O Último Filme

The biggest problem with viewing The Last Movie is that it actually has two parts.

The first part of the film where the citizens of a Peru village try to duplicate (for real) the violence of a western that has just been filmed in their village raises some interesting question (some put forth by the town's priest).

The problem is at a critical point for the main character (the only member of the crew to stay behind) the movie suddenly and without warning shifts gears into the second part which can best be described as 'the making/behind the scenes of the Last Movie.' Worst yet this part of the movie doesn't have any rhyme or reason in the order in which things are shown so it can be a confusing 5 minutes before the viewer figures out what has just happened. And even after the poor viewer does figure out what has just happened trying to follow this part of the film is next to impossible as it is so disjointed.

It is a pity as the premise of the film is a good one and if the film had stayed with that premise it would have been a great film. Instead you have part of a great film followed by a disjointed mess.

I didn't know but I am not surprised to learn that over 40 hours of footage was shot in the making of this movie. Virtually any kind of movie can be made with that much material to work with. Screwball Comedy, Dark Comedy, Light Drama, Melodrama even Horror. It all depends how you edit it. Kind of like the manufactured plots in reality tv shows. It's all down to editing

What you get here is something that is sort of like a precursor to Wicker Man but in another part of the world and with different results. Locals mimic the making of a Western that was just shot in a strange ritualistic way. How we get to that point is a bit of a surprise because much of the story seems to be about one of the stars of the western staying on the location to settle with a local woman and discover gold mines. Then comes the bamboo film equipment.

If the goal was surrealism, Hopper nails it. If the goal was to be anything else specifically speaking, then that's still unclear. I was interested enough to keep watching and was surprised with how things shifted. The ending felt a little open ended. I can't call this a great movie but it has alot in it for me to want to revisit it and make more sense of it or a different sort of sense of it. Maybe my interpretation was a little off. Visually, it is fantastic. Peru is a genuinely beautiful country and very well captured here.

This movie isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. But I don't know how to recommend it, or to whom. Do you like Dennis Hopper? Well, here he is, in almost every scene, and he never looked better. A beautiful face, the graceful cowboy. In fact, he appears so genuine in this film that I begin to realize what an acting job he was doing in Easy Rider. The scenery is haunting, and the movie has a poetic, lyrical rhythm....yet sometimes seems to go on too long, and the mind wanders....but I loved the feel of it, the primitive environment of the Peruvian village, the ever-present mud....contrasted with the lewd and crude wealthy Americans. And I happened to enjoy the home-movie aspects of this film, also. I delighted in picking out Dean Stockwell, Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law, etc. in the Hollywood on Location shots....I loved the spontaneity of the last scenes of dialogue....hell, I loved seeing Kris Kristofferson sitting on a rock singing Me & Bobby Magee....but would anyone else?

I watched this film twice. The second time I watched it I was simply trying to figure out why I liked it the first time---but like it I did. Usually I don't like this kind of film, because I think they're pretentious. (NORTHFORK, as an example.) I think if ten people watched this film, those ten people would take ten different journeys and wind up at ten different destinations--so I can only describe what I felt---and it really was, for me, strangely enough, only a feeling.

For me it boils down to this: I'm from Oklahoma. During the early years, growing up in the great American heartland, the moral compass is very clear for most people. But the feeling, as you grow older (and migrate away from your roots), that with each season something precious is slowly draining away, and that things you care deeply about become like sand dunes that change shape and form with every rising sun---and there seem to be a progressive sense of loss---loss of the north star, reference points, meaningful trails in your life, until one day you are forced to stop and ask yourself, "Where am I, and what the hell do I care about anymore?" That's when you go to the pound and adopt a dog. I'm sure that my response to the film had absolutely nothing to do with what the authors intended, but I liked the film very much, and can't help but feel that this film is vastly underrated and was never given a fair chance.

A little credit is due (I guess): Dennis Hopper made it huge with Easy Rider, took his momentary carte blanche and made, for all intents and purposes, a movie he wanted to make. No holds barred is putting it lightly. It's like Hopper stumbled over the bars while on acid and just let the natives come around and stomp on it till the term 'hold' was soaked in alcohol and set on fire. It's cinematic anarchy that reigns with a sword of originality and hubris, and it's always coming right from Hopper's soul. The Last Movie, this said, is not a very 'good' movie. I'm not even sure it's "anything" of value. But it's surely one of those must-see "personal" movies all the same. For any film buff it's simply stunning - and I don't mean that fully as a compliment.

In a way I feel sorry for this production. Hopper did have a script, somewhere, and even had a writer with him as well, Stewart Stern, and the opening 25 minutes of the film is fractured but feels contained in its "meta-movie"-ness. It seems actually clear enough to follow: a film crew is in Peru filming a movie, a western, directed by none other than Samuel Fuller, and there's lots of intensity on the set and, at other times, weird vibrations in the off-hours. Hopper is a stuntman who works on the production, but once it ends he sticks around, and sees the Peruvians re-enacting the film that has just been made, only with "equipment" made of sticks and stones and other things. So far, so good, more or less, and, again, Samuel Fuller directing a movie in a movie! It can't get much cooler than this can it?

As it turns out, there is even more story and scenes that make sense, such as the romance (or lack thereof) between Hopper's Kansas cowboy and a Peruvian woman, Maria. These scenes, along with the rough seduction of Kansas to another woman who happens to wear a mink coat, rang true past the weird intentions of the film-making and into the personal for sure. Hopper in real life shouldn't matter in the course of the movie itself, but it is so self-reflexive on the end of making the meta-movie that it spills over into his real life with women (when you see it you'll understand). That, plus an allegorical storyline involving a foolish and failed attempt to go gold mining, seem to at least add emotional grounding for chunks of the picture.

And then, other times... it's just drivel, repetitive movements and rhythms and sudden things like "Scene Missing" cards. The problem that Hopper didn't see while editing, not while hopped up (no pun intended) on enough drugs to run a mega-pharmacy on the moon, is that the meta-movie qualities and his flourishes and mad jump cuts and time reversals and non-linear-ness don't always serve in favor of the actual story. There are certain moments and scenes that stand out wonderfully, and are even filmed and edited with scary precision and capturing the beauty of Peru (oh, and the opening gunfight as part of the movie-in-movie is amazing). Other times, it's just tricks and things, devices and obstacles that just add dead weight to the running time. It's non denying it's art, but is it always interesting? No. Sometimes, it just sticks out way too much as being "important" art, forced when at other times it could be natural and fitting for the already strange premise.

It's basically this: a very talented filmmaker (and for all of his ups and downs in his career, more downs than ups, not least of which the stigma that followed Hopper after he made this movie and didn't direct another for nine years) and an unlikely and electrifying actor, got loaded with all of the praise that someone like him didn't need, already cooking with loads of free-loader friends sticking too many hands in the creative pot, and, in the end, got in the way of himself. A lot of The Last Movie burns with raw energy and crude dramatic thrills. And the rest of the time, it just looks like it needed an editor, ONE editor that was sober to go along with the one other sober cadet on the production, the late-great Laszlo Kovacs as DoP. Alejandro Jodorowsky might be a kind of genius, but an editor for someone else's project he definitely isn't.

So should you see it? If it's available (it's hard to find) and you're willing (maybe do a coin toss) and you aren't expecting a John Ford movie (please don't), give it a shot. It's not an easy movie to defend, and I probably can't on a reasonable level. But as a personal statement of an artist on the edge, you could do worse (i.e. Southland Tales, the only thing that comes closest in ambition and faulty technique).