Last Days

It is ironic that in an era of high-speed communications and hyper-dimensional physics that the children of these creations would choose to express their exacerbations in a primal mumble of modern madness, while sleepwalking through their nightmare.

The Director's low-key, laid back, and standoff style are appropriate, with little dialog using sound and fluid composition to facilitate the ethereal essence of the environment.

A parallel but not a specific profile, the similarities to Nirvana's Kurt Cobain are a worthwhile comparison. Entering the mind and the world of a tortured and talented person is not going to be entertaining, but it is a different, difficult detour to a road to nowhere.

It is a vast, expansive and mostly empty space, an unknowable territory and it smells like spiritual suicide.

Nirvana were big around about the time I was in my teens so I do have a certain amount of cultural involvement in his suicide. By this I'm not claiming anything special, just saying that it was an event I remember from the time rather than since. As such I was quite interested in seeing this film although I did think it would be detailed than it was. Instead it is literally "Blake's" last days in a remote house with a group of friends. We see him in a state of isolation, falling deeper into whatever it is that is eating at him from the inside out. 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. I am not one of those viewers. It wasn't that I was waiting for the film to do a lot of work for me or spoon-feed me emotions, but I did need more than what was delivered and I confess that the film bored me intensely at some points. 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. Without any dialogue to speak of (sorry) this is all he can really do and I found it totally unconvincing and uninteresting – which is a pretty big failing given that he is supposed to be the heart of the film and the reason we have all come along. The rest of the cast are fairly unimportant and it says a lot that the only one that held my interest was Ricky Jay – but that was only because he was Ricky Jay.

Perhaps this will really touch major fans of Cobain but it did nothing for me at all. Silent and surprisingly dull, this badly needed depth and insight as well as a serious and respectful tone.

Last days This is the final instalment of Gus van sant's trilogy of the disenfranchised and the alienated human condition. It began with 'Gerry' dealing with two guys trapped in a desert with no way of finding civilisation again and continued with 'elephant' dealing loosely with the columbine school killings. Last days is loosely based on the life of Kurt Cobain the late nirvana singer. Last days is really gelephant a mix of the first two films. Similar themes like repetition and the same story told from different characters perspectives are lifted straight out of elephant and the endless, hopeless tracking shots of despair are taken out of Gerry. Here the main character Blake is lost, unlike the two central characters in Gerry who are lost in the desert without hope, Blake is lost in his own head seemingly without hope. We meet Blake in the title of the film, his last days, being destroyed by drugs (although we never see him take anything harder than a cigarette) and emotional vampires who pretend to be his friends sucking the life out of him coupled with the pressure of fame and impending 86 date tours, Blake is quite simply falling apart. Here though it is a beautifully subtle take on madness, gone are the visions you see in films like 'Jacobs ladder' replaced with a clever underscore of sounds of doors opening and closing and mutterings and oddities. It's as if as you travel round with Blake you too can here the doors of insanity opening in his head, you too struggle to make out all the sounds. It's gently handled but eerily effective in linking you in with Blake's mindset. Elsewhere he stumbles and crawls round trying to function in the face of increasing paranoia and his drug addled inability to perform even the simplest of tasks. With record executives, band members, his manager and a private investigator all on his trail doing little for his state of mind Blake only seems comfortable when making music. This is also the only thing he can do with any sense of achievement, this could be down to the fact that it is second nature or the fact that he is a musical genius. The film also has an amazing sense of space, the landscapes around the mansion, the emptiness of its rooms and the vacuous nature of the hangers on to Blake's coat tails. 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. Although different in its approach it deals with madness in a way not seen since Polanski's 'repulsion' and ultimately it is a film that stays with you long after the final chilling shot.

Just watched this movie a couple of hours ago. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I'm a big fan of Gus Van Sant so I wasn't prepared for this pretentious little number!! It was long, long, long. I sat with the remote control in my hand wanting to press the FF button but out of respect for this great director I chose not too. I hoped something towards the end might enlighten........nope. The actors however did a good job with what they were given and I did like the boys from 'the church of the Latter day saints' scene. Was it supposed to be based on Kurt Cobains last days?? I honestly hope that the good man Kurt did not spend his last days in such a boring capacity. I was also a fan of grunge in the 90's, I hoped for more of a grungy feel to the movie and maybe some more music. It was too light on music, drug scene etc. If you're after an entertaining, music-filled homage to Kurt Cobain..this is not the movie for you. Too soft for me

Gus Van Sant completes his trilogy of films revolving around the theme of death and friends (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days). However this is the weakest of the group as it, unfortunately, is tied to an event that is meaningful to many. As Lennon's death hit the generation of the 60's, Cobaine's death was a blow to those raised in the 80's and 90's. Many expect this film to be an interpretation of the last days of Kurt and the film is very loosely based on those facts. There is very little dialog as most of the film is music / sounds (sound design by Sonic Youth) and the film repeats events attempting to show the same moment from various viewpoints. Gus misses many opportunities and instead aims for an overall aesthetic (it was even shot in TV aspect ratio, 4:3, instead of film) rather than creating a typical storyline.

For Gus fans, the film is a welcome sight but for traditional movie goers, the talents of Michael Pitt and company are not challenged and the visual aesthetic disappoints an expectation of character development, storyline, and drama.