Rodaje del corto 'Premio Western' titulado The End
The End
A short film by Eduardo Chapero-Jackson Produced by Prosopopeya Producciones
Director’s Note About The End
Water is the pure essence of life. Without it there is only death, desert, and emptiness. Humanity is bound to collective suicide if it continues to waste its very source of life, not only by poisoning and exhausting it but also because its lack brings the darkest of human nature to the fore. We all carry within ourselves the seeds of fear and mistrust, of selfishness, exploitation and indolence, of pain turned into destructive and self-perpetuating anger. We could lose everything. Everything. We are creatures for whom it is difficult to stop the forces that drive us. The End is a look into our final clash, in order, perhaps, to remember our beginning and move us to restore it.
Where will the coming water crisis take us? How will it affect our society? What will happen when vast regions of our planet turn to desert and water is so scarce that we have to fight over it? To what extremes will people be driven?
The End began when the first short film of Eduardo Chapero-Jackson, Contracuerpo, won the International Film Festival Almeria in short award for the best production of the year 2007. This award, also known as the “Western Award,” comes with an unusual condition: writing and shooting a short Western film. The challenge thus posed made me stop and think about what this genre, this dramatic code, really meant and transmitted. I wanted to understand what times and human circumstances Westerns portray.
Western movie mythology is so compelling because these films show us a world of extremes in which men and women were pushed to the limit and forced to face the most basic of life’s problems, dilemmas, and conflicts. Those were hard, cruel times. An entire indigenous civilization was erased, replaced by a new one struggling to ensure its own future. Natural resources were plundered. There is a reason why this virtually lawless place came to be known as the “Wild West.” Each person made and enforced his or her own laws. A new society with new values took shape. The need to build a future, to survive no matter what, led people to do things that most of us, with our comfortable lives, doubt we would ever be capable of. In the harsh light of situations so dire that they seem black and white, it is plain to see who is brave and who cowardly, who will risk life for an ideal, and who will not. Good and evil set an almost mythological stage; the backdrop is a harsh, barren landscape with its own revelatory beauty. The sweeping, epic, and iconographic stories that unfold on this stage are driven by our most elemental needs and dreams.
I sat down to write The End wondering how that world might be relevant today. It didn’t take much for me to see that it is all too relevant. To think otherwise would be pure blindness and denial. In many places the Wild West still exists. For instance, we could speak of the “Wild Near East.” The chronic conflicts in some parts of Africa that have their root in the economic value of natural resources also come to mind.
And what about the near future? That question provided the backbone for this story. The basic premise—the future of water—is so vital that it fills me with terror and anguish. What will happen to us when there isn’t enough? That is the question posed by The End. That fact that the water crisis is becoming a major issue and that this year Spain is playing an active role by making water the theme of the World Expo, brought all of the pieces of this project together in my mind. In a country like Spain, threatened by desertification and emerging water rights disputes between regions, water is increasingly important. Early awareness and effective action can spare us much suffering. I hope that The End can contribute something to this awakening—and better a drop of water than a grain of sand.
I made two decisions when setting the conflict in which the characters of The End find themselves. First, I wanted to expose the new Western citizen (more specifically, the new average American) to the same harsh conditions in which their then-new nation was forged and in which their ancestors fought. These are the same dreadful circumstances in which so many other people around the world are trapped. Second, this average American family is forced back to the world of Westerns by a vast struggle arising from political, economic, and social factors that have changed Nature itself. The specific and the general become—are—one. The End shows us a time when drinking water is running out because of profligate waste and climate change. Most of what is left is polluted. The rest belongs to and is sold by private companies. Water has become a commodity, and for-profit corporations control most of the supply. The government has to distribute and ration water from its precious and dwindling reserves. Water is no longer a birthright; it is no longer a part of Nature. It is scarce and sought-after, and the fact that it is necessary for survival drives the protagonists to fight over it. Unrest flares in an unexpected place: the comfortable and developed first world.
