On The End (Ari Selinger, 2025): United States

Reviewed by Margarita Bergquist. Viewed at SBIFF.

Gentrification, a struggle that is familiar to any person living in a suddenly lucrative real estate area, is the backdrop of the drama On The End which is fully based on real life characters and the events that happened to them, as interpreted by the director and screenwriter Ari Selinger. As shared during a Q&A and filmmaker seminar held at Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Ari Selinger discovered this story by accident, driving around depressed-looking areas of Montauk, a laid-back neighbor to luxurious and wealthy Hamptons. He connected with what he learned was the most hated guy in town, a local car mechanic, outcast and hoarder. A typical ogre, who found himself at war with the town elites trying to overtake control of his property “for the greater good” of real estate value in the area by throwing zoning laws and ordinances at him.

It might sound like a grim story, and as life goes, it is, but On The End shows us something beautiful and valuable, especially in the times of ‘deport thy neighbor’ rhetoric. The heart of the film is a love story between two off-beat characters, who are easy to judge and despise from the comfort of a more privileged life. Tom, masterfully played by Tim Blake Nelson, turns out to be a deeply caring human, conditioned by his unremarkably painful life to be non-confrontational to a point where it escalated any conflict he found himself in. He is pushed out of his shell by a sudden arrival of a girl named Freckles, someone he met over an online chat (wonderful Mireille Enos) and whose illness very soon requires him to show up for her in the most challenging way.

Tackling a class conflict and an unconventional love story, Ari Selinger manages to honor the authenticity of the characters, not portraying them as better or worse than they are and incorporating rough, far from idyllic scenes as well. One of the peculiar details that added special meaning to the film is the fact that it was filmed in a house a couple of doors away from where the real Tom was living at the time of shooting, with Tom’s real belongings stuffing the location. Knowing that Tom was watching his life story being played out in front of him in the form of this movie and was able to see it completed before his death, somehow adds a sentimental but very honest layer to it. From the director we know that Tom was in control of the dialog, helping Ari to reproduce his particular grumpy conversational style on screen.

One of the extra levels that add to this story is the way Ari Selinger decided to frame it by first introducing us to Montauk as a character in itself. With a voiceover by who we later learn is Freckles, we see Montauk come alive and set the scene for a story that happens on its outskirts, ‘on the end’ of the world. Overall, On The End brings us a heartfelt and tender exploration of how brutal we could be to our fellow humans, how fast to pass judgment and how difficult to live next to.