Last and First Men

The most interesting movie I've seen in a long while. Visually and Sonically stunning.

Is there anything more chilling that the acknowledgment of own mortality?

Rarely did the visuals match the story and music so I essentially listened to this. The score was nearly perfect and the story was quite compelling. As art, I liked it quite well. As a film, it wasn't very good. 36 hours later I'm still thinking about it.

I rarely watch arthouse films, and I seldom enjoy the few that I see. Yet somehow, I found myself captivated by this one. Partly because I had read Stapledon's book not too long ago, and been impressed by its vast scope. I found the strange way this film represents the story intriguing.

As others have said, on the surface this is 70 minutes of slow pans and zooms on strange concrete sculptures. The kind of style over substance that could easily be dismissed as pretentious navel-gazing. But for me, at least, it worked.

The core purpose of the visuals, I think, is to create a sense of alienation, of peering into a distant future world that we cannot fully grasp, through a medium - cross-time telepathy - that we are not built to comprehend. The film is made not as a story to be watched, but as if it were an actual telepathic message from the narrator, one of the last living men, waiting for the inevitable end of all of humanity in a future two billion years away.

This is not for everyone, and I won't disparage any of the 1 star reviews here. But if you "click" with what this film is trying to accomplish, it can be quite enjoyable.

This is a beautiful art/science/philosophy installation music film by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson released after his death in 2018, from a haunting text by the British philosopher and writer Olaf Stapledon, known by his "science fiction" in the first half of the 20th-Century. It's narrated by Tilda Swinton, who conveys greatly the tone of a once and future humanity (a post-humanity, if you will). The visuals are provided mostly by brutalist Soviet concrete architecture from the former Yugoslavia.

Apparently the film is being marketed by some quarters like some sort of kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi pic, and apparently kids are watching it with expectations of seeing the likes of Mad Max (which is a great series of films, anyway) or Ready Player One or who knows what kind of zombie crap. This is not it, and you can then laugh at their perplexed and resentful reviews giving the film 1 star. No, nope, nope. What were they sold? This is not World War Z, nor the Time Machine. Think, if of anything, of Guy Debord's films, John Berger, Soviet films, think of Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology, think of the visuals and soundtrack for T. S. Eliot's serious poems (not "Cats", of course), etc. Think of Cosmos or 2001: A Space Odissey, if you want. Think of a documentary. Think of a museum exhibit. Think of a manifesto for post-humanity. Think of archaeology in 2 Billion AD... but for Pete's sake, when you get into watching this film, stop thinking you are entering a McDonald's or a Chuck E. Cheese when you come in into The Met or a Guggenheim museum.