Last Days
d. Gus Van Sant, 2005
As a fan of both Gerry and Elephant, I had some pretty big expectations for Gus Van Sant's Last Days. And though I found plenty to admire in the film (particularly Harris Savide's photography), I felt I was also kind of let down. On one hand, the images are not as striking as they were in Gerry, and the time-lapse shots are not as exquisitely composed as they were in Elephant; on the other, Last Days is supposed to be setting its own aesthetic boundaries and perhaps I shouldn't be comparing it so harshly to those previous films, but it's rather hard not to when a lot of all of the three films is structured in the same way.
As you may or may not know, Last Days is/isn't a portrayal of the last days (though no time is actually pointed out) of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain. Not being much of a Nirvana fan myself, I had no problems with the movie regarding an inaccurate portrayal of Cobain, because it's Van Sant's movie and he should be able to do whatever he wants with these characters. With that said, maybe Van Sant himself did not take this into consideration, because he does seem to be holding back and playing it safe by and large. This is most evident when one compares his treatment of Blake, the protagonist of this film, and that of the Gerrys.
Though I'm sure there aren't many people who will find Last Days particularly engaging (I was the only one at the theatre when I saw it), for someone who is used to this kind of rigorous filmmaking, I would strongly recommend it. The sound design is quite striking, the aforementioned fullscreen cinematography of Savides was breathtaking to see in theatres, and Van Sant gives us a couple of blatant Michael Snow and Chantal Akerman, which I found interesting if a little too obvious (particularly the shot of Blake pouring cereal, a la Jeanne Dielman).
Some scenes in Last Days actually achieve the hypnotic effect Van Sant wanted present through the entire film, most notably Michael Pitt's acoustic performance of "From Death to Birth," and the back to back playing of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs," in which some of Blake's band members sing along with the part everyone sings along to when listening to the song, "I am tired, I am weary..."
