Last Days
Tags: avant garde, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
Grunge rocker Blake escapes rehab and walks home through a long forest, also swimming through a lake then lighting a fire for the night. The next day, he gets home and changes his clothes. He walks around in the house with a shotgun pointing it at his sleeping roommates Scott, Luke, Asia, and Nicole. He is greeted by Yellow Pages representative Thadeus A Thomas who talks to him about placing an ad in the upcoming book. He receives a phone call from his record company telling him that he and his band have to do another tour and that it is important they make the booked dates, but Blake hangs up. He goes upstairs and falls asleep on the floor in one of the rooms. Asia awakes and finds him asleep as two boys arrive at the door. Scott and Luke answer the door and the two boys talk to them about their church down the street. Blake changes into different clothes and leaves the house for the shed outside as the Christian boys leave.
Scott, Luke, Asia, and Nicole leave and Blake goes back into the house. His friend Donovan and a private detective come to the house and Blake leaves as they look around the house for him. He waits for them to leave before he enters the house again. He messes with the guitars and drums putting them on loop with his vocals. He stops when his record executive (Kim Gordon) comes over and tries to have him leave with her but Blake refuses. Blake goes to a rock club that night where a friend of his comes up to him and tells him about how he went to a Grateful Dead concert. Blake leaves before his friend can finish telling the story. Blake goes back home where Scott takes some of his money and Luke asks help from Blake on a song.
Scott tells Luke that Donovan had a private detective with him and that they should leave. After Scott and Luke have sex with each other upstairs, Blake plays acoustic one last time before walking out to the shed where he sits quietly, watching his roommates leave. They spend the night at their friend's house, and awake the next morning to see the news announcing that Blake committed suicide and an electrician found his body. Scott, Luke, and Nicole get in a car and leave, driving down a highway while Luke plays the guitar in the back seat.

Review: Van Sant has drawn this fall out over 90 minutes where, lets be honest, not a great deal actually happens.To some viewers this has given the film a tragic and haunting quality that has produced a lot of insight into the man Blake.
Van Sant has written these last days and based them on Kurt Cobain but I would have liked him to have imagined a bit more detail in his character and perhaps done more than delivered some stroppy teenager silently moping around the place until the inevitable happens (and even that is done in a very low key way).
It is hard to fault the intimate nature of Van Sant's filming but this is very different from getting into the character and actually benefiting from this degree of perceived intimacy.Pitt does as he is told and spends most of the film looking through his hair in a sort of creative and tragic way.
With some amazing scenes, look out for the Venus in furs scene and the amazingly shot and framed acoustic song performed by Blake in the studio with probably one of the best little pieces of improvisation I've ever seen, this is a brilliant and touching portrayal of a great man left to fall to pieces by those who should have helped him stay together.
I haven't seen Gerry or Elephant, but this time he has created a masterpiece.The movie follows Blake, an isolated young rebel, who is a "rock-and-roll cliché", during the last days of his life.
"Last Days", Gus Van Sant's experimental film loosely inspired by Kurt Cobain's, err, last days, is not one of his best, but it's certainly not the worst (the "Psycho" remake, anyone?).
"Last Days" is slow, hard to watch, "boring" as some people say, but that suits a brave attempt to show some moments of a troubled musician, "Blake" (Michael Pitt, from the wonderful "The Dreamers"), who seems completely lost and away from reality, trying to escape from himself in his house, surrounded by "friends" who are only interested in his money.
Nothing "happens", like everybody says, throughout the film, and Van Sant partially succeeds in showing us the big empty inside and around Blake with bitter, raw strength.
