Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
As an asteroid nears Earth, a man finds himself alone after his wife leaves in a panic. He decides to take a road trip to reunite with his high school sweetheart. Accompanying him is a neighbor who inadvertently puts a wrench in his plan.
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What critics say influenced Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Before the world does in fact end, you might want to track down a copy of 1998�s "Last Night."
It also borrows (some might even say steals) a screenplay from Don McKellar’s Last Night, a 1998 Canadian indie focusing on an unlikely love story taking place amid the chaos of a planet hours away from destruction.
Hell, there was even a nifty little 1998 film from Canada called "Last Night" that saw the end of the world through a filter of bemused resignation--in one key moment, a woman entered an abandoned liquor store in search of a bottle of wine with which to toast the end of times, picked up and examined two still sitting on the shelf and then put one back before leaving with the other.
Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World covers almost exactly the same ground as Don McKellar’s beautiful 1998 gem Last Night: a middle-aged loner whiles away the last days before a calamity (unspecified in McKellar’s film; an unstoppable asteroid here) wipes out the planet.
(There have been a few, though, including a fine Canadian film from 1998 called "Last Night.")
…well, since Don McKellar's excellent, bittersweet 1999 end-of-the-world reverie, Last Night.
While the film’s website helpfully points out the many movies with a similar premise that inspired this story, they also bring to mind so many other recent apocalypses that have approached the familiar set-up with far more creativity and insight into human behavior, let alone entertainment value—Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter , Brit Marling and Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, or Lars von Trier’s Melancholia .
Lars von Trier's Melancholia , for example, cared little about the science of an extinction event (to the point where his utter lack of any kind of realistic touchstone became a distraction) and instead explored how a small group of individuals would react to their imminent demise.
The obvious movie referent is Lars von Trier's "Melancholia," a much nastier film in a much lovelier wrapping: This one lacks an eight-minute Wagner montage.
Right from the first scene in Scafaria’s film, the world is going to go boom a la “Melancholia” or “Armageddon” (one of the few times you’ll hear those two movies compared in a sentence).
Last year alone brought us Lars von Trier's "Melancholia," Brit Marling's "Another Earth" and such television shows as 'Falling Skies' and 'The Walking Dead' among others.
Right from the first scene in Scafaria’s film, the world is going to go boom a la “Melancholia” or “Armageddon” (one of the few times you’ll hear those two movies compared in a sentence).
Humanity’s last hope, in the presumed though unseen shape of (say) Bruce Willis in Armageddon, has just failed to deflect an asteroid from its collision course.
There are the big, brawny effects-laden blockbusters like "Armageddon" that are all about watching a few good men (with maybe one woman in a supporting role) race against time to save the day while stuff blows up around them a la "Armageddon" and the like.
The perfect Canadian retort to the bombastic "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" of the same year, it was a relatively calm and, well, very Canadian ensemble piece about how various people responded to imminent global doom.
A manned space mission to save the day, a la Armageddon, has failed due to basic human error, and now humans are left to ponder the abject silliness of their own institutions.
Cinema has long been fascinated with Armageddon, but with technology advancing ever forward, many movies about the end of the Earth overlook true human emotion in favor of big explosions, big gestures, and big box office.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Themes
Making this concept into an outright farce would have taken the most subtle and clever of comic directors, and I don't know that we have anybody working in America right now who'd be able to do it; Stanley Kubrick in his Dr. Strangelove mode is what it's looking for, and that is a powerful rare commodity.
As I dipped in and out of the various moods of Seeking a Friend, I began to miss the uncompromising satire of bravura end-of-the world movies such as Dr. Strangelove.
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While the film’s website helpfully points out the many movies with a similar premise that inspired this story, they also bring to mind so many other recent apocalypses that have approached the familiar set-up with far more creativity and insight into human behavior, let alone entertainment value—Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter , Brit Marling and Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, or Lars von Trier’s Melancholia .
In Mike Cahill's Another Earth, a carbon copy of our planet approached from points unknown and ended up taking up orbit in the sky, as those on our world discovered that the twin Earth had alternate versions of themselves.
Last year alone brought us Lars von Trier's "Melancholia," Brit Marling's "Another Earth" and such television shows as 'Falling Skies' and 'The Walking Dead' among others.
The end of the world is hardly a rare subject for movies; recently we've had " Melancholia " and " Another Earth ," and who could forget Don McKellar's bittersweet " Last Night " (1998)?
Survivalists are counting the days until the rapture or the Mayan meltdown, and last year we had two separate movies about astronomical annihilation ("Another Earth" and "Melancholia").
There have been gentle apocalypses before, to be sure, like 1985's lyrical " The Quiet Earth ," the excellent " Last Night " (a 1998 film I love so much I had to work to get past my initial knee-jerk unfounded resentment over this film's seeming resemblance to it) and many more.
While the film’s website helpfully points out the many movies with a similar premise that inspired this story, they also bring to mind so many other recent apocalypses that have approached the familiar set-up with far more creativity and insight into human behavior, let alone entertainment value—Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter , Brit Marling and Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, or Lars von Trier’s Melancholia .
The recent spate of onscreen Armageddons kicked off with Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, but we’ve also endured Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter and Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day on Earth.
In “Seeking a Friend For the End of the World,” the despair of “Melancholia” and “Take Shelter” and “The Road” get a spin toward romantic comedy in the hands of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” writer Lorene Scafaria, making her directorial debut.
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World has much less in common with Take Shelter or Beasts of the Southern Wild – the two greatest recent apocalypse films – than it does with Safety Not Guaranteed, another offbeat charmer that avoids the danger of too much whimsy.
It joins a raft of other doomsday scenarios, including "Melancholia," "Take Shelter," "The Walking Dead," "Falling Skies" and the upcoming TV series "Revolution," in portraying human behavior as being tested under the most extreme of circumstances.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is one of those tender Armageddon love stories that crop up every so often — 1988’s “Miracle Mile,” 1998’s “Last Night,” 2009’s French thriller “Happy End.”
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Natalie Portman played one in Garden State, Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown.
Call it this summer's Garden State.
What starts as a quirky apocalypse comedy quickly reveals itself as a boring hybrid of “Lost in Translation” and “Garden State,” burdened with two stars who couldn’t have less chemistry together.
The end of the world has become quite prominent in recent movies ranging from Roland Emmerich’s “2012” to Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia,” and first-time director Lorene Scafaria, who previously adapted “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” for the screen, makes a strong directorial debut using it as a backdrop for a quirky romantic road comedy that owes more to “Garden State” than it does to the usually gloomy apocalyptic thriller.
From “When Worlds Collide” to “Armageddon” and “Melancholia,” the “end of the world” story is a science fiction staple.