Last Days

"Last Days", Gus Van Sant's experimental film loosely inspired by Kurt Cobain's, err, last days, is not one of his best, but it's certainly not the worst (the "Psycho" remake, anyone?). Even though it's not half as poignant as the previous "Elephant", which has similar style, I admire Van Sant for daring to make such a personal, non-commercial film. "Last Days" is slow, hard to watch, "boring" as some people say, but that suits a brave attempt to show some moments of a troubled musician, "Blake" (Michael Pitt, from the wonderful "The Dreamers"), who seems completely lost and away from reality, trying to escape from himself in his house, surrounded by "friends" who are only interested in his money. Nothing "happens", like everybody says, throughout the film, and Van Sant partially succeeds in showing us the big empty inside and around Blake with bitter, raw strength. Pitt's performance is low-key at most, and Ricky Jay ("Magnolia") and Lukas Haas ("Witness"), two criminally underrated actors, don't disappoint in their small roles. We can't say anyone in the cast stands out, though, because this is a movie where the scenery (the house, the forest) is the biggest character, eating Blake up.

"Last Days" didn't engage me enough to make me want to re-watch it, but I didn't regret watching it. Far from being a masterpiece, but worth seeing if you're looking for a different option and are interested in the main subject, of course. This is not a movie for a Kelly Clarkson or Lindsay Lohan fan, but please don't say this is the biggest piece of pretentious crap out there - I'm pretty sure Björk|Matthew Barney's "Drawing Restraint 9" is a lot worse.

Last days This is the final instalment of Gus van sant's trilogy of the disenfranchised and the alienated human condition. It began with 'Gerry' dealing with two guys trapped in a desert with no way of finding civilisation again and continued with 'elephant' dealing loosely with the columbine school killings. Last days is loosely based on the life of Kurt Cobain the late nirvana singer. Last days is really gelephant a mix of the first two films. Similar themes like repetition and the same story told from different characters perspectives are lifted straight out of elephant and the endless, hopeless tracking shots of despair are taken out of Gerry. Here the main character Blake is lost, unlike the two central characters in Gerry who are lost in the desert without hope, Blake is lost in his own head seemingly without hope. We meet Blake in the title of the film, his last days, being destroyed by drugs (although we never see him take anything harder than a cigarette) and emotional vampires who pretend to be his friends sucking the life out of him coupled with the pressure of fame and impending 86 date tours, Blake is quite simply falling apart. Here though it is a beautifully subtle take on madness, gone are the visions you see in films like 'Jacobs ladder' replaced with a clever underscore of sounds of doors opening and closing and mutterings and oddities. It's as if as you travel round with Blake you too can here the doors of insanity opening in his head, you too struggle to make out all the sounds. It's gently handled but eerily effective in linking you in with Blake's mindset. Elsewhere he stumbles and crawls round trying to function in the face of increasing paranoia and his drug addled inability to perform even the simplest of tasks. With record executives, band members, his manager and a private investigator all on his trail doing little for his state of mind Blake only seems comfortable when making music. This is also the only thing he can do with any sense of achievement, this could be down to the fact that it is second nature or the fact that he is a musical genius. The film also has an amazing sense of space, the landscapes around the mansion, the emptiness of its rooms and the vacuous nature of the hangers on to Blake's coat tails. With some amazing scenes, look out for the Venus in furs scene and the amazingly shot and framed acoustic song performed by Blake in the studio with probably one of the best little pieces of improvisation I've ever seen, this is a brilliant and touching portrayal of a great man left to fall to pieces by those who should have helped him stay together. Although different in its approach it deals with madness in a way not seen since Polanski's 'repulsion' and ultimately it is a film that stays with you long after the final chilling shot.

SPOILER WARNING....

Now i will be commenting on a few things in the film but whether or not they can be considered spoilers i will leave up to you, my own personal opinion is that a film must first have a plot before it can be spoiled in any way.

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Well i just finished watching this film 20 minutes ago so i'm writing this fairly fresh and still haven't completely formed an opinion of it, its probably best me writing these comments in this state of mind because most of you will probably be thinking the same thing.

I watched this film without reading any reviews seeing any ratings or hearing about it through word of mouth, after 2 minutes of seeing Micheal Pitt as "Blake" you will clearly see Kurt Cobain, 30 minutes later you will be slightly confused by just what the hell you are watching and for a time this movie will seem like a chore to watch and if i'm honest it just carry's on like that.

So why then did i give it 7 out of 10? Because roughly an hour into the film i was actually impressed by something, up until this point in the film all you see is a blonde skinny guy fumbling around looking like his half way to falling asleep or down a flight of stairs, this is pretty much what you have watched up to now. Then he starts playing guitar and singing, now i have been a Nirvana fan since i was 13 years old and that spans almost half my life time, this one scene reminded me why. Its a shame this is a movie site otherwise i could carry on with a review that could get me hired by rolling stone, but it isn't so i won't.

To sum up, if your looking for a source of entertainment please forgive me for the caps and DO NOT WATCH THIS. This is not a film you watch to be entertained in any form, if you watch this searching for something to give you a thrill or move you in anyway you will most likely be let down by it, an example of why this would be so? how about at one point in the film you are watching a TV showing a Boyz 2 Men video for the entire duration.

However, if you want to watch a film with some incredible acting, great direction and is a good deal different to anything else thats had a decent size release to it lately this might be for you.

It may also be worth it for Nirvana fans to check out. ;)

Gus Van Sant does a remarkable job with this film - "Last Days." Nothing much happens, there is not a lot of dialogue but what we see, experience, is the slow demise of an individual into oblivion. We are observers, albeit at a distance. The urge maybe there to intervene; deliberately evoked by the structure of Van Sant's film. We want to say: 'You do not have to go on like this. We can help.' The structure is like a memory recalled. We keep going over it, adding bits as we do to try to make more sense, but never arriving at a definitive version. We especially hope that when the advertising salesman calls to the house and Blake lets him in,that he will engage with the man and forget his morose preoccupations. But the gulf between the two is unbridgeable. The nadir of the film is when Blake, left alone by his friends in the rehearsal room, starts to play on his guitar. His voice echoes his inner anguish, rising from a low to a high and then back to a low. He even manages to break a string on the guitar, but dexterously pulls the string while continuing the song. How could such music come out of such gloom? This is the paradox of creativity -- of trying to give form to ideas, not yet realized. We wait in anticipation, incapable of giving directions. Blake is constantly trying to evade the intrusion of others but cannot transcend his own self, of being in the world. The final intrusion finds him not there; he is dead.

It is ironic that in an era of high-speed communications and hyper-dimensional physics that the children of these creations would choose to express their exacerbations in a primal mumble of modern madness, while sleepwalking through their nightmare.

The Director's low-key, laid back, and standoff style are appropriate, with little dialog using sound and fluid composition to facilitate the ethereal essence of the environment.

A parallel but not a specific profile, the similarities to Nirvana's Kurt Cobain are a worthwhile comparison. Entering the mind and the world of a tortured and talented person is not going to be entertaining, but it is a different, difficult detour to a road to nowhere.

It is a vast, expansive and mostly empty space, an unknowable territory and it smells like spiritual suicide.