SPOILER WARNING....Now i will be commenting on a few things in the film but whether or not they can be considered spoilers i will leave up to you, my own personal opinion is that a film must first have a plot before it can be spoiled in any way.----------- ------- -------------- ------------- -------------- ------- Well i just finished watching this film 20 minutes ago so i'm writing this fairly fresh and still haven't completely formed an opinion of it, its probably best me writing these comments in this state of mind because most of you will probably be thinking the same thing.I watched this film without reading any reviews seeing any ratings or hearing about it through word of mouth, after 2 minutes of seeing Micheal Pitt as "Blake" you will clearly see Kurt Cobain, 30 minutes later you will be slightly confused by just what the hell you are watching and for a time this movie will seem like a chore to watch and if i'm honest it just carry's on like that.So why then did i give it 7 out of 10?
Even though I really like some of Gus Van Sant's older movies (DRUGSTORE COWBOY, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO,...) and I do appreciate the fact that he dares to do something different (in terms of stepping away even further from mainstream cinema) with his more recent work, he more or less lost me with LAST DAYS.
And then, after the 'movie' is over and we have absolutely learned nothing about our protagonist, Gus Van Sant has the pretension to show us some written text explaining that this movie is based on the last days of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain.
It's true that last Days isn't a film for everyone, nirvana fans are best to stay well away as the sight of their icon in a dress might send a shiver down their spines, but those who are willing to simply be with the character of Blake, body and mind, for 90 mins are in for something special.
I've never been a big fan of Gus Van Sant's and this looked like his most pretentious project yet, but beyond the events the films based on and all the conspiracy theories that come with it Van Sant has chosen to just tell a story of a lonely isolated man.
Pitt's great song fits so well into the film you would think he wrote it about Cobain, (and he probably did) it's a scene you'll wanna watch over and you'll find yourself singing the song when the movie's finished.
Gus Van Sant does a remarkable job with this film - "Last Days." Nothing much happens, there is not a lot of dialogue but what we see, experience, is the slow demise of an individual into oblivion.
I know that Gus Van Sant's films can be a little slow, and of course, you don't need a million miles an hour action for a great film (case in point, "Wings of desire").
I get what Van Sant was trying to do - representation of the monotony of Cobain's final days, and the mundane existence of a washed out/drug addled rock star, but fundamentally this film lacked any kind of passion or devotion to it's subjects.
A movie about the last days of Blake, which are similar to Cobain's last days, directed by Gus van Sant.
Let us say you put Last Days in a vault and this said vault re-emerges some billion years later when the memory of Kurt Cobain is long gone, do you think any form of intelligent life is going to give a damn about a movie featuring some bumbling waste named Blake?
I do not know if every details of the movie are real or if Gus Van Sant just figured out how the last days were but all seems so unique and finally the truth is not so important.
One part of this movie that was horrible in particular was when the Blake character was in his bedroom (druged up on something) watching a Boys 2 Men video and Van Sant zooms to the t.v and the viewer is watching the B2M video for about a minute and a half.
That said, I think the character "Blake" falls short of capturing the tortured life of Cobain.Van Sant's distant shots of Pitt are worth while as, like in an intentionally slightly out of focus work of photography, the image allows the viewer to reflect and imbue it with subtle indirect connections.
Thank God, by the way, the video included on the DVD was not included in the film itself -- it disrupts any Cobain/Nirvana vibe Van Sant might have achieved, and is downright embarrassing.On a positive note, I do like seeing Cobain portrayed by the use of simple detailed activities.
I cannot believe I just wasted 2 hours watching this movie and still do not know what really happened to Kurt, but now if I had been mumbling around my house for days - wearing a dress I might have to kill myself too!
The fine line of this balancing act gives a film that fails to add anything new to what we already know of Cobain's last days, in fact Sant tries to steer clear of events such as the 'Tough Love' from Cobain's friends and family and the final gunshot.What I was amused by was the ability of cinema to force us to sit through any rubbish it happens to throw out; The Chronicles of Riddick, Van Helsing...
Here are the tragical Colombine school events.It's not about this but it shows that we live in a society that enables people taking other's life as fun."Last Days" uses the same method, by taking the icon figure of Kurt Cobain as an example in a movie that deals with loneliness, despair, futility of living.
