Last Night

Don McKellar directs/wrote/stars in one small movie that asks us... what is REALLY important?

The world is about to end (how is irrelevant) and we follow a (seemingly) random bunch of people as they fill there last hours.

On one level they all want to make dreams/desires/fantasies they've held onto happen. Our main character, Patrick Wheeler is caught between fulfilling his parents plans and his own.

I don't want to give too much of this simple, beautiful and heartfelt movie away, but I think it boils down to a question of opening ourselves up - to be less alone - and to let love in. I think that one thing Mr. McKellar is trying to say is that the power of love- true love (NOT lust) will get us through - no matter what the obstacle.

I've seen this movie several times, and am the last person to be swayed by big Hollywood films that try to "steer" you to "feel" for their characters. Last Night is NOT an action picture. It moves slowly, and builds to an ending that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. I hope you enjoy it is much as I do.

There are films that are great, but by virtue of their intelligence and understatement fall through the cracks - or go on over the years to achieve 'cult' status. Paul Auster's 'Smoke', or Thomas McCarthy's 'The Station Agent' are a couple. This is such a film, and for fans of these types of 'smarter', less 'hollywood' productions there is no greater cinematic experience than finding such a gem. This is unpretentious and real - and ultimately honest and rewarding. Don McKellar has crafted something really special.

The world is going to end at midnight; it's six pm now. The impending catastrophe has been known about for months but nothing can be done about it.

Government has been wound down. There's a certain amount of mayhem, looting, and bloodshed in the streets, but most of that ended weeks ago; now people are just quietly resigned. The nature of the disaster is never specified or even mentioned, but cleverly hinted at. Sooner or later you'll suddenly realise what it must be to do with, and when you do it's a breath-catching moment. Once you notice this, the closest thing the film has to a big special effect, it becomes increasingly appalling as time goes on.

There are to be no last-minute attempts to save the earth. They were known to be futile before the film begins. Instead, people calmly make preparations for their last night alive. It's a bit like wanting to do something special for your birthday. Craig (Callum Keith Rennie) is living out the four-letter answer most people would give if asked 'What would you do if the world was about to end' - as he has been, methodically and systematically, for the past few weeks. Sandra (Sandra Oh) is trying to get across the chaotic city to her beloved husband. Patrick (Don McKellar, who also wrote and directed, brilliantly) attends a last family meal and plans a quiet evening alone with a Pete Seeger record. Almost everyone else is heading downtown for the big end of the world party.

Flashes of black humour help make things bearable, but I can't convey how genuinely chilling and terribly moving the film becomes before the end. Pre-millennium there were a handful of end-of-the-world films, most based around big-budget special effects. For a grumpy misanthropist such as myself, who officially couldn't care if the world was to end, even a blockbuster disaster movie like Deep Impact was a salutary experience, making me realise that I really, really don't mean that, and that for all its travails and miseries life is precious. But by excluding special effects and scientific explanations, and precluding the possibility of averting the end, and focusing entirely on the human, Last Night is far, far better and left me drained and devastated.

I almost prefaced these remarks with a 'Don't watch this alone' but decided, nah, other people can be a pain when you're trying to watch a film. But if you watch it alone and late at night as I did, be warned that after the end you may feel a strong urge to make contact with one of those annoying other people, at 2 in the morning, a friend, a relative, your milkman, anyone.

But watch this you must, for it's a great cinematic work of art.

I found LAST NIGHT quite thought-provoking and moving the first time I saw it and its impact on me has only grown over time. This is an amazingly sophisticated and well-executed film for a first-time director. What I find thrilling about it is both the fine balance it finds between ideas and emotional resonance and its sense of tonal unity and control. The images and music have stayed with me for years. Despite the melancholic events of the story and the sense of loss that permeates the film (after all, we are talking about the end of the world here), a mordant sense of humour and finally a romantic, optimistic heart leavens the story's darkness, without pushing the movie into cheap sentimentality or melodrama (Armageddon, anyone?). All this and only one of the most memorable closing images in modern film! Seek it out. It's worth it.

Don McKellar's less pretentious works (here, I exempt the Red Violin, of which I am not particularly fond) always seem to deliver what I need, if not quite what I want. There's always *something* about each work that bugs me a bit; but like the bit of gravel in your hiking boots that makes the trek that little bit more memorable, that little bit more real, I always wonder: would I really have been happier without it?

Last Night -- a subtle, oddly serene film about the world ending, not quite with a bang, not quite with a whimper -- but with a gently rueful, and very human, shrug -- is typical, in this regard. I more than merely like this film -- I believe I'd put it among my top ten favourite works, and I've seen a *lot* of movies -- but as a matter of honesty, I have to warn anyone who hasn't seen it yet, it does have more than a few rough edges.

The acting's a bit uneven, and ranges from borderline painful to actually stunning; I find the occasionally hysterical mother played by Roberta Maxwell painfully cliched. Bujold, on the other hand, you just have to see. Oh is memorable, surprisingly powerful. McMullen I still can't make my mind up about. McKellar is, well, McKellar. I can't help liking the character, even if it does seem a manipulative kinda setup that makes it so.

The script does amble a bit. It's kinda the nature of the story. And McKellar's fondness for clever, throwaway lines sometimes gets the best of him, in my view, both in his own part and in McMullen's.

But these are minor flaws, forgivable (or, as above, perhaps necessary), in an otherwise actually brilliant piece of work.

And overall, the writing, I have to say, is the best I've seen from McKellar yet. This a very delicately balanced script, marvelously restrained. Somehow, McKellar has made a movie in which regret, euphoria, and dread circle each other warily for an hour and a half, without melodrama once rising up out of the mix. There are believable moments of hysteria; they generally punctuate the prevailing current of reflection, resignation, and quiet desperation entirely believably and appropriately.

The ending... I'm not breathing a word about the ending.

Apart from this: it's flawless.

My vote: see it.