Last Days (2005)

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"Last Days" is the third leg of Gus Van Sant's "Death trilogy", with Gerry and Elephant filling out the first two thirds. It concerns the titular last days of Kurt Coba-- sorry, "Blake", a drug addicted rock star who spends most of his time unconscious, or haphazardly stumbling around his stone mansion in the forest, avoiding everything and everyone as much as possible.

At one point a guy from the Yellow Pages arrives to try to sell him an ad. The conversation is shot in one long continuous take, but there is nobody involved. The salesman is doing his pitch, completely oblivious to the person he's talking to, who is also not there, but there they both sit, playing their roles.

Blake spends his time roaming around the house, making Cocoa Rice Krispies and mac & cheese (both with way too much milk -- c'mon, Blake), or running into the woods whenever the possibility of having to face another person becomes too real. Usually he is mumbling incoherencies to himself, and his gate is none-too-steady.

Occasionally, when in his studio, he'll pick up an instrument, and show a brief flash of the brilliance that got him into this situation to begin with. (Most impressive is that the music is written and performed by Michael Pitt, the actor portraying Blake -- if acting didn't work out for him, he could have fronted a pretty good Nirvana cover band.)

His house is occupied by losers and hangers-on, who make sure nobody is ever able to help Blake, because he's the reason they're having parties every day and not homeless or dead. The two kids who blow up the school in Elephant are monsters, but these people come across as even less sympathetic.

In reading this review, you might get the idea that unlike the other two movies, lots of stuff happens in this one. Not to worry, this movie has as many if not more long stretches of single shots in which nothing happens than the others. As I was watching it I remarked to Kathy that it's "Gerry, but with just one guy." If you could not stand the first two movies of the trilogy, avoid this at all costs.

The Death Trilogy presents an unflinching look at death, and not in the conventional Hollywood sense of "unflinching" -- it's not interested in the gory details, but quite literally just shows you the last minutes, hours, or days of human lives. The minutiae, the banality, the confusion and ambivalence. You're alive, and then you're not.

So it goes.

[AArdvark]

Now here's a question. Would having the sound off on the tv make a difference?

Obviously the director didn't make these movies to fill seats at theaters, are these 'art' films?

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These are the definition of "art" films, yes, and if there were ever any three movies I'd approve of watching with the sound off, these are they.