Last Days (2005)

Gus Van Sant's Last Days pushes his realist style to the absolute extreme. Van Sant does not give us a biopic on the last days of Kurt Cobain, as many had hoped. Instead, he focuses his camera on a lost soul, an individual alien to his environment, as he wanders, wonders, and makes a bowl of cereal. However, this should not be read as criticism. While this film does not have the impact, the inherent social criticism that his masterpiece Elephant does, it is a challenging film that deserves a more thoughtful examination than, "Nothing happens." The point is that nothing happens, and in not showing "anything", Van Sant pushes what the cinema can do to new grounds.

It is nerely impossible to connect with this film on an emotional level. We are not allowed to know these characters, their connections, their relationships status', etc. Instead, we come to understand that they are bored, isolated, and futureless. While no drug use is ever seen, its effects are overbearing. Characters stumble, stutter, mumble, and fall asleep. Each of these facets makes it more and more difficult to connect.

Van Sant's film is exciting in the way it challenges modern Hollywood aesthetics. It employs moments that Hollywood edits out, and edits out moments that Hollywood would add. The effects of drugs are seen, but they themselves are never present. The suicide, too, is not shown. Van Sant does show the aftermath, but does it in such a way that the typical "shocked" reaction is coopted. Instead, Van Sant employs an overtly metaphysical sequence, to his otherwise realist film. When Blake is discovered, a nude, "ghost" of Blake sits up from the body, turns towards the door, and climbs out of the scene. (I have qualms with this moment because it instantly makes an argument, whereas the rest of the film paints a picture. Besides placing a positive moral-judgment on a character that is otherwise objectively portrayed, the sequence instantly attacks pre-conceived Christian beliefs that suicide is a Heaven barring act.) The film, however, should have ended on this sequence of images:

If Van Sant ends on this last frame, with Blake's foot visible in the background, it solidifies the only readable themes of the film: isolation, invisibility, and hopelessness. Instead, Van Sant steps outside the framework that created the film in effort to make an unneeded point.

Still, it is exciting to see a film-maker taking chances, whether they work or not. Many times they do work. Van Sant is now infamous for using random people from around the city he's shooting in as key actors. In this film, he employs two Elders from the Church of Latter Day Saints and a salesman from the Yellow Pages. These sequences are actually quite funny and acknowledge how incredibly out of touch with reality the characters that inhabit the mansion have become. It also allows Pitt to shine as Blake. Hints of intelligence shine as he mumbles on the subjectivity of success, but in the end, he falls asleep sitting up. This is his character. We can instantly see his past and understand his fate.

Overall, a fresh film that shows that Van Sant is following in the heels of Godard. Challenging the cinema, making people uncomfortable, and taking risks.