Product: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)
Rating: 5.0
What do you expect?
The Amazon reviews for this DVD actually do a good job overall, because most casual fans of popular movies will only be wasting their time trying to get anything of value from this movie. There is considerable value to be found in the work, but it's obvious from the reviews that only a limited number of people have the patience or the temperament to understand the moods. It seems to me that the real question is whether or not the movie should have been made in the first place. It's a movie about the last days of life before a suicide, so with that subject matter in mind I found it to be painful and confusing and at times totally incoherent, but that also made it strangely fascinating and increasingly compelling. Most of the people who hate this movie should actually consider themselves to be fortunate that they can't relate to the moods, but serious fans of artistic movies shouldn't be scared away by the bad reviews. There are lots of people who insist that this is totally lacking in any artistic and creative merit, but I strongly disagree, and I wonder how else the critics would portray the last days of the character. You couldn't add car chases to liven up the movie. Lots of quick edits wouldn't amount to anything. Snappy dialogue would be completely false. I have no idea how closely this movie follows the real life case, and I don't really care about that. I think that Gus Van Sant simply used the real events as a starting point, and then made the movie total fiction. I've been in bands and known many people who have never been able to fit into normal life, and some of their stories end badly, so the characters in this movie resonate with me even though they disturb me. Every movie should be its own world, and one that's different than the worlds in every other movie. I'm not at all critical of the people who hate this movie, but they shouldn't act as if they can pass total judgment on its merits.