Cinema Associate Holly's Staff Pick for August at Digital Gym Cinema! Influenced and accompanied by manosphere mantras and motivational content, a young man sets out on a road trip through the North American continent, from his home in the Midwest all the way to Alaska, on a quest for self-optimization, in Jacob Gregor’s END OF HISTORY, a quiet yet fierce satire that is frequently funny, often absurd and always lonely. The voices of content creators preaching pop stoicism and the grievances of Canadian conservative talk radio haunt the stunning natural vistas and endless suburban sprawl of his northward journey, with nothing to be found and nothing to feel alongside the frozen lakes, at the feet of snow-covered mountains, in strip mall parking lots, gas stations and motel honeymoon suites. Influenced by the landscape films of James Benning, the film also recalls an old saw from director Alex Cox that every road movie is about the death of the American dream. END OF HISTORY certainly qualifies, but it is notable for the sobriety and wit with which it approaches the current post-dream post-history American nightmare. Unlike the road movies of the seventies and early-eighties that Cox may have had in mind (mentioning this idea in his Moviedrome intro for Robert Aldrich’s 1981 wrestling road movie …ALL THE MARBLES aka THE CALIFORNIA DOLLS), there is no naive belief in the dream to be shattered along the road as the film unfolds. END OF HISTORY doesn’t gradually reveal the hollowness and broken promises so much as use them as its essential foundation and point of departure, situating itself and us in a uniquely hopeless time and place in the American landscape. Digital Gym Cinema on Facebook / Instagram