Gus Van Sant completes his trilogy of films revolving around the theme of death and friends (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days).
Empty of ideas but filled with self-importance, "Last Days" is, without a doubt, Van Sant's least impressive work to date and an "art film" in the worst sense of the term.
This is really what it must have been like for Kurt, what a drag, all he wants to do is chill and get wasted, alone, and heres this yellow pages dude totally harshing his buzz" dialogue from his movie audience.For anyone who does not think this is an overly pretentious, self absorbent piece of junk.
Talents (for making what was once interesting into the biggest pile of pretentious nonsense I have ever witnessed) This film is dreadful from the start.I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain, I remember lying in bed and a news flash came over saying he had shot himself, had he still been alive and seen this movie he would have shot himself again.
If not then feel free to waste a perfectly good couple of hours that could be spent watching paint dry or kettles boiling or maybe even watching the washing machine spin.It is a shame the film sucks so badly because Michael Pitt is a great young actor with a great future in Tinsletown but I dare say he will leave this out of his C.V. when approaching movie producers/directors.
And for no apparent reason.Someone should let Gus know that there are ways to show time passing in a film without actually making an audience sit through boring, pointless scene after boring, pointless scene.I'm a Nirvana and a Cobain fan.
Kurt Cobain has just became a stereotypical idea, a image, a type of clothing, and this movie is more of the same.Like Tim Burton, Gus Van Sant has no more original idea's.
It's a good thing that it still works brilliantly after these last three films.Although he barely speaks three full, coherent sentences throughout the film, Michael Pitt still brings a performance packed with immediacy and strength to a character who, at this point in his life, has neither.There are three musical sections in the film (four if you count the lingering shot of a TV playing a Boyz 2 Men video)...the first is Blake, apparently on a whim, playing one instrument at a time until each one is layered upon the others, creating this incredibly powerful sonic improvisation.
This was necessary and in my opinion the only conceivable way to accurately and respectfully reenact the last days of anyone, let alone someone famous.I also think Van Sant was a little too "artsy" with this film.
This movie is terrible.its way too pretentious everything the director tries to do is misplaced and does not work at all he focuses on the cinematography way too much and does not seem to care at all about the movie as a whole.Movies in my opinion are a sum of their parts score actors style script.this director has focused on shots and thrown everything else away.Some more time should of been spent on the story as it goes nowhere at all.I know its supposed to be about Kurt Cobain but the movie is so hollow than you cannot feel for the characters at all.The scenes in the car where the shot is taken from outside the car are utter crap other directors do not use it because it does not work it takes focus off the actors and furthers are disengagement from them.This is truly one of the worst movies i have seen.I cannot believe it got good reviews especially from the guardian shame on you.Forgive my rant but i cannot believe this movie was released.
Pitt's (or whoever it was, though he plays in a band in real life so it could've been him) voice sounds just like Kurt's, and the music is the perfect underground grunge sound of Nirvana.This is not a traditional movie, it doesn't follow any of the classic steps.
The fact is that I started watching this movie with great expectation, but the only thing that I rescue is Michael Pitt's role as Kurt Cobain or (Blake); both the physical aspect and his character, but the history is practically vague, too much silence, which doesn't give us to understand thoughts and feelings of the singer, the opposite: it leaves us with a displeasure, the same question ever: what happened really????
A magician rarely fools another magician.Simply put, this is a cynically-made, cynically-constructed movie which uses art-house filmmaker techniques as a smokescreen to disguise the fact that there's no actual feature-length film here.This movie could've made its few heavy-handed points about depression, despair, alienation, and exploitation in half the time, even keeping a number of the extended locked-camera shots which intentionally never cut.For all his artistic pretensions in Last Days, director Van Sant doesn't even sense the irony as, like the characters he attempts to criticize, he exploits Kurt Cobain's life, dysfunction, and death to make money and further his own career.This is a substandard USC Student Film desperately insisting that it's something more.
