Product: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)
Rating: 1.0
End of his days
Kurt Cobain was that all-too-familiar spectacle of rock'n'roll -- a young genius who is ruined by his own success and inner demons, and ends up dying too early.And while Gus Van Sant never openly admits that the protagonist of "Last Days" is Cobain, it's pretty obvious to anyone with five active brain cells that this is a story about his last days. Unfortunately it's hardly a fitting eulogy to such a vibrant personality -- instead it's a slow grind of excruciatingly dull, unspeakably mundane events. By the time the gun comes into play, the viewers will already be dead of boredom.We first see Blake (Michael Pitt) staggering through the countryside near his New York mansion, muttering to himself and apparently not paying any attention to his surroundings. Upon returning home he makes cereal, staggers around in a dress, and starts zoning out when the Yellow Pages man comes to call on business. He also passes out in an empty room in front of the TV.If I wanted to see this, I'd go hang out at a frat house on Sunday morning.The vast, chilly mansion is filled with various drugged-out hangers-on who have sex, go on joyrides and sponge off Blake, although he seems too far gone to really care. And though Blake makes a few clumsy attempts at reaching out, the others see him just as a source of money and shelter. And by the time his mother arrives to try to reason with him, it's clear that Blake has reached the point of no return.... and only tragedy will follow.Rather than making a straightforward biopic of a thinly-veiled Cobain, Gus Van Sant evidently decided to focus on the last few days before Cobain took his own life in a Seattle greenhouse. This could have been a shocking, haunting experience -- a look into the final hours of a man of wild genius as he started circling the drain. It could have been a look into a modern American tragedy.Instead we get a film that Van Sant clearly directed while fast asleep. Which is more or less what I wanted to do as I watched "Blake" going about the most mundane tasks imaginable.Admittedly the settings are lovely -- fresh green woods and lawns, and a rambling stone mansion filled with shabby furniture. But nothing really HAPPENS in this movie, except a long treacly string of excruciatingly slow events that have nothing to do with one another. Van Sant spins it out in hyper-realistic style, with no music, mumbled dialogue and lots of boring activities observed in detail -- and frankly nothing could be more dull.And though a few scenes have a feeling of imminent doom -- such as Blake's fruitless trip to a local punk club, or his pitiful attempts at playing music -- most of "Last Days" lacks even the slightest shred of foreboding or foreshadowing. Blake just does a lot of random, empty activities around his house, such as a seemingly ten-minute scene about making macaroni and cheese. No foreboding. And when he reaches the inevitable end, that's it.Michael Pitt is one of the few good things about this movie. Though Van Sant blatantly wastes his screen presence for most of the movie, his beautiful face and powerful eyes fill the screen during the more emotional scenes, such as Blake's final meeting with his mother. Though the camera rarely captures it -- Van Sant seems more interested in watching him stumble around -- he gives a startlingly, disturbingly good performance when given half a chance.Most of the other actors, though, are no more than hostile cardboard cutouts, and there's nobody here who has much presence -- which may be appropriate, since they're all leeches. The biggest waste is Asia Argento, who is reduced to a frumpy, grimy nonentity with bad hair and not much clothing. It's anyone's guess why she accepted this role at all, because she's virtually unrecognizable and utterly bland."Last Days" is a movie so soulless, so dull, so utterly staggeringly ghastly that it's actually painful to watch. Michael Pitt is the sole redeeming aspect of this movie, and even he can't save it.