Last Days
4 Stars
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It is usually a bad sign when, in a movie, the protagonist seems to be dead and an audience member shouts, “I hope he is finally dead, so this film can be over.” I overhead phrases like, “it was the worst movie I have seen all year,” to “a pretentious mess.”
The pretentious mess quote was my own, then something happened. Once the ideas, sounds, atmosphere and music of Last Days filtered through my brain and I stopped challenging director and writer, Gus Van Sant, and I opened my mind to his unique vision.
Even though we know the film is fictionalized take on the last days of a grunge rock start, as seen by Van Sant, the diehard Nirvana and Cobain fans can relax. What made Cobain a rock god to so many will remain intact because none of us knows what happened and it is the music, always the music that remains important.
Last Days visualizes the story of the struggles of a Kurt Cobain-like musical artist in the final 36 hours or so of his life.
We first meet Blake (Michael Pitt, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Dreamers, Dawson’s Creek) running through the lush woods, underdressed in silk pajama bottoms, a dirty t-shirt, still sporting his hospital identification bracelet. He dives into what must be a freezing river stream for a cleansing, therapeutic swim, followed by some reflective time in front of an inviting campfire.
Blake is next seen as a man on a mission. We follow him tumbling and stumbling through the woods into a decaying mansion with shabby chic furniture, mumbling, groaning, incomprehensible. He finds his buried treasure and mumbles some of his first comprehensible words, “spoon, spoon.”
In an unsatisfying drug haze, he hides from the world, hides from friends, tries to hide from the a woman who may be the mother of his little girl, the wheelers and dealers of the music world, but, dressed in a black silk slip and coat, Blake greets and talks to, not mumbles, a determined Yellow Pages sales rep. He can talk to a strangers.
Blake enjoys little, but, he seems to be having fun, playing his own version of hide and seek throughout the mansion, in the woods and pretending to be both the hunter and the hunted with what may be a loaded rifle. He cradles and caresses it, making it a twisted form of foreplay for him and for the audience because we know what is coming, but not when.
Then there is the music. Usually in a shuffling, mumbling, numbing drug-state, Blake only comes alive when making music. He is coherent, clear, passionate, intense, electric. Now we can understand his pain, through his lyrics and some primal screaming that could wake the dead. Outside the music, he is a dead soul, afraid of the world which no drug can help him overcome.
Although Blake rarely interacts with them, other members of his band are also roaming around the mansion. Luke (Lukas Haas, hiding behind coke-bottled glasses) mainly wants Blake to help him with a song. Scott ( Scott Green), is there to help deflect unwanted visitors. Asia ( Asia Argento, Michael Pitt‘s real life girlfriend at the time) is the girlfriend, maybe, of Luke. These are members of his troop, protectors, maybe, but, not real friends. They all seem to have their own agendas for Blake, but, caring about helping him save his life and their careers is not one of them.
Everyone sitting in the audience knows what is coming. We watch and wait and when the end does come, there is a sense of relief for us and for Blake because for him, after repeated failures in rehab, he is tired, he has shared his heart and soul with the world, through his music, now it is time for his big sleep.
Last Days is the third in a trilogy of death films, following Gerry (2002) and Elephant (2003). How could I go from thinking Last Days was a pretentious mess to thinking it is a film of beauty and poignancy? Gus Van Sant.
When I let go, stepped back and reviewed his whole approach to the film, I then began to understand the inarticulate ramblings of a man, a boy, a put-on-a-pedestal, insecure rock god reciting his long suicide note to us, to himself. Irritating long shots of the meditative woods became visual postcards of the beauty that surrounded Blake but, he could not see. Looping and looping of scenes, some with subtle perspective changes, some not, was a view of the Blake’s world through the haze of his drugged-out, depressed mind. Van Sant teases us throughout the film, creating tension, by having Blake play with his rifle.
Michael Pitt plays guitar and sings and fronts for the band Pagoda. He has portrayed and sang as the glam, rock star, Tommy Gnosis, in Hedwig. For some strange reason, director, Bernardo Bertolucci uses Pitt’s cover of “Hey Joe” in the movie Dreamers, whose soundtrack covered the greatest musicians of the late sixties: Hendrix, Joplin, The Dead, The Doors. Pitt’s cover of a song that even Hendrix never felt he was worthy to sing, was distracting. But, in Last Days, Van Sant (he and Pitt have been good friends for years) lets Pitt cut loose in two powerful music scenes. We get to watch Blake, (with Pitt singing and playing all the instruments) tell the world his truths through the music. He is tired of all the crap that is his environment. Watching Blake create music from what was his ramblings is brilliant and electrifying.
There is an almost homoerotic scene between Luke and Scott, which is one of the many looped scenes, that even on reflection, seems out of place. I will have to continue to ponder that one, because there has to be some deeper meaning beyond the obvious.
Gus Van Sant is usually ahead of the curve in his story telling methods. He will make you work in order to “get” his story, understand his unique vision. When we are angry and frustrated with Blake, the film itself, we are suppose to be. After you have left Last Days feeling like Van Sant has made a bomb, wait, think, reflect and you will began to visualize, smell, feel and understand the small sparks and then the whole mental picture of a great auteur who refuses to tell his stories the easy way.