mercuryix2003

I saw this short when I was in college for a theater class, and I've never forgotten. It is very simply a filmed version of Chekhov's Swan Song play, featuring two men, one of them a recently retired veteran stage actor, and the other the Theater Prompter played by none other than Michael Dunn, known for playing Dr. Loveless on the old Wild Wild West show. (A theater prompter had the thankless job of standing in a hole below the stage, and prompting the actors if they forgot their lines).

The entire 22 minute short involves the Theater Prompter listening to the retired actor talk about his lifelong experience as an actor in the theater. That's it. There are no explosions, gun battles, car chases, nudity, sex, stabbings, beheadings, or a single chain saw. In other words, absolutely nothing for today's American audiences.

However, if you are a throwback of nature who actually cares about believable acting and human emotion, this is a must-see if you can find it. The older actor does a superb job playing a retired actor whose real emotions fight through his natural dramatic personality, and Michael Dunn holds his own as a down-on-his luck theater prompter who knows every word of every play ever written by heart, but who will never get the chance to act onstage.

I remember this short piece vividly, long after forgetting hundreds of other films, and that is the highest recommendation I can give it.

It's both a shame and a crime that it hasn't been seen by everyone who cares about real acting or even reviewed, until now. I hope whoever reads this will seek it out and watch it; both actors are long dead, but the emotions they play out are timeless; and will stay with you for life.

......are the only two words that apply to this film. It can only be called a film because that was the medium it was shot in. We will never know what was in Gus Van Sant's mind when he made this movie, and that may be his private joke; because he may very well have had nothing in mind when he made it. The film is a detached view of the last days of a self-indulgent, unaware drug addict, so detached that it might have been shot with a security camera affixed to the wall as it watches a man stumble around, ignore his friends, stumble around, ignore his family, stumble around, listen to a Jehova's Witness try to convert him as he sits there totally tuned out, stumble around, hide from a detective trying to find him, stumble around, wander into a potting shed, stumble around, and die. I have just given you the entire plot of Last Days, but did not give a "spoiler alert", as there is no plot, action or dialog to spoil. If a friend wanted to show you a security video of the last eight hours of a homeless drug addict's life in an alley before he slowly dies in front of you, would you watch it? I actually would, rather than watch this again. Because at least I would be watching a real life and death event, without the suffocating pretentiousness of this film.

On top of that, we can't forget that we are watching the pointless and self-indulgent destruction of a millionaire who had far more success than he deserved, was overrated to an embarrassing degree, was more narcissistic than was previously thought humanly possible, and had friends, family and a wife who loved him far more than he deserved. In his own suicide note, Cobain referred to himself as a big baby. At least he was self aware to that degree. His mother after his death said "now he's gone and joined that stupid club". (Referring to the death of Jimmy Hendrix and Joplin by drug overdose, at age 28). His mother had more meaning, depth and insight in her life than her son ever did. Who cares about his life, he wasted it, and who cares about his death, as he didn't care about whoever cared about him? That is the feeling this film leaves in you; though I'm not sure Gus Van Sant cared about any meaning or effect this film had. Finally, who cares about this film? Its subject had no meaning and nothing to say, and neither does this. If you somehow think Kurt Cobain was a "genius" of some kind, and that his death at a young age had some kind of deep meaning, please, please consider a better role model. (And no, Marilyn Manson is not a better role model. At least Cobain wasn't That pathetic.....)

There are far too many reviews about this film that discuss the plot, acting, and directing in-depth for mine to add anything, so this is more of a comment about how this film affected me when I watched it many years ago.

This is one of the most difficult films I have ever watched. A slasher film marathon with in-your-face gore would be easier to sit through than this, because they don't affect you on a personal level like this film does. You can laugh off the blood and fake violence in a slasher flick, but there is nothing to laugh at in this film. It brings up disturbing feelings, hopelessness, claustrophobia, the feeling that no matter what you do, even if given a second chance at life, you are still trapped by the decisions you made in your first one, or will make the exact same choices you did in your first life, bringing you to the same point again. I hope the message of this film isn't "you're doomed to make the same mistakes and decisions over and over again no matter what you do, so don't even try". If there is a message in this film, or a statement it makes, it's "don't pretend your past didn't happen, and walk away from it, thinking you can start over with a new life and new lessons. Instead, embrace what happened to you, good and bad, and that you learned a lot from it, good and bad. Then go on with the rest of your life with those lessons that your life, including your mistakes, taught you". It's one thing to move to a new place and to a new career and even a new family; it's another to abandon everything you learned up to that point, which is your identity. That's the cautionary moral this movie seems to make.

At least, I hope it does. The movie is so bleak and so stark in its presentation, it leaves it entirely up to the audience whether there's a statement there at all.

I think this is just the kind of movie that Roger Ebert liked and would have recommended. I'd like to know what he thought of it.....