Shannon is credited as “Father” but might as well be “The White Man Who Rules The World For All the Other Patriarchs.” This self-deluding figure homeschools his child with propaganda about how, as a corporate head, he really did care about saving the planet; over the lengthy running time, dad comes to understand he has something to answer for. But when it comes to climate change, I’m interested in nihilism, grief, realpolitik solutions and not much more; belated accountability exercises, even metaphorical ones regarding the collective complicity I need to own every time I fly or eat unsustainable meat, do not strike me as an interesting proposition, let alone the possibility of redemption. (Send them to the Hague and be done with it.) There are moments of black comedy (intended?), feints at camp (same question), shambolic fake-it-til-you-make-it dancing (Mackay gives windmill arms his all) credited to two choreographers and dialogue that’s just plain odd, as when Mackay calls a fish a cocksucker. These tonal disjunctures seem less strategic than like a lack of control, possibly resulting from a mountain of material generated from a variety of strategies; at 148 minutes, the film feels carved out of many more. The questions that I ended up contemplating are probably not those The End wanted me to focus on; e.g., if thousands of lives depended on it, could Tilda Swinton play a normal person at this point, or are the once-chameleonic performer’s recognizable tics so unlearnable as to place her somewhere near late-period Christopher Walken?

Toronto.