Last Days | Review

With a low-budget minimalism, Van Sant’s discourse studies a character, instead of offering a character study.

There are two manners in which you can view Gus Van Sant’s recent string of films – either the filmmaker has a fixation with death, or he is obsessed with the definition of life among other living things. This Cannes entry answers that burning question of what does a person who could live of royalties for the rest of his life do when his existence has already expired. In an emblematic fashion, Last Days borrows from the sad story of a rock legend whose candle mesh was moments away from burning out. With candor, and without pretension, Van Sant forgoes the need for story, but still manages to deliver something that is moving, and yet totally depressing.

The first sequence shows a man, alone, taking a hike in the woods followed by a dip into the water. At face value everything appears to be in balance, but the light-blue plastic wristband that he sports is definitely not from a day spent at an amusement park. Populated by mumbling sounds, odd gestures and demonstrating the obliviousness of those who surrounded the man, Van Sant exposes the solitude of a fallen star by emphasizing the final moments that lead up to death. Much like Gerry and Elephant, Van Sant charts a course which is not interested in answering or posing questions – thus keeping the Kurt Cobain tragedy as the mysterious story that it is. Wearing bleached hair, actor Michael Pitt adorns decomposing, knitted striped sweaters and woman’s clothes but he wears tailored imprints of a soulless soul.

Rather than delivering a VH1 story of coked-up beings swimming in Jack Daniels, Van Sant takes an observatory stance and cinematographer Harris Savides matches this light examination of the state of mind with what comes across as a removed visual treatment. Influenced by director Bela Tarr’s work, the selection of long gestating shots, Van Sant does a couple of double takes from various p.o.v’s and is expressive in his experimentation of the narrative form and temporal space, therefore the camera tries to pick up on whatever emotions are available in an empty house and vast forest and the breaks in the palette of bleakness come across as pivotal moments in the film – when the character of Blake confuses a yellow pages salesmen as just another magazine interviewer – it really resonates.

Last Days is perhaps not the most exciting film of the year, but it’s conceivably the most tragic one – it hauntingly places the viewer directly in the context of loneliness, and the spiritually bankruptcy. Those expecting a full musical soundtrack will be disappointed – since this is not the tale about a musician but about a dying soul – the lack of music or the ample use of it no matter which way you look it is understandable especially when Blake sometimes replaces the guitar for a shotgun. If there was ever going to be a film that honored and respected the untimely death of Kurt Cobain, this is the one – and though I appreciate Van Sant’s recent work, I’m hoping that this is the final piece where the idea of story is developed in such a free-flowing form instead of a script.

Rating 3 stars