EVERYTHING IN THE END - CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL
There is something about wild coastlines and the end of days. About 12 years ago I was involved in a survey asking Cambridge people where they would go if the Earth’s days were about to be numbered. The overwhelming answer was – the north Norfolk coast.
In Mylissa Fitzsimmons’ hauntingly beautiful film, for Brancaster read east of Reykjavik. In her deliberately slow-paced story, the world is about to die – we are not told why except it is the catastrophic result of human folly. We meet Paulo, a young Portuguese man wandering along the windswept craggy beaches of Iceland. He has a scrappy old map and he is in pursuit of something, a last-ditch effort to find – what, who?
Set against a majestic landscape of mountains, stormy seas and the dying of the light, Paulo meets several locals on his (and their) journey to oblivion. The director’s palette is almost monochrome except for warm washes of electric light within the isolated houses of a small Icelandic township. Though apocalyptic, this is no sci-fi thriller, but an intense study of human nature. Using super close ups, we almost see inside the minds of those who know the end is coming for all. But rather than terror, there is a kind of wonderful stillness, a reckoning. There is warmth, comradeship – tiny gestures in the touch of a hand, the caress of a cheek, a simple hug.
Hugo De Sousa is stunningly magnetic as the peripatetic Paulo. Though he can’t speak Icelandic (and there are no subtitles to help us out either) language become unnecessary. There is a truly touching scene when Paulo encounters a small boy playing solo football on a desolate stretch of coastal moorland. A simple act of kicking a ball with a child and later meeting his widowed mum; a touching bedtime story for the kid and the enjoyment of a last homemade cake, provide a heartrending coda to the impending doom everyone faces.
If the film sounds maudlin and not a little scary – it is neither of those things. We do learn what Paulo is searching for and like the rest of the film, it is about the most important thing in that soon-to-end world: human connection. When all is said and finally done, everything in the end is about love.
