Product: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)
Rating: 3.0
Little sound. Little fury. Little meaning.
Once I felt the emptiness of the lead character in Gus Van Sant's "Last Days." It was at the end of a 31-hour drive from California to Nebraska on New Year's Day when I nudged my friend and pointed out into the blowing snow."Look at that giant dump truck, man. Just look at it. Look at it." It was five in the morning. When I later stumbled into my dorm room I wanted to cry, but instead I kneeled right there on the floor and leaned on the TV to sleep.We never learn why Blake the alternative rock star inhabits this state as a daily routine in "Last Days." Because actor Michael Pitt looks and dresses like Kurt Cobain, shambling about in his Upstate New York castle, muttering under his breath, we are to borrow the reasons Cobain claimed for his exhaustion and use them here. It'd be easy to say Blake's apathetic, except that he seems intent on hiding from people hired by his record company to find him. He is certain of his own suicide before he commits it. The movie plays out like amorbid last meal.Van Sant purposely drains all the psychological pap and drama out of this story. This is the terminus of Blake's life, not the downward spiral. The tears have already been shed, the chances at recovery wasted. The immensity of Blake's reduction denies him the ability to reach out, or be reached. The groupies hanging out in his castle ignore him. A bandmate (Scott Green) engages the singer only to tell him he wants to go to Utah. Blake's longest chat is with a (real) Yellow Pages salesman. When he speaks it's a whisper. When he sings, it's unintelligible. He swats invisible flies, hears bells in his head."Last Days" takes considerable discipline to appreciate. Unlike Van Sant's previous stunner, "Elephant," there is no drive to the plot, no final movement, no climax. Scenes drag out beyond their purpose. How many times can Blake walk around in long underwear toting a shotgun? Why a scene of Blake preparing macaroni and cheese? Or the Boyz II Men video? Or the Yellow Pages salesman, Thaddeus A Thomas, who walked onto the set one day and was given, arguably, the movie's fourth biggest role?Van Sant walks the tightrope between commercial and Andy Warhol cinema, and here, possibly because he is too familiar with the subject, he indulges far more than he should, presuming the connection to Cobain will inject meaning where his camera has provided none. Pitt takes his role too literally, and makes Blake a fool without insight or kindness. I don't think we're supposed know what it is about Blake now that matters to music, but Pitt blocks us from knowing what it was. The director and actor are so intent on presentation they forget to say much of anything.