Post by StevePulaski on Mar 16, 2013 21:40:19 GMT -5
![](http://cassavafilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/lastdays.jpg)
Michael Pitt in Last Days.
Rating: ★★½
Last Days concludes Gus Van Sant's "Death Trilogy," a series that has been met with mixed reception from audiences and critics alike. It's definitely an acquired taste; when I read horribly negative reviews of any film in this series, I completely understand the main points the author makes. Whether they claim Van Sant's approach to his pictures is overly-arty, uninteresting, boring, pretentious - which is a common one - or simply repetitive and confusing, I can see eye-to-eye with them, while maintaining my own point of view.
It just so happens I kind of like the style of cinematic impressionism, which is stunning considering my bias towards monologues and fulfilling characters development. I no longer find the ambiguity irritating, so much as fascinating. I find the intimacy often carried with these pictures to be simply lovely and very taking. And the idea of being able to apply motives and traits to characters is interesting and very unique to me. But because of this, I can totally see why one would find it all tedious and void of all meaning. Having to apply the meaning to almost every instance in the film isn't something everyone wants to do, which is why I'm always very hesitant to recommend movies of Van Sant to others.
Unfortunately, Last Days is not a film I will be recommending to very many people. Here is a film that wears its impressionistic style not as a means of benefit, but as something of an albatross, desperately voiding itself on demand from connection and personality. A story about two men wandering aimlessly around a mountain can function within ambiguous terrain, as well as one about a pointless, unnecessary school shooting at a high school. One about a rock-star, crumbling under the weight of fame, potential, and family doesn't seem like a story fit for the style of impressionism. It seems like its dues could be paid better through the genre of mumblecore.
The rock-star in question is Michael Pitt's Blake, a shaggy, lean, often unkempt young man, who wanders around the cluttered wilderness, while his family, friends, band, and a private investigator attempt to track him down. Blake just simply wants to escape the monotonous, relentlessly unsatisfying world around him by staying reclusive in a stonewall mansion. His humdrum existence is what we follow for the next ninety-seven minutes.
Seeing as this story is loosely based on the days leading up to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide, we immediately know the unfortunate doom Blake will be met with. If Blake's last few days are anything akin to Cobain's last days, there's no wonder why he would off himself. The thought of fame and fan-loyalty, working for those who would never work for you, ongoing family troubles, inferiority, among other things would do nothing so much as get to the person and drive them mad with pessimistic thinking.
Michael Pitt's performance is the silver lining in this otherwise redundant affair. Pitt embodies the same sort of enigma and mystery Blake does, making him, at the very least, interesting and watchable. If only there was more of a character here. I'm well aware that one of the rules for this genre requires mostly vacant characters, but I can't help but feel that this film would've had a boon in quality if we had been blessed to see more of Blake's internal thoughts, relationships, and opinions in the mix of isolation and loneliness. Here, we watch a man wander around, sing, or stare for minutes at a time and we can't help but wonder what his problems really are. We can think of them, sure, but for a story like this, it almost requires an analysis that's more given or hinted at rather than extracted.
Gus Van Sant never loses his grip on direction, however, making this be a very personal film rather than a cold, distant one, and certain scenes, take for example, "the soul scene" towards the end (you'll know it when you see it) are very well captured. Yet it's too bad that Van Sant decided to make this a film to conclude his series that was truly hitting shocking heights up until this film. If there was ever a film that needed to be remade into a slightly more "mainstream" film it would be this one.
Starring: Michael Pitt. Directed by: Gus Van Sant.