The Polygon entertainment team is connected to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which became virtual for the first time. Here’s what you need to know about the indie gems that will soon hit streaming services, cinemas and the cinematic zeitgeist.
Logline: On Earth’s last day, when a planet-destroying asteroid advances towards Earth, a strange woman named Liza (co-writer and co-director Zoe Lister-Jones) and her younger self (Cailee Spaeny) walk through Los Angeles together , confronting people, determined to finally end their relationships before everything is over.
Longerline: If you knew exactly when you were going to die, what would you do before you died? The question becomes a rich cinematographic theorist, and filmmakers come up with widely varied answers, from a poisoned man trying to solve his own murder before dying in the 1950s noir DOA for a woman who mainly spreads the contagious death panic to everyone she meets in 2020 She dies tomorrow.
Inside How it ends, Liza and her younger self decide that it’s time to finally try honesty. Liza spent her life avoiding emotional confrontations and conflicts, to the point of running away from a relationship with a man she loved. On the last day before oblivion, she decides to tour Los Angeles and confront her parents, a distant friend and the guy who cheated on her repeatedly. She hopes to end her life at a doomsday bacchanal powered by drugs and tell the love of her life what she really feels for him.
Complicating your plans slightly: the presence of your younger self. It is implied that young Liza has been invisibly dating Liza for a long time, but mysteriously, other people can now see and hear her, which both Lizas consider normal during a time when everyone seems a little more in tune. to infinity. It’s a strange device, but it gives Liza a cheerleader and empowerer who constantly pushes her out of her comfort zone, and most of the real drama in the film comes from the natural conflict between the younger self and the present self, given how far they’ve strayed.
Which is How it ends trying to do? In the question-and-answer session following the film’s premiere at the 2021 Virtual Sundance Film Festival, partner writer and director Lister-Jones (The Craft: Legacy) and Daryl Wein (White Rabbit) admitted that How it ends it was his attempt to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing blockades. Lister-Jones explained: “We really don’t know any way, for better or for worse, to process existential crises, except through our work … [it] kind of serves as therapy. “
In a way, this makes How it ends it is no different from the endless pursuits of other people’s confinement to make fermented dough bread better. But the timing of the film’s production (it was shot in the late spring and early fall of 2020) explains a lot about the film’s production, how the way LA seems strangely empty and the way Liza’s various planned confrontations take place over the years. outdoors, usually with participants about six feet away. It also explains the story’s uncomfortable relationship with death: all the characters are focused on the approaching global extinction event, but at the same time, no one seems particularly concerned. It is as if they had lived with mass death hanging over their heads for months and started to find the waiting tedious. Most of the characters reached a philosophical point where they reflected on their apocalyptic plans and presented them with somber casualness.
This seems partly metaphorical – as with the pandemic, the characters here are all dealing with the exact same existential crisis at the same time, but each has been immersed in imminent death long enough to face it in their own idiosyncratic ways. At the same time, all of these methods look like fully LA-centered approaches. Several of the Angelenos Liza speak to appear casual about the apocalypse because they are heavily self-medicated. Most of them speak the language of self-help books and spiritualism seminars, particularly a gay and drugged couple played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Charlie Day, gathered in It’s always sunny in Philadelphia. Caressing a giant crystal and shouting things they appreciate in each other (“Feet!” “Oral sex!”), They are walking towards death without fear. Likewise, when Liza visits her father (Bradley Whitford, as cheerful and hilarious as ever) to confront him about his failures, he encourages her to primitive howls and pushing gestures, while trying to take over all of her negative energy and leave her free. At several meetings, Liza’s acquaintances casually talk about the next life they’re going to, as if explaining why they’re not too nervous about leaving this one.
That melodious hippie vibe seems destined to be particularly therapeutic; in addition to random encounters with tough neighbors, the Lizas find mostly peaceful people and positive emotions. Almost everyone seems sincere and willing to cooperate in their attempt at reconciliation. Liza has big problems with her mother (Helen Hunt), but they speak for them in a sincere and open way. She is angry that she has betrayed ex Larry (Lamorne Morris), but he is willing to listen and give feedback, gracefully, if not sincerely. For a film where almost 8 billion people are about to die in the flames, How it ends it’s too cold.
The quote that says it all: “Tonight I just want to get really high, eat until I vomit and then die.”
Does he get there? This lack of significant conflict also means that the film lacks urgency, or a sense of increasing or decreasing action. In large part, it is just a series of incidents, each very close to the boundary between comedy and drama. The screenwriters explained during the questions and answers that some of the scenes are strictly scripted, while others were largely improvised, which explains the variation in tones and stiffness. The overtly ridiculous overcoming of the confrontation with Larry is a highlight, while Liza boldly waves a boombox, Say anything style then tries to express his frustration with him through Alanis Morrisette’s direct lyrics. But other scenes revolve around a central joke without going anywhere in particular, and the biggest drama in the film suddenly appears, without the feeling of growing tension that would make it seem like a natural and inevitable part of the story.
What does this bring us? How it ends it is not as depressing and exhausting as the other Melancholy, Lars von Trier’s 2011 study of depression in the days before Earth was destroyed by an asteroid. He does not explore as much variation in response to death as Looking for a friend for the end of the world, The comic drama by Lorene Scafaria of 2012 that similarly follows the extinction situation based on an asteroid. Mainly what brings to an inevitable future “Death By Asteroid” triple characteristic is warmth and elevation: it is discreet for a failure, full of peculiarities and charm. In this version of the apocalypse, even the most self-centered and narcissistic people on Liza’s extensive list of friends are well-meaning and supportive.
The other thing he brings is that strange device of the inner child (or in this cast, in their twenties), which Lister-Jones says the filmmakers used therapeutic tools. What is missing from the film, however, is the feeling that the device is really necessary. This allows for some tension at the end of the film, but the film perpetually seems to be without the kind of complete revelations about Liza and her younger self that would make that big central division seem significant. Thematically, as everyone happily gives Liza some time to speak her truths and find her center and other things, sometimes at their expense, the only person she is not at peace with is herself. But this idea seems basic and the execution is just as basic. There is great potential for humor and trauma in your daily interaction with your own younger self, but the script barely scratches the surface of it.
The most fundamental problem with How it ends is that it looks exactly what it is: a hobby project designed by a bunch of bored people looking to process their own anxiety. Okay, these bored people include Fred Armisen, Paul Scheer, Nick Kroll, Rob Huebel, Sharon Van Etten, Olivia Wilde and even Finn Wolfhard in a small phone appearance, so the film has something like a Los Angeles comedy podcast, where every casual acquaintance also has some level of fame in its own right. But the story seems a little confused. It’s a nice hangout movie, and someday it can be presented as an oblique portrait of what it looked like mid-2020 for people privileged enough to ignore politics. But it still looks like a smaller film in the face of a major catastrophe.
The most capable moment of memes: Virtually any scene where Liza and Young Liza exchange meaningful and judgmental looks is the main meme material of the type “Me to me” or “Me / Me too”.
When can we see this? How it ends is currently seeking distribution.