker real­ly about? It’s about lies, and sto­ries, and self-decep­tion root­ed in shame, or an inabil­i­ty to face the truth. We give our­selves per­mis­sion to fill a hole – we place our­selves; we re-inscribe, we re-enforce the walls.

Mir­rors are a huge part of the film. And espe­cial­ly in Til­da Swinton’s solo per­for­mance, where she’s speak­ing direct­ly to her reflection.

Mir­rors are a motif also in The Act of Killing – I’m always inter­est­ed in mir­rors as a place where we ought to see our­selves and don’t. Tilda’s song is titled ​‘The Mir­ror’, and she’s dis­tinct­ly not see­ing what’s in the mir­ror. She doesn’t see her­self; she starts by see­ing a stranger, and makes up excus­es which fall apart one-by-one under their own weight. The mir­ror reminds us of the recog­ni­tion that is demand­ed by the sit­u­a­tion, but that the character’s unable to achieve. It speaks to how I think of my film­mak­ing as a whole – as a mir­ror, not a win­dow onto a real­i­ty, or a sto­ry that is inter­est­ing, but an invi­ta­tion to look at ourselves.

Some­thing I love about the film is the cos­tumes – design is so impor­tant to each char­ac­ter specifically.

Cos­tumes are the only thing between you and your naked reflec­tion…. these char­ac­ters are con­stant­ly per­form­ing for each oth­er and for them­selves. There was a real­ly excit­ing dis­cus­sion with Til­da who was able to gain us access to Chanel’s whole archive of cos­tumes and clothes. And with Frauke Firl, the cos­tume design­er. Father has a kind of stud­ied casu­al­ness with these knit sweaters, tweeds – a kind of Jim­my Stew­art qual­i­ty, with a roil­ing self-hatred under­neath. Moth­er has tight necks, as if the clothes which she puts on are almost stran­gling her­self, and cuts her hair in the same way as Son, as a rit­u­al they do together. 

Colour isn’t sim­ply a visu­al­ly beau­ti­ful part of the film, it func­tions effec­tive­ly as its own character.

Colour was a key­way of mak­ing this place seduc­tive. Both the colour and the paint­ings on the wall, cathect a lot of hope and desire. We knew the bunker shouldn’t be a claus­tro­pho­bic affair, like Hitler’s in Down­fall, it should be a whole world. We had sky­lights which sim­u­lat­ed day­light, chang­ing the colour tem­per­a­ture of the space. But if the light and the music are telling you the same thing, you have the rep­e­ti­tion that is at the core of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. I loathe sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty – I think it’s always escapist, and always part of self-deception.

The whole film is con­struct­ed around this idea of bour­geois art, and has a lux­u­ri­ous con­trol. Do you think afflu­ence inher­ent­ly car­ries with it moral questioning?

I think that afflu­ence is root­ed in fetishiza­tion. We chose Amer­i­can lumin­ist paint­ings, to serve as win­dows onto a lost nature that nev­er real­ly exist­ed. But the key to Amer­i­can lumin­ism is that you don’t see the brush­strokes. That obscures not just the labour of mak­ing and imag­in­ing them, but also the labour in the destruc­tion of the earth. 

The paint­ings of peo­ple hang­ing on the wall upstage them at times, star­ing at us like wit­ness­es from a time where there was still mean­ing, indit­ing us. This is the last human fam­i­ly, the char­ac­ters are name­less because they are each and every one of us. And those art­works, like any fetish of afflu­ence, as Wal­ter Ben­jamin says, ​“always an arte­fact of bar­barism.” And so is our film – The End is also an arte­fact of barbarism.