In The End I also use the codes of the Western to look at the issue of an armed populace. This is a familiar, recurring theme in the United States and the subject of constant debate. In a way, the idea of the right to bear arms is a bequest of the Wild West. The thinking behind the right to own weapons for personal defense is that governments should not have too much power over the citizenry. Transporting this mindset to an era of critical water shortage sets the stage for destructive, disturbing action. Whenever I think about “cowboys and Indians” movies, the words “The End” come to my mind as I remember them scrolling up the screen when the movie was over. I have tried to reconstruct that ominous feeling of finality and take it to the extreme. Hence the title of this story. I also wanted to bring to mind its antonym: “The Beginning.” Hope. We are made of water. We are water. Treasuring it is treasuring ourselves. It is not too late to avoid the nightmare. I just tried to imagine, to show what it could be like to live it. This painful senselessness that is also portrayed by another “The End”, the famous, hauntingly beautifully song by The Doors:
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the endOf everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will beSo limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger’s hand In a...desperate land
The west is the bestThe west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest
Lost in a Roman...wilderness of painAnd all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain
In our film’s story, there are no stock heroes or villains. I wanted the viewer to identify with all of the characters, because the evil they can do is, sadly, latent in us all. It comes from a very human place.
The script draws on all of the ingredients of a Western, either literally or with updated avatars. The elements are all there: scenery, weapons, duels, wagons, the Seventh Cavalry, ambushes, lost tribes lying in wait and protecting their rights and their land, and the struggle for El Dorado. It is virtually all there, but moved forward in time, to give current meaning and eloquence to this venerable genre. The future depicted in The End is not a science-fiction future. It is immediate and not very sophisticated, because the worldwide crisis caused by gross neglect of the economy-environment nexus has hamstrung the search for solutions. New technology is not being developed quickly enough. In this story, water has become a bigger and more expensive problem than oil, which has still not run out. I did this in part to illustrate the problem better, in part to show how evolution can come to a halt, and in part to say that this future is neither so distant nor so intangible that we can disengage ourselves from it. It is something that could happen far earlier than we think.
This drama is set against the imposing backdrop of the Almería countryside, in a grandiose, epic style, like the Middle Eastern desert in Lawrence of Arabia (which was actually partly shot in Almería, as were the Indiana Jones series, several of Clint Eastwood´s films, and many other well-known movies). I wanted to take full advantage of the plasticity of the Almería landscape. But Almería is more than the setting. It is a relevant example of what is starting to happen in southern Spain. Climate, and water use, will have a significant impact on Spain’s future social, political, and economic agenda. Spain could actually lead the way in water conservation awareness and new technologies and come to exemplify how to address the problem of desertification.
Water and sustainable development are the theme of Expo Zaragoza 2008. This film wants to say something at the Expo and at as many other venues as possible where the future of water and of ourselves will be discussed. The subject is universal, current, and relevant for many other parts of the world—including the heart of the film industry, Los Angeles, where drought is a serious problem. Making The End was, for all of us that made it, not only a cinematic journey into a genre that embedded in our modern consciousness, but also an exercise of care and responsibility, using the powerful emotional impact of the medium in which we work, cinema.
Synopsis
What was once a green, prosperous and peaceful northern state is now a vast desert. Climate change and draught caused by human activity have changed the land, the culture, and the lifestyle of everyday Americans. Water has become so scarce that it is worth more than oil and is at the root of increasing social conflict. The right of civilians to bear firearms is a factor that only heightens the tension, danger, and mistrust.
A group of civilians seeking to wrest control of the water supply from government agencies and private corporations attacks a heavily guarded federal tanker truck carrying drinking water. An average American family is accidentally caught up in the assault and is forced to fight for survival in a barren and hostile land, where they come across the remains of what were once grand rivers and massive, life-giving forests.
As they wander in search of aid, they come across an abandoned farm with a long-forgotten water tower. Their hope is soon shattered; another surviving family discovered it before them. A showdown over water takes place between the two families. Parents and children are driven to act on their basest instincts. It is the rule of another law, as if the West were once again Wild, not as an idealized epic but as an ominous glimpse into an all too real world to come.