While I'm sure Cobain's last days were lonely and bleak, this movie portrays "him" as a stumbling post-lobotomized zombie - some tribute!Shuffling & mumbling for 2 hours, we watch Kurt (ahem, Blake) dry his underwear by a fire(!) dig something up(!) fall down(!) try to make mac & cheese, fail miserably and eat the inedible mess(!) dress up in a slip(!) fall down(!) talk(?) with Yellow Pages salesman(!) fall down(!) sit by a lake(!).
I loved Nirvana - and this is NOT Nirvana's music or much like it at all.This had to be the most boring movie I have ever seen - and I have seen lots of documentary films.Truly awful as little to nothing happens for two hours and when something does happen it is so repetitious or inane it is just dumb.Don't waste time - re-rent the Flintstones, or better yet that horrible exposition - Westender.
Gus Van Sant has serious issues in his own life that he needs to sort out before he makes another movie..
the new gus van sant movie 'last days', is a film based on the final moments of kurt cobain's life leading up to his suicide (or murder for those less convinced).
but van sant's stumbling and mumbling blake (not kurt, only 'based' on him) as played by michael pitt, never tries to state more than he knows he reasonably can, but simply puts to vision a sensitive impression of a disconnected soul on his last days on earth..
There's a lot of interesting things in the movie that really make you think deeper and each scene has a hidden meaning and people are criticizing the film because they can't understand it they should open their eyes and minds to be a little more educated.
Why wasn't his family in the movie, Van Sant Butchered the Image of Kurt Cobain!!.
If you think Gus Van Sant is the most brilliant director of all time AND you are completely fascinated with every trivial piece of Kurt Cobain's life - you might enjoy this film.
This is the worst film I have seen in a long time, and I watch a lot of movies.
yet this movie lacks plot, characterization, dialogue for the most part, any thread of narrative, and any point aside from tossing pretty people on-screen in a lame attempt to re-examine the suicide of Kurt Cobain.Gus Van Sant has made some truly gifted films: Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Elephant.
It's a shame that Gus Van Sant is going to make money off of this just because it is based on Kurt Cobain, not that you can tell from watching this horrible flick.
first of all I'm a big nirvana and Kurt fan, second of all even after reading the IMDb reviews that dissed this movie something awful i still had an open mind when i watched it, sadly though, it didn't deliver, hardly any dialog(which appears to be just simple laziness from the filmmakers, and not an artistic expression)no character development(even on Blake, the main character), and hardly any portrayal of the truth, which basically makes this film not a film about kurts last days but almost a film about a guy that dressed like Kurt and lived in a similar house, apart from that the similarities end there, i watched this film Right through to the end and it just trys to be arty and stuff but hardly ever pulls on any strong emotion(if ever) an absolute rubbish 'tribute' or what ever the hell its supposed to be, note for the record, this film kinda gives you an insight to severe depression, but not kurts mental illness.
Repeating scenes from different perspectives, as writer/director Gus Van Sant did in "Elephant," just makes them seem even more culpable in their neglect.With real world references, there's amusing irony when "Blake" turns on the TV and a Boys II Men romantic video plays, perhaps commenting how absurd it was that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became an MTV staple.Pitt doing his own songs acoustically recalls Cobain's "unplugged" take on Leadbelly's haunting "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." At the very least, one certainly sees the depths of the anguish that produced Cobain's tortured music and suicide.
The third time I watched it I really payed attention to it, really looked close at all of the feelings and emotions Van Sant and Pitt were trying to convey through Blake.
I'm trying to think of a film more boring than Gus Van Sant's Last Days, but I'm having trouble.
That's kind of what it was like watching Gus Van Sant's Last Days.
The camera angles are amazing (there are actually certain times in the film where Michael Pitt looks exactly like Kurt Cobain), the general absence of music works surprisingly well, and Blake's mumbling and aimless wandering mirrors Cobain in his final days.