Product: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)
Rating: 5.0
the resonance of an ultra-slow fade
This is filmmaking as poetry, the kind that resonates long LONG after you finish watching/reading/sensing it. Van Sant's take on Kurt Cobain's psyche is steeped in anomie, loneliness, and the deep sadness that infuses your being when you have given up, almost completely, on relating to others for any reason at all. Blake (read: Cobain), played by Michael Pitt, is a rock icon who lives in a huge mansion funded by his astounding success but who has by this time become completely mired in his own lack of interest in practically anything at all except, occasionally, making music.But even that is an activity he has just about forsaken. The one time we see him composing a piece, it's from a distance and from outside looking in (he's in one of the many many rooms in his mansion doing this), as though he himself is an outsider to his own activity. This is an intelligent film, really well thought out, with a standout performance by Michael Pitt who, when he does say anything at all, is mostly unintelligible, mumbling, hiding behind ridiculous sunglasses, and endlessly roaming about the enormous grounds surrounding his mansion.This is not at all a linear film but one whose substance gels, slowly, ever so slowly, very very slowly, based on Blake's psyche and, sometimes, those of his "friends" and hangers-on and also occasional interlopers (a Yellow Pages salesman, two religious missionary nut types), all of which adds up to a richly conceived character-based piece that gives you, more than anything else, the sense that time has slowed down, more than it ever could in any other way, in any other film until finally at the end, time stops for Blake forever.Completely unique, completely unlike any other film from 2005, or, for that matter, a whole lot of other years, Last Days deserves to be seen at least once so that you can feel it, and then one more time so that you can sink into it and really feel it.Unforgettable. What no one else is doing today